Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Na­tion­al Flour Mills is mon­i­tor­ing the on­go­ing in­ter­na­tion­al tar­iff sit­u­a­tion but is work­ing to keep flour af­ford­able for the broad­er pub­lic.

NFM chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ian Mitchell said the com­pa­ny had con­tin­gency plans in place giv­en the un­cer­tain glob­al eco­nom­ic cli­mate sparked as a re­sult of the threat of tar­iff in­creas­es by Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

The stance by the US head of state has cre­at­ed con­cern about sup­ply and cost vari­ances around the world. How­ev­er, Mitchell said that cur­rent­ly NFM is not af­fect­ed.

“We adopt a wait-and-see ap­proach. We are ready. We al­ways have con­tin­gency plans in place to en­sure that should our usu­al sources present any dif­fi­cul­ty, there’s an op­tion or two avail­able to us,” said Mitchell in an in­ter­view with the Guardian at a mix­er event mark­ing the re­brand of its Ibis Flour range at The Forge Stu­dio Kitchen in El So­cor­ro South on Wednes­day.

The event fea­tured sev­er­al top lo­cal chefs who cre­at­ed dish­es at the venue us­ing Ibis flour to high­light the var­i­ous lines avail­able un­der the Ibis um­brel­la.

Mitchell said the re­brand was part of the com­pa­ny’s re-in­vest­ment in­to the brand par­tic­u­lar­ly, af­ter the com­pa­ny suf­fered sup­ply chain chal­lenges in the wake of the Rus­sia-Ukraine war.

NFM raised flour prices in De­cem­ber 2021 and June 2022, cit­ing sup­ply chain is­sues prompt­ed by the war, be­fore ad­just­ing the price down­ward in June 2023.

Mitchell said the brand would con­tin­ue to be strate­gic as it at­tempt­ed to nav­i­gate po­ten­tial chal­lenges.

In its lat­est fi­nan­cial re­port re­leased in April, NFM re­port­ed an $8.8 mil­lion or 25 per cent in­crease in year-on-year prof­its af­ter tax, from $35.4 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2023, to $44.1 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2024. How­ev­er, NFM al­so saw a nine per cent dip in over­all rev­enue down to $523.4 mil­lion in 2024, in com­par­i­son to $577.3 mil­lion in 2023. 

“If we con­tin­ue to make a prof­it to rein­vest in­to those brands, we can make sure that we con­tin­ue to add val­ue for the peo­ple of T&T and the wider Caribbean and all of our cus­tomers. So when things changed a cou­ple of years ago, yes, it was a rough pe­ri­od.

“We had to make ad­just­ments with prices and so on, and de­spite our best ef­forts, we had to pass on some of that in­creas­ing cost to our cus­tomers,” said Mitchell, “As things have changed, you would have seen us reel things back a lit­tle bit and pass on those sav­ings. And we will con­tin­ue to do what we can to en­sure that we of­fer val­ue at an af­ford­able price. But I can say, de­spite what­ev­er tur­moil and dis­rup­tions that are out there in the en­vi­ron­ment, we feel that we are equipped to man­age those dis­rup­tions and en­sure that there’s food se­cu­ri­ty for the peo­ple of T&T.”

In re­cent weeks, NFM work­ers staged protests out­side the com­pa­ny as they are await­ing the set­tle­ment of out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Mitchell urged pa­tience among the NFM staff as he ex­plained the mat­ter had been de­layed due to ad­min­is­tra­tive tran­si­tion is­sues.

“It’s un­for­tu­nate we are in a sit­u­a­tion where we’ve been in ne­go­ti­a­tions with our recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union since No­vem­ber. We have been around the ta­ble. We have pre­sent­ed to our board of di­rec­tors a pro­pos­al that, once it is ap­proved, we will take back to the union.

“As you would un­der­stand, the board is in tran­si­tion now, be­cause there’s been a change in ad­min­is­tra­tion, and you’re well aware that NFM is state-con­trolled, so I mean, we are wait­ing on our board of di­rec­tors to give us the green light to pro­ceed with a more at­trac­tive pro­pos­al that we can take to the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union. Un­til such time we just have to wait and ex­er­cise some pa­tience.”

He ac­knowl­edged the anx­i­ety of work­ers giv­en the try­ing eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, adding “ So I re­al­ly feel that for the work­ers, I know that every­body wants their mon­ey now. It’s a tough time eco­nom­i­cal­ly and so on for a lot of peo­ple, and I em­pathise with them, but I just asked them to ex­er­cise a lit­tle bit of pa­tience. I’m sure we’ll have this re­solved in the short­est pos­si­ble time,”

De­spite this lin­ger­ing mat­ter, Mitchell de­fend­ed hav­ing the launch with those dis­cus­sions pend­ing. He ex­plained the NFM team had been work­ing on im­prov­ing its prod­uct, as the com­pa­ny had in­vest­ed in a new pro­duc­tion and pack­ag­ing line ear­li­er this year. Mitchell said the brand­ing should al­so re­flect the im­prove­ment in qual­i­ty.

“I think it’s a per­fect time. We’ve in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in this brand. All of the pack­ag­ing equip­ment that makes all of our Ibis prod­ucts is ei­ther new or just com­mis­sioned very re­cent­ly. So new tech­nol­o­gy, the for­mu­la­tion and over the last sev­er­al months, we’ve moved to clean la­bels so there are no chem­i­cals in Ibis. These are all-nat­ur­al prod­ucts. So we felt, as we make those sort of in­vest­ments in the brand, both from a pack­ag­ing stand­point and from a qual­i­ty stand­point,”

The re­brand of Ibis was al­so care­ful­ly mea­sured as the NFM CEO ex­plained the new de­sign did not de­vi­ate sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the pre­vi­ous pack­ag­ing.

“We en­gaged with top de­sign­ers in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and some lo­cal­ly, to work to­geth­er with us to de­ter­mine what does this brand rep­re­sent and how can we pro­duce some sort of man­i­fes­ta­tion of what the brand rep­re­sents to us and to the peo­ple of T&T. So you no­tice we didn’t make too much of an ag­gres­sive change to the lo­go. We went gen­tly in the di­rec­tion that we feel would mod­ernise the brand and re­flect the mod­ern ap­peal to the im­age of the icon­ic brand,” said Mitchell.

The Ibis re­brand comes just af­ter an­oth­er pop­u­lar brand in T&T, Nes­tle’s Or­chard, a drink in­dige­nous to T&T and the Caribbean, re­brand­ed its pack­ag­ing. How­ev­er, the re­design of the Or­chard pack­ag­ing re­ceived mixed re­spons­es from the pub­lic as sev­er­al cus­tomers ex­pressed dif­fi­cul­ty recog­nis­ing the brand on store shelves with the new de­sign.

Nes­tle has since de­fend­ed the re­design.