Lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings (AS­BH) has pur­chased a 50 per cent in­ter­est in Bar­ba­di­an im­porter and dis­trib­u­tor, Arm­strong Agen­cies Ltd (AAL).

Ac­cord­ing to a no­tice dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 1, 2025, AS­BH said the deal has cre­at­ed a part­ner­ship be­tween the two com­pa­nies. The no­tice said this trans­ac­tion was car­ried out through AS­BH’s sub­sidiary in Bar­ba­dos, Re­tail Ac­qui­si­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd (RACL), which al­so owns Stans­feld Scott (Bar­ba­dos).

The no­tice said, “In the trans­ac­tion, RACL is both in­ject­ing ad­di­tion­al cap­i­tal in­to AAL to sup­port fu­ture growth and pur­chas­ing shares from its ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers.”

Arm­strong Agen­cies Ltd is a pre­mier Bar­ba­di­an dis­trib­u­tor rep­re­sent­ing glob­al brands across the food, bev­er­age, con­fec­tionery, per­son­al care and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tors. The fam­i­ly-owned en­ter­prise has served the Bar­ba­dos mar­ket for over three decades, the no­tice ex­plained.

Richard Pan­do­hie, CEO of the Bry­dens Group said, “This in­vest­ment marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in our strate­gic vi­sion for re­gion­al ex­pan­sion,”

He added, “Arm­strong Agen­cies is a high­ly re­spect­ed com­pa­ny with a deep-root­ed pres­ence in the Bar­ba­di­an mar­ket. This part­ner­ship strength­ens our port­fo­lio and al­lows us to build up­on our shared val­ues and com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing qual­i­ty prod­ucts and ser­vices to the Caribbean.”

“We are thrilled to em­bark on this new chap­ter with AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings,” said Christo­pher Lam­bert, CEO of Arm­strong Agen­cies.

“Their his­to­ry of suc­cess and com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence aligns per­fect­ly with our own. This col­lab­o­ra­tion en­sures the con­ti­nu­ity of our lega­cy while pro­vid­ing the re­sources and ex­per­tise need­ed to achieve new lev­els of growth and in­no­va­tion. We are con­fi­dent that this part­ner­ship will be a great ben­e­fit to our cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers, and em­ploy­ees,” he said.

AS­BH said, “This agree­ment for­malis­es a long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween AS­BH and AAL, which pre­vi­ous­ly saw the two en­ti­ties joint­ly own and op­er­ate Arm­strong Health­care, an af­fil­i­ate of Bry­den pi in Bar­ba­dos. This strate­gic in­vest­ment is de­signed to en­hance the ex­ist­ing part­ner­ship and en­able AS­BH to broad­en its foot­print in the Bar­ba­di­an mar­ket by in­tro­duc­ing the full range of its prod­uct port­fo­lio.”

Bry­dens said AAL’s cur­rent lead­er­ship and op­er­a­tions team will re­main in place, en­sur­ing busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and a smooth tran­si­tion. The re­lease con­firmed that the ac­quired busi­ness will fall un­der the purview of Ra­keesh Bernard, who serves as the CEO of the Bar­ba­dos Busi­ness Unit for The Bry­dens Group.

AS­BH, whose head of­fice is in San Juan, was list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change last Fri­day.