GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) has made a $25.5 mil­lion in­vest­ment in plant and equip­ment that will help the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned com­pa­ny man­u­fac­ture more prod­ucts, more quick­ly, while main­tain­ing qual­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

One of the piece of equip­ment is a $ 17.2 mil­lion 2 kilo­gram pack­ag­ing line that re­places equip­ment that served the com­pa­ny for near­ly 40 years.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at the rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny at NFM's Port-of-Spain, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon said, "This ac­qui­si­tion will not on­ly al­low NFM to in­crease its pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty, it will al­so en­hance the pre­ci­sion and con­sis­ten­cy of its prod­ucts, help it stay ahead of con­sumer trends and re­main com­pet­i­tive in a rapid­ly chang­ing mar­ket."

The min­is­ter added the food and bev­er­age sec­tor re­mains an im­por­tant in­dus­try in T&T's econ­o­my.

She cit­ed Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice da­ta to in­di­cate the sec­tor ac­count­ed for about 10.5 per cent of T&T's (GDP) in 2022.

"This sec­tor is not on­ly cru­cial for our do­mes­tic con­sump­tion, but al­so plays a crit­i­cal role in our non-en­er­gy ex­port earn­ings," Gopee-Scoon said.

While she ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try's food im­port lev­els are too high, the min­is­ter main­tained that com­pa­nies such as the NFM and oth­ers in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor have en­sured T&T's food im­port bill has been re­duced.

NFM’s CEO Ian Mitchell said the state-of-the-art sys­tem brings sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing:

• In­creased ef­fi­cien­cy, al­low­ing NFM to meet grow­ing de­mand while re­duc­ing pro­duc­tion down­time;

• Im­proved food safe­ty and hy­giene, en­sur­ing the high­est qual­i­ty stan­dards for cus­tomers;

• Re­duced waste and a low­er car­bon foot­print, re­in­forc­ing our com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able man­u­fac­tur­ing; and

• En­hanced er­gonom­ics and work­place safe­ty, pro­vid­ing a bet­ter en­vi­ron­ment for em­ploy­ees.

Not­ing that flour re­mains the foun­da­tion of NFM’s suc­cess, Mitchell de­scribed the 2 kilo­gram prod­uct line as the cor­ner­stone of its busi­ness, ac­count­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 per cent of its non-in­dus­tri­al flour rev­enue.

"Many of our cus­tomers have grown up with our icon­ic Ibis All-Pur­pose Flour, and we have re­cent­ly­in­tro­duced our Lo­tus Cas­sa­va Blend­ed 2 kilo­gram, re­flect­ing chang­ing con­sumer pref­er­ences for health­i­er al­ter­na­tives with more lo­cal con­tent," Mitchell added.

He said lat­er this year, the NFM will com­mis­sion ad­di­tion­al ad­vanced pack­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, which will al­low the com­pa­ny to in­tro­duce new for­mats to bet­ter meet the needs of cus­tomers.

This is sched­uled for com­ple­tion by June 2025, which will be an­oth­er new state-of-the-art, ful­ly au­to­mat­ic 10-kilo­gram pack­ag­ing line to en­hance fur­ther NFM's ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

"At NFM, we un­der­stand that in­no­va­tion is not just about equip­ment—it’s about peo­ple. That is why we con­tin­ue to in­vest in train­ing and up­skilling our em­ploy­ees, en­sur­ing they have the tools, knowl­edge, and ex­per­tise to dri­ve our vi­sion for­ward," Mitchell added.