Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (Wit­co) will soon be sell­ing va­p­ing prod­ucts, its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Raoul Glynn an­nounced yes­ter­day, as he al­so re­vealed that the com­pa­ny is still ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing en­ter­ing in­to the cannabis mar­ket as well.

“We have re­alised that the world is pro­gress­ing to­ward new cat­e­gories of nico­tine de­vices and West In­di­an To­bac­co will be a part of that jour­ney. So we will be go­ing be­yond the are­na of cig­a­rettes and go­ing in­to the area where our par­ent com­pa­ny British Amer­i­can To­bac­co is the world­wide leader in va­p­ing prod­ucts. That will be a part of the port­fo­lio of the T&T mar­ket be­cause our con­sumers are de­mand­ing it,” Glynn said, as he ad­dressed the au­di­ence at Wit­co’s An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing held at Queen’s Hall.

This was the first in-per­son meet­ing since 2019.

In Sep­tem­ber 2021, BAT re­port­ed that its flag­ship e-cig­a­rette Vuse had the high­est glob­al e-cig­a­rette mar­ket share, by val­ue, based on sales in its key mar­kets: USA, Cana­da, France, Ger­many and the Unit­ed King­dom.

Asked by one of the share­hold­ers if he felt that Wit­co would be able to make a mark giv­en the sat­u­ra­tion of the va­p­ing mar­ket lo­cal­ly, Glynn said: “We feel con­fi­dent, de­spite the fact that you have that sat­u­ra­tion of no-name brands, that a strong brand like Vuse as be­ing the world­wide leader that we can lever­age on those things that work. We feel con­fi­dent, and util­is­ing the ma­chin­ery that is West In­di­an To­bac­co, that we can cut through any clut­ter,” Glynn said.

Glynn said re­search shows that va­p­ing is 95 per cent safer than cig­a­rettes and can as­sist in ces­sa­tion.

“We be­lieve the con­sumer in T&T is ready for that next step. It’s not one or the oth­er, we will con­tin­ue to have cig­a­rettes for those con­sumers, adult con­sumers, who pre­fer to smoke. But we want to have va­p­ing prod­ucts for those con­sumers who choose to do that as well and we feel con­fi­dent that we need to move quick­ly on it but do it the right way,” Glynn said.

Glynn said while ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing en­ter­ing the cannabis mar­ket too, this was not on the im­me­di­ate hori­zon.

“The group has done ex­ten­sive re­search. They are con­clud­ing one in Man­ches­ter, Eng­land now with con­sumers. We will take those learn­ings and see if it is ready to go to mar­ket, but at this stage I think it is a lit­tle bit far off,” he said.

Glynn said Wit­co is re­search-based and in­tends to “mea­sure three times and cut once” with re­spect to the in­tro­duc­tion of cannabis prod­ucts.

Yes­ter­day was Glynn’s first AGM as Wit­co’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor.

Glynn ac­knowl­edged the “lin­ger­ing ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic, in­clu­sive of dev­as­tat­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pacts—such as job loss, in­come loss, dis­rup­tion in busi­ness, and trav­el re­stric­tions—which led to re­duced dis­pos­able in­comes in the mar­ket and the search for cheap­er prod­ucts across all sec­tors. This, with­out doubt, had a neg­a­tive ef­fect on our per­for­mance and con­tributed to the up­surge of the il­lic­it trade.”

Not­ing that there have been pos­i­tive mile­stones in deal­ing with the threat, in­clud­ing seizures and the ap­pre­hen­sion of per­pe­tra­tors, he com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and in par­tic­u­lar, both the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, for the ag­gres­sive ap­proach tak­en to­wards clos­ing gaps at the Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones.

The Gov­ern­ment’s recog­ni­tion of the wide-arch­ing neg­a­tive im­pact of il­lic­it trade on all as­pects of so­ci­ety and the econ­o­my was fur­ther re­flect­ed in oth­er mea­sures as well, key among which was its com­mit­ment to not in­creas­ing ex­cise du­ties. Still, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor cau­tioned there was a con­tin­ued need for con­sis­tent ef­fort in en­force­ment to ef­fec­tive­ly com­bat il­lic­it trade.

Glynn not­ed that al­though rev­enue had de­clined, the Com­pa­ny record­ed prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion of $379 mil­lion for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2022.

Ac­cord­ing to Glynn, the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance was made pos­si­ble by a num­ber of in­ter­nal­ly dri­ven ini­tia­tives which, col­lec­tive­ly, were able to off­set chal­lenges faced dur­ing the pe­ri­od. These in­clud­ed an in­crease in ex­ports to the re­gion and an $85 mil­lion fac­to­ry up­grade which di­rect­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed ex­port to Colom­bia for the first time.