West In­di­an Traders Ltd has of­fi­cial­ly closed its mile­stone 30th year of op­er­a­tion, mark­ing its de­but as a pub­licly list­ed en­ter­prise with a strong surge in top-line rev­enue along­side strate­gic op­er­a­tional re­align­ments.

The com­pa­ny’s prof­it af­ter tax­a­tion for the year end­ed June 30, 2026 was $1.87 mil­lion, a 19.84 per cent de­cline com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

In com­ments ac­com­pa­ny­ing West In­di­an Traders 2026 fi­nan­cial state­ments, CEO Jake Gillette, said the Caribbean dis­trib­u­tor ex­pand­ed its full-year top line by 20 per cent, reach­ing $97.8 mil­lion com­pared to the $81.5 mil­lion gen­er­at­ed in its 2025 fi­nan­cial year.

This was at­trib­uted the sharp vol­ume growth pri­mar­i­ly to re­cent port­fo­lio ex­pan­sions, in­clud­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of pop­u­lar con­sumer brands such as Dux, Hy­per­malt, and Hin­du Tea.

Rev­enue fig­ures were fur­ther bol­stered by the ex­e­cu­tion of the full Nestlé dis­tri­b­u­tion con­tract across To­ba­go, sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ing the firm’s re­gion­al foot­print dur­ing its in­au­gur­al year on the pub­lic mar­ket.

How­ev­er, rapid ex­pan­sion across new mar­ket seg­ments cre­at­ed short-term pres­sures on prof­itabil­i­ty.

Gross mar­gins con­tract­ed from 22.0 per cent in the pre­vi­ous fis­cal pe­ri­od to 17.8 per cent.

“About three per­cent­age points of that came from trade pro­mo­tions and cus­tomer in­cen­tives we chose to fund, and the rest from high­er freight and for­eign ex­change costs. Gross prof­it was $17.4 mil­lion, slight­ly be­low the $ 18.350 mil­lion we earned on low­er sales in FY2025,” Gillette said.

Look­ing for­ward, West In­di­an Traders Ltd has al­ready ini­ti­at­ed fi­nan­cial re­struc­tur­ing steps to strength­en its bal­ance sheet.

Fol­low­ing the close of the fi­nan­cial year in Au­gust 2026, the com­pa­ny de­ployed $4.4 mil­lion from its ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing pro­ceeds to ful­ly sat­is­fy out­stand­ing debt oblig­a­tions with RBC and Re­pub­lic Bank as Gillette out­lined, “In Au­gust 2026, af­ter the year end, we used $4.4 mil­lion of the IPO pro­ceeds to re­pay two loans in full (RBC and Re­pub­lic Bank) as set out in the prospec­tus. The re­pay­ment will be re­flect­ed in the FY2027 fi­nan­cial state­ments. It re­duces fi­nance costs by about $300,000 per year and re­moves about $50,000 a month in loan re­pay­ments.”