PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Jake Gillette, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at West In­di­an Traders Ltd is op­ti­mistic that the po­ten­tial sale of Nes­tle’s lo­cal op­er­a­tions will not af­fect its busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with the brand.

In fact, Gillette said there are pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ties that may arise from such a trans­ac­tion, in­clud­ing the com­pa­ny buy­ing the lo­cal plant from Nes­tle.

Gillette, who was re­cent­ly elect­ed as the new chair­man of Food Dis­trib­u­tors As­so­ci­a­tion, would not be drawn in­to spec­u­la­tion as to who might be the po­ten­tial buy­er of Nes­tle’s op­er­a­tions, but stat­ed he too would be in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing if giv­en the chance.

“If Nes­tle reach­es out to us or we reach out to Nes­tle, we will be in­ter­est­ed as well. But I don’t think there’s any­thing of­fi­cial on the ta­ble as yet,” said Gillette.

Ear­ly in Ju­ly, Nes­tle con­firmed it was re­struc­tur­ing its Trinidad op­er­a­tions in­clud­ing re­view­ing op­tions to sell its Val­sayn fa­cil­i­ty. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive union for Nes­tle work­ers, the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union, con­firmed that sale of the plant was Nes­tle’s pref­er­ence.

WIT, which was of­fi­cial­ly list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change on Mon­day, is cur­rent­ly the dis­trib­u­tor of Nes­tle prod­ucts in To­ba­go.

“I still feel con­fi­dent in the busi­ness and our re­la­tion­ship with Nes­tle,” said Gillette when asked about the turn of events at the list­ing cer­e­mo­ny at TTSE’s Nicholas Tow­er of­fice.

He con­tin­ued, “I don’t see any near term or medi­um-term risks and in all things like this, there are op­por­tu­ni­ties. So I would say there prob­a­bly is an op­por­tu­ni­ty lurk­ing some­where from all of this. So, I don’t feel any kind of dan­ger or any kind of pes­simism about it. I feel ac­tu­al­ly very op­ti­mistic. There’s a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ty from it.”

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port in the Busi­ness Guardian, two Caribbean food man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies, Had­co and Se­prod, the Ja­maican con­glom­er­ate which is the par­ent com­pa­ny of T&T’s AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings, have ex­pressed in­ter­est in buy­ing Nes­tle’s Trinidad op­er­a­tions should they choose to sell.