An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Nestlé has be­gun a strate­gic re­view of its Trinidad and To­ba­go op­er­a­tions as part of a wider glob­al re­struc­tur­ing, with lo­cal em­ploy­ees be­ing told yes­ter­day the com­pa­ny is ex­plor­ing the pos­si­ble sale of its dairy and juices busi­ness .

More than 200 work­ers are em­ployed at the com­pa­ny’s fa­cil­i­ty on Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, Val­sayn.

The an­nounce­ment was made at a meet­ing with em­ploy­ees on Thurs­day, led by head of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca Pablo Wiech­ers, who trav­elled from Pana­ma. Work­ers were told the com­pa­ny is ex­am­in­ing sev­er­al op­tions for the dairy and juices op­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing a po­ten­tial sale. No time­line was giv­en for any de­ci­sion or trans­ac­tion.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Nestlé’s lo­cal head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Siti Jones-Gor­don, said the re­view is part of the com­pa­ny’s new glob­al strat­e­gy, which sharp­ens its fo­cus on nu­tri­tion, food, cof­fee, pet care and con­fec­tionery while re­duc­ing em­pha­sis on oth­er parts of its port­fo­lio.

Jones-Gor­don said no fi­nal de­ci­sions have been made and that the re­view re­mains in its ear­ly ex­plorato­ry stages. She added that Nestlé is al­so as­sess­ing a dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el through third-par­ty part­ners in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She said the com­pa­ny’s ob­jec­tive dur­ing the re­view is to pre­serve jobs where pos­si­ble, pro­tect well-known lo­cal brands and main­tain con­ti­nu­ity across the val­ue chain. She added that Nestlé re­mains com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing a strong pres­ence in T&T and the wider Caribbean and will com­mu­ni­cate fur­ther once de­ci­sions are made.

Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union ex­ec­u­tives said they met with com­pa­ny of­fi­cials on­ly on Wednes­day and were giv­en lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion about the re­view. The union is ex­pect­ed to meet with work­ers on Mon­day to dis­cuss the de­vel­op­ments.

Sources fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter said the dairy and juices man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tion is the first busi­ness un­der re­view and claimed the com­pa­ny has been qui­et­ly seek­ing a buy­er for some time.

Nestlé has pre­vi­ous­ly re­struc­tured op­er­a­tions else­where in the Caribbean. In Ja­maica, the com­pa­ny di­vest­ed its dairy busi­ness in 2017, sell­ing the Supli­gen and Bet­ty brands to Mus­son In­ter­na­tion­al Dairies. Around the same pe­ri­od, it trans­ferred dis­tri­b­u­tion of its pet food port­fo­lio, in­clud­ing Pu­ri­na One, Dog Chow and Friskies, to Cari-Med Ltd, while re­tain­ing a fo­cus on brands such as Mi­lo, Nescafé, Mag­gi and KitKat.

The Ja­maican re­struc­tur­ing re­flect­ed a broad­er strat­e­gy of con­cen­trat­ing on core prod­uct cat­e­gories while re­ly­ing on third-par­ty part­ners for se­lect­ed op­er­a­tions.
The re­view in Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so comes as Nestlé pur­sues wider glob­al changes.

In Sep­tem­ber 2025, Busi­ness Stan­dard re­port­ed that new­ly ap­point­ed Nestlé SA chief ex­ec­u­tive Philipp Navratil told em­ploy­ees he would move quick­ly to ad­dress chal­lenges fac­ing the world’s largest food com­pa­ny af­ter years of slow­ing growth, high­er costs and weak­er con­sumer de­mand.

The re­port not­ed that Nestlé’s share price had fall­en more than 40 per cent from its 2022 peak as in­vestors grew in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned about the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance and strate­gic di­rec­tion.