The Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) has record­ed a de­cline in prof­itabil­i­ty for the first six months of 2026 as ris­ing grain prices in­creased pro­duc­tion costs, al­though the com­pa­ny says it re­mains op­ti­mistic about its prospects for the re­main­der of the year

Chair­man Ham­lyn Jailal re­port­ed that rev­enue for the six months end­ed June 30, 2026 climbed slight­ly to $263 mil­lion, up 1.1 per cent from the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

How­ev­er, high­er op­er­at­ing costs re­duced earn­ings, with gross prof­it falling 3.5 per cent to $78.9 mil­lion and af­ter-tax prof­it slip­ping 2.4 per cent to $22.2 mil­lion.

Jailal said the in­crease in the com­pa­ny’s cost of sales, which rose by $5.8 mil­lion, was large­ly dri­ven by high­er grain prices on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

De­spite those chal­lenges, he not­ed that NFM strength­ened its bal­ance sheet dur­ing the six-month pe­ri­od, with to­tal as­sets in­creas­ing from $527.9 mil­lion to $559.5 mil­lion while sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing amounts owed to cred­i­tors.

A ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment high­light­ed by the chair­man was the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) cov­er­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2023 to De­cem­ber 2025. Jailal de­scribed the agree­ment as sig­nif­i­cant for the com­pa­ny and said NFM looked for­ward to build­ing a part­ner­ship with the union that would ben­e­fit both par­ties.

Look­ing ahead, he said glob­al com­mod­i­ty mar­kets, freight rates and en­er­gy prices are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue in­flu­enc­ing the com­pa­ny’s cost struc­ture for the re­main­der of the year.

In re­sponse, the board in­tends to close­ly mon­i­tor mar­ket con­di­tions and take steps to safe­guard NFM’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Cost con­tain­ment would al­so re­main a cen­tral fo­cus as Jailal said man­age­ment is con­tin­u­ing to re­view man­u­fac­tur­ing ef­fi­cien­cies, dis­tri­b­u­tion costs, pro­cure­ment prac­tices, in­ven­to­ry lev­els and ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pen­di­ture as part of on­go­ing ef­forts to im­prove per­for­mance and man­age ex­pens­es.

The com­pa­ny is al­so seek­ing growth op­por­tu­ni­ties as Jailal not­ed that NFM is work­ing close­ly with its cus­tomers as it pur­sues a larg­er share of the do­mes­tic mar­ket, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

He added that the com­pa­ny’s ex­port busi­ness is al­so re­ceiv­ing re­newed at­ten­tion as man­age­ment seeks ad­di­tion­al av­enues for ex­pan­sion.