As a child, my mother drove me to primary school in St. Joseph in the mornings. We would often pass the Nestlé factory by the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, and I would ask if the giant storage tanks with the Milo and Quik advertisements on them were actually full of my favourite chocolate milk drinks. My childlike mind filled the inside of the Nestle factory with images from the Willy Wonka movie with seas of chocolate and rivers of milk and candy in every scene.
Since then, in my mind the Nestlé factory on the highway disappeared into the landscape not unlike the green mountains of the Northern Range. It has now come back into focus as talk of Nestlé reviewing its operations for a possible pullout has made news.
As an adult, I see the same factory as a national asset and understand that the Companies Act will protect shareholders’ interests; therefore, it will be in the best interest of T&T citizens for a wide cross-section of the public to invest their excess cash into owning Nestlé’s operations.
Nestlé announced on July 2 that it had begun a strategic review of its T&T operations as part of a wider global restructuring.
The company said it is exploring a possible sale of what I assume to be the same Valsayn factory and related operations.
More than 200 workers are employed at its Valsayn facility along the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway and over 100 local dairy farmers supply milk to this factory.
According to the Business Guardian, two Caribbean-based food manufacturing firms, Hadco and Seprod, the Jamaican conglomerate which is the parent company of T&T’s AS Bryden & Sons Holdings, have expressed interest in buying Nestlé’s Trinidad operations should they choose to sell.
However, West Indian Traders Managing Director Jake Gillette expressed interest in Nestlé’s local operations as well.
He is reported as telling the Guardian, “If Nestlé reaches out to us or we reach out to Nestlé, we will be interested as well. But I don’t think there’s anything official on the table as yet.”
Keeping the factory running and our local dairy farmers in business is key to continued economic stability and food security nationwide.
As a milk aficionado, I regularly advise persons who are not lactose intolerant to stop wasting time drinking almond milk and oat milk.
A serving of 240ml of cow’s milk has seven times the protein of an equal serving of almond milk and more than twice the protein of 240ml of oat milk.
While it must be admitted that cows have a major impact on the environment when measured per gram of protein, cow’s milk has less of an environmental impact than almond milk.
Almond milk requires 74.3 litres of freshwater per gram of protein, while cow’s milk requires 18.5 litres.
I see this as a prime investment opportunity for a new holding company to be established to buy Nestlé’s operations and fund the purchase using bonds and a share offering to the public.
Each citizen can then own a stake in products that they use daily; every time a child drinks their glass of chocolate milk, a small portion of the profit can then be returned to their parent’s stock portfolio, increasing the wealth of our population.
The Nestlé review is part of a global shakeup, not a statement on the profitability of the local operation. We should explore the global context, as this is something that is happening in many other countries.
In October 2025, CEO Philipp Navratil announced 16,000 job cuts over two years: 12,000 white-collar roles and 4,000 in manufacturing and supply chain, lifting the group’s savings target to three billion Swiss francs by 2027.
Prior to the 2025 job-cutting plan, Nestlé’s 75-year-old Freehold, New Jersey coffee plant shut in 2023, its 200-plus workers let go, the company citing the site’s age and limited operational flexibility.
Its Sweet Earth facility in Moss Landing, California closed in 2022, production absorbed into an existing Ohio plant.
In Germany, the Neuss site making Thomy oil and mayonnaise winds down this year, its output redistributed across Europe.
To ensure that these issues do not repeat in T&T, local capital needs to step up and invest in taking over the factory.
There will be an initial cost to pay off Nestlé’s investments in plant and equipment, then further costs to possibly upgrade and maintain the facility.
I encourage credit unions, private equity firms and business leaders like Mr Jake Gillette to enter into negotiations with Nestlé to strike a good deal, and with one another to raise the necessary capital to buy and run the factory and related operations.
The Government of T&T may have to assist by offering corporate tax breaks to the new entity that would run Nestlé; however, it must be remembered that keeping the factory running helps employees put food on the table and will save some foreign exchange by obviating the need for imports to substitute the products that were once produced by the factory.
