PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The ANSA McAL group has hailed the turn­around of US-based chlor-al­ka­li pro­duc­er Bleachtech LLC as a key part of its promis­ing sec­ond quar­ter per­for­mance.

The group re­port­ed a prof­it of $141 mil­lion for the sec­ond quar­ter, an im­prove­ment of $8.6 mil­lion over the $132.4 mil­lion re­port­ed for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

While the group’s half year prof­it de­clined 20.3 per cent to $206 mil­lion, chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer Nicholas Jack­man not­ed the quar­ter al­so rep­re­sent­ed a shift in mo­ment af­ter a chal­leng­ing first quar­ter.

“All in all, you can see that the group has mo­men­tum. And the key high­lights would be, we’re now re­al­is­ing that point of in­flec­tion, which in­di­cates that the tar­get­ted in­vest­ments we made in Bleachtech’s re­li­a­bil­i­ty se­ri­ous­ly con­tributed to that, due to turn­around in terms of be­ing able to mar­ket gains and in­vest­ment port­fo­lios,” said Jack­man dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of ANSA McAL’s fi­nan­cial re­sults for the six months end­ed June 30, 2025 at the Brix Ho­tel in St Ann’s, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Re­fer­ring to the sec­ond quar­ter, Jack­man said, “We saw a 12 per cent se­quen­tial in­crease in rev­enue.

We saw a 31 per cent im­prove­ment in ad­just­ed EBIT­DA and a 200-ba­sis point im­prove­ment in op­er­at­ing mar­gins.”

For the six months end­ed June 30, ANSA McAL’s rev­enue rose by 11 per cent to $3.80 bil­lion.

Andy Ma­hadeo, head of the group’s util­i­ties sec­tor said the Bleachtech’s prof­itabil­i­ty dou­bled be­tween March and Ju­ly.

The group pur­chased Bleachtech via its US sub­sidiary ANSA Chem­i­cals US LLC, for a pur­chase price of US$327 mil­lion last year.

ANSA McAl Group Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III was heart­ened by the per­for­mance of the in­vest­ment. He said, “What is en­cour­ag­ing is notwith­stand­ing the chal­lenge of the first quar­ter, where we had some re­al plant chal­lenges and al­so sig­nif­i­cant weath­er chal­lenges, the sec­ond quar­ter is start­ing to re­alise the am­bi­tion that we be­lieve was pos­si­ble with the busi­ness. So we are very en­cour­aged, very ex­cit­ed about the fu­ture. This is an as­set that will most cer­tain­ly be­come a key cor­ner­stone in­vest­ment of the ANSA McAl group. It is pro­duc­ing what we ex­pect­ed and in­tend­ed it to do.”

Sab­ga con­firmed that there were some ad­just­ments that would have to be made as a re­sult of the im­po­si­tion of uni­ver­sal tar­iffs by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment but was con­fi­dent that it would not af­fect the group’s op­er­a­tions sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

“Bleachtech had on board some key parts that did fall un­der some of the rare earth min­er­al tar­iffs that the Unit­ed States had im­posed on Chi­na, and as a re­sult, it de­layed one of the short-cir­cuit­ing plans that we had to get the plant re­li­a­bil­i­ty up. The team has sub­se­quent­ly been able to ral­ly, and we are sourc­ing those ma­te­ri­als from oth­er sources,” he said, “So apart from that, I would say no, and I do know that our Gov­ern­ment and var­i­ous trade agen­cies are on­go­ing­ly and di­rect­ly en­gag­ing in di­a­logue around tar­iffs and op­ti­mis­ing for the var­i­ous sides of the equa­tion. So it is an area to be watched, but cer­tain­ly not an area to be ig­nored, but one for which we are not re­al­ly fraz­zled around. It is what it is.”

Ma­hadeo how­ev­er not­ed that some parts that are to be im­port­ed from Eu­rope did go up be­cause of the tar­iff sit­u­a­tion.