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Thursday, July 24, 2025

ANSA McAL's David Inglefield: Tells of his plans for media, retail sectors

De­vel­op the Ja­maica mar­ket

by

20110921

One of ANSA McAL Group's most ex­pe­ri­enced ex­ec­u­tives has re­turned home af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly sta­bil­is­ing the group's op­er­a­tions in Bar­ba­dos. So what's next for David G In­gle­field? Billed by his col­leagues as en­tre­pre­neur­ial, a pro­gres­sive thinker and a change ad­vo­cate, David G In­gle­field, or "DGI" as he is some­times re­ferred, is the ANSA McAL Group's new Sec­tor Head of Me­dia, Re­tail and Ser­vices. He is, there­fore, the man tasked by the con­glom­er­ate's board with the trans­for­ma­tion of the re­tail, ser­vices and the me­dia com­pa­nies. In­gle­field is brim­ming with new ideas to build on the work of his pre­de­ces­sors. He as­sumed these two po­si­tions on the Au­gust 1.

Hav­ing just re­turned from a suc­cess­ful stint in Bar­ba­dos as pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, ANSA McAL (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd, In­gle­field was re­spon­si­ble for the nine op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies in the Bar­ba­dos Group for the last four and a half years. An up­beat In­gle­field spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian two Tues­days ago at his 11th floor of­fice in the Tatil Build­ing, Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain. He spoke with the con­fi­dence that his ex­pe­ri­ence in Bar­ba­dos had pre­pared him for the po­si­tions he now holds. "In Bar­ba­dos, there is a mix of com­pa­nies with every­thing from au­to­mo­tive to fi­nance to re­tail and dis­tri­b­u­tion," he said. "I am quite fa­mil­iar with the me­dia sec­tor and I have had pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence with it as a mem­ber of the Trinidad Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny board and as chair­man of the ra­dio board. So that's a good fit for me, even though the me­dia land­scape has changed quite a bit in the last few years...I hit the ground run­ning," he said.

He not­ed that the two sec­tors are very dif­fer­ent in that where­as he has a work­ing knowl­edge of me­dia, the learn­ing curve in the re­tail and ser­vices sec­tor will be a lot steep­er. "Chal­lenge has al­ways en­er­gised me. It's an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn some­thing new and con­tribute to the suc­cess of the sec­tor, but I am lucky; we have some great teams in both these sec­tors."

Re­tail and ser­vices sec­tors

The re­tail and ser­vices sec­tor in the ANSA McAL Group com­pris­es MBM, Al­stons Ship­ping Ltd, ANSA Tech­nolo­gies Ltd, Al­stons Trav­el, Stan­dard Equip­ment Ltd and Crown In­dus­tries Ltd, and three com­pa­nies in Bar­ba­dos, Tri­mart Su­per­mar­kets, Bry­dens Re­tail Inc and Bry­dens Xpress Inc. The op­er­a­tions of ANSA McAL USA al­so come un­der In­gle­field's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. He be­lieves that al­though the world and the Caribbean re­gion are in a chal­lenged eco­nom­ic cli­mate and will be for at least the next few years, there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth in the ser­vice sec­tor com­pa­nies. "Gen­er­al­ly, the econ­o­my in T&T and, par­tic­u­lar­ly, the pri­vate sec­tor, is pro­duc­tion-dri­ven, and ser­vice as a com­po­nent of the av­er­age busi­ness mod­el is not very well de­vel­oped. This is a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for com­pa­nies that have fo­cused on sup­ply and price and not lever­aged the ser­vice com­po­nent of their cus­tomer in­ter­ac­tion."

In­gle­field said some of ANSA McAL com­pa­nies have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow.

"In the ser­vices sec­tor, com­pa­nies like ANSA Tech­nolo­gies that are aligned to the ac­tiv­i­ties of the en­er­gy sec­tor, have gone through a chal­leng­ing time be­cause of the de­cline of the over­all econ­o­my and the ef­fect on the en­er­gy sec­tor. "We have some catch­ing up to do, our prod­uct port­fo­lio has shift­ed and our cus­tomers now want a stronger lev­el of sup­port and, yes, ser­vice; it's not on­ly about price. "Com­pa­nies in that sec­tor have op­er­at­ed in tra­di­tion­al sup­pli­er man­ner for a while. There's huge op­por­tu­ni­ty to take these com­pa­nies from where they are to full sup­ply and ser­vice spe­cial­ists." Speak­ing about the man­age­ment mod­el, In­gle­field said the sec­tor has been man­ag­ing al ong tra­di­tion­al lines of busi­ness very well, and point­ed out that over­all, the ANSA McAL Group con­tin­ues to de­liv­er good per­for­mance and share­hold­er val­ue in spite of dif­fi­cult mar­ket con­di­tions.

"The mar­ket and cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions are chang­ing fast. Our com­pe­ti­tion is evolv­ing and we have em­braced this change and are com­mit­ted to adapt at a faster rate to stay ahead. That's our chal­lenge.

"ANSA Tech­nolo­gies now has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to move in­to the ser­vice part of the busi­ness in­stead of just sell­ing pipes and en­er­gy sec­tor sup­plies." In­gle­field said the group is com­mit­ted to a cus­tomer-first fo­cus as a key com­po­nent of its busi­ness strat­e­gy to re­main com­pet­i­tive and that this is em­bed­ded in the group's core val­ues state­ment that is post­ed in of­fices and pro­duc­tion plants through­out the group.

"The group has in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions in most of its sec­tors as well as an en­ter­prise re­source plan­ning sys­tem across the group to dri­ve ef­fi­cien­cies and im­prove our cus­tomer knowl­edge and ser­vice de­liv­ery. "In the ser­vices sec­tor, we must look to sat­is­fy our cus­tomers at a high­er lev­el. We must bench­mark on in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. Re­mem­ber, with tech­nol­o­gy to­day, cus­tomers can shop world­wide," In­gle­field stressed.

He said com­pa­nies in the group are lift­ing their game to sat­is­fy cus­tomers. "When the mar­ket be­comes price sen­si­tive, the de­ci­sion-mak­ing is pure­ly price-dri­ven. If your ser­vice com­po­nent of your busi­ness is not strong, you are des­tined to be­come part of that lim­bo con­test for price. Long-term, it's very dif­fi­cult to main­tain, es­pe­cial­ly in an in­fla­tion­ary en­vi­ron­ment. This ap­plies to MBM, Al­stons Ship­ping, our re­tail busi­ness­es and the oth­er com­pa­nies in the sec­tor. "In the group, our sec­tors are lift­ing our lev­els of cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion to a point where we are more re­la­tion­ship-dri­ven rather than trans­ac­tion­al-dri­ven."

Ex­ter­nal mar­kets

An over­whelm­ing per­cent­age of T&T man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts is ex­port­ed to Cari­com and, dur­ing this re­ces­sion, the re­gion has been neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed. "This is not good." "About 75 per cent of our man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­duc­tion in T&T is sold to the Cari­com coun­tries. We are a sort of Ger­many of the Caribbean. We need healthy cus­tomers and there are not a lot of healthy cus­tomers in Cari­com right now. So the bat­tle is for mar­ket share where we have po­ten­tial to ex­pand. "We al­so need to look be­yond our tra­di­tion­al Cari­com mar­kets. No, I don't see much mar­ket growth in the T&T mar­ket in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture, but I do see the op­por­tu­ni­ty for the group to grow mar­ket share in many of its sec­tors." In­gle­field said the group in al­ways search­ing for new mar­kets. Apart from look­ing out­side of Cari­com, the group is al­so look­ing at ar­eas in Cari­com that it has not ful­ly de­vel­oped.

"We are not re­al­ly in Ja­maica. Al­though we do have good busi­ness and dis­tri­b­u­tion re­la­tion­ships in that mar­ket and we do have an in­ter­est in a com­pa­ny in Ja­maica, we are in the process of de­vel­op­ing our port­fo­lio in this mar­ket. There are al­so oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion that have good po­ten­tial that we can do busi­ness in." In­gle­field point­ed to pos­si­ble mar­kets out­side of Cari­com. "The ANSA McAL Group has al­ways done well in good times as well as in dif­fi­cult mar­ket con­di­tions. We have a very strong bal­ance sheet, ex­cel­lent gov­er­nance and very ro­bust man­age­ment struc­tures. This and a large cadre of ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als at all lev­els car­ry us through the dif­fi­cult times."

Me­dia sec­tor

In­gle­field, who has had pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence in the me­dia, wants to fur­ther mod­ernise the me­dia sec­tor and build new re­la­tion­ships with cus­tomers, view­ers, read­ers and lis­ten­ers. "One of the things we need to fo­cus on is our cus­tomers. These are the ad­ver­tis­ers who buy time and space from the Guardian Me­dia Group as well as read­ers, view­ers and lis­ten­ers, no mat­ter how they chose to ac­cess our prod­ucts. We are in the in­for­ma­tion and en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness and our au­di­ence is not sta­t­ic. Peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly the younger seg­ment, are very mo­bile and have tremen­dous choice of how they ac­cess in­for­ma­tion and en­ter­tain­ment." One part of In­gle­field's plan is to change the old way of do­ing things. "Me­dia com­pa­nies can't re­ly on tra­di­tion­al de­liv­ery sys­tems. For a large sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, they have be­come ir­rel­e­vant. You are go­ing to see a step change in how we do what we do. That's go­ing to take a sig­nif­i­cant ef­fort, but we have good peo­ple who are fo­cused on suc­cess. There are ar­eas of our busi­ness that is very well de­vel­oped and there are ar­eas we will en­hance and de­vel­op as well as en­ter new ar­eas of the me­dia mar­ket.

"There is a change in me­dia, news­pa­pers around the world are in de­cline. I think one of the rea­sons for the de­cline of read­er­ship in T&T is that we have not kept track of who our au­di­ence is. The de­mo­graph­ics of con­sumers of me­dia in this coun­try have changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. The way we de­liv­er this me­dia to the mar­ket and the au­di­ence must al­so change." In­gle­field stressed the im­por­tance of the use of so­cial me­dia. "The so­cial me­dia net­work is very un­der de­vel­oped in T&T in gen­er­al. There are some com­pa­nies who have done a good job on Face­book and so on. From a news, cur­rent af­fairs, so­cial is­sues point of view, I don't think you see a strong pres­ence there. We saw the po­ten­tial when dur­ing the last elec­tions, we re­ceived thou­sands of hits and texts on our Web site with­in one hour. We got the mes­sage and are in­vest­ing in this fu­ture now.

"There is no ques­tion our au­di­ence has changed, the de­mo­graph­ics of this au­di­ence has al­so changed. It's our job to lis­ten to the con­ver­sa­tion of our younger au­di­ence and un­der­stand how to join that con­ver­sa­tion. It's not just print, TV and ra­dio; it's all forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. "If you look at our me­dia-we just bought Slam Ra­dio-and if you look at our print­ed pub­li­ca­tion, you would see the whole for­mat evolv­ing. The ad­di­tion­al pub­li­ca­tions that we pro­duce are tar­get­ed to spe­cif­ic seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion. That's one way we reach a wider au­di­ence."

The fu­ture of TV

With­in the rapid­ly evolv­ing and chang­ing me­dia en­vi­ron­ment, In­gle­field be­lieves that CNC3 tele­vi­sion sta­tion must find and own its niche. "We have a big in­vest­ment in CNC3. We were grant­ed free-to-air li­cence not too long ago. That al­lows to reach a wider au­di­ence be­yond ca­ble. The im­por­tant thing is to make it cur­rent and rel­e­vant in peo­ple's lives. We have huge com­pe­ti­tion, not just from oth­er lo­cal TV sta­tions, but from ca­ble TV, satel­lite and di­rect. The ca­ble chan­nels have over 100 choic­es. Is ter­res­tri­al TV des­tined to be rel­e­gat­ed to the slot where peo­ple just tune in to us for news? I think not. We have too much in­vest­ed in this busi­ness to ac­cept that small piece of the pie. "The re­gion is rich with di­verse cul­ture and nat­ur­al re­sources that have not been de­vel­oped as me­dia prod­ucts. There is so much ma­te­r­i­al out there wait­ing to be taped."

In­gle­field said us­ing the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy in so­cial me­dia is im­por­tant. "If ten years ago I had told peo­ple that they would be able to read news­pa­pers on­line and ac­tu­al­ly turn pages sit­ting at the beach eat­ing bake and shark, who would have pre­dict­ed that? So where are we go­ing to be in the next five years? These are search­ing ques­tions for me­dia com­pa­nies. By the way, the mar­ket, your au­di­ence, won't wait around for you to re­spond." Speak­ing about fu­ture ac­qui­si­tions in the sec­tors he now man­ages, In­gle­field said the group would ex­am­in­ing any op­tions that fit the strate­gic ob­jec­tives of the sec­tors and add good peo­ple and re­al val­ue to the over­all busi­ness. "We are al­ways look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties, and I'm sure in our busi­ness plan­ning process­es, there may be some op­por­tu­ni­ties that arise. These are great times to be in busi­ness, I see so much op­por­tu­ni­ty," In­gle­field said.

"We have some re­al­ly strong lead­ers as well as some bright young hun­gry pro­fes­sion­als in these sec­tors who will ex­pect to be chal­lenged. Per­son­al­ly, I get tremen­dous sat­is­fac­tion help­ing peo­ple de­vel­op and grow in their ca­reers and look for­ward to work­ing and learn­ing from the teams in both my sec­tors."


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