ANSA McAL an­nounced yes­ter­day that it was wind­ing down the man­u­fac­tur­ing and site op­er­a­tions of its Berg­er Paints Bar­ba­dos Ltd sub­sidiary, with all sites clos­ing on April 24, 2026.

The clo­sure in­cludes the plant, ware­house, Colour Shops, and ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices, the T&T-head­quar­tered group said in a news re­lease, adding that “this ac­tion has be­come nec­es­sary due to sus­tained changes in the op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing the im­pact of Ar­ti­cle 164, which have af­fect­ed the long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty of lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions for Berg­er Paints Bar­ba­dos.”

Ar­ti­cle 164 of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas al­lows less de­vel­oped coun­tries (LD­Cs) to tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend “Com­mu­ni­ty Ori­gin Treat­ment” on cer­tain goods im­port­ed from more de­vel­oped coun­tries (like Bar­ba­dos) and from out­side the re­gion to pro­tect their lo­cal in­dus­tries.

Berg­er will com­mence a for­mal con­sul­ta­tion process next week, which is de­signed to en­sure that em­ploy­ees are en­gaged di­rect­ly, giv­en time to ask ques­tions, and sup­port­ed through every step of the tran­si­tion, ac­cord­ing to the news re­lease.

ANSA McAL al­so said yes­ter­day that Berg­er Paints Bar­ba­dos would in­tro­duce a new dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el de­signed to con­tin­ue serv­ing its cus­tomers in Bar­ba­dos.

Un­der this mod­el, Berg­er prod­ucts will con­tin­ue to be man­u­fac­tured with­in the Caribbean re­gion and dis­trib­uted in Bar­ba­dos through se­lect­ed part­ners, in­clud­ing Carters (via Blades and Williams) and Ace H&B Hard­ware, both well-es­tab­lished and rep­utable Bar­ba­di­an com­pa­nies cho­sen to care for and car­ry the Berg­er brand for­ward in the mar­ket.

The group said the Berg­er brand would con­tin­ue to be avail­able at all ex­ist­ing hard­ware stores, and through this mod­el, its loy­al cus­tomers will ben­e­fit from im­proved pric­ing, con­sis­tent­ly high prod­uct qual­i­ty, and even an ex­pand­ed Berg­er prod­uct range.

ANSA McAL’s 2024 an­nu­al re­port in­di­cates that Berg­er Paints Bar­ba­dos is 100 per cent owned by the group.