GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

T&T’s dis­tri­b­u­tion con­glom­er­ate, Massy Hold­ings has ac­quired US gro­cery store chain Rowe’s IGA Su­per­mar­ket for US$47 mil­lion.

The ac­qui­si­tion was made through Massy’s Amer­i­can sub­sidiary, Massy Stores (USA) LLC.

This is the sec­ond com­pa­ny Massy Hold­ings has bought in re­cent weeks.

The pur­chase of the su­per­mar­ket chain comes al­most two weeks af­ter an­nounc­ing the sale of the T&T busi­ness of French com­pa­ny, Air Liq­uide In­ter­na­tion­al SA to Massy Gas Prod­ucts Hold­ing Ltd (MG­PHL).

A no­tice post­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change said the ac­qui­si­tion of Rowe’s IGA Su­per­mar­kets was com­plet­ed on De­cem­ber 12 and rep­re­sents a one per cent in­crease in Massy Group’s as­sets and is ex­pect­ed to con­tribute to an in­crease in pre-tax prof­it of ap­prox­i­mate­ly four per cent.

“Massy Stores USA en­tered in­to a mem­ber­ship in­ter­est pur­chase agree­ment with the sole own­er of Rowe’s IGA, Robert A Rowe, to pur­chase 100 per cent of the eq­ui­ty in­ter­est of each of the sev­en lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­nies with­in the Rowe’s IGA Group,” the no­tice said.

For Massy’s in­te­grat­ed re­tail port­fo­lio, the ac­qui­si­tion is ex­pect­ed to in­crease its pre-tax prof­it by sev­en per cent.

Massy, whose shares are cross list­ed in T&T and Ja­maica, said the ac­qui­si­tion of Rowe IGA is aligned with its in­te­grat­ed re­tail port­fo­lio’s strat­e­gy to ex­pand its re­tail foot­print in the Amer­i­can mar­ket.

“The ac­qui­si­tion of Rowe’s IGA, an in­de­pen­dent su­per­mar­ket chain with sev­en stores in Jack­sonville, Flori­da, is aligned with the Massy in­te­grat­ed re­tail port­fo­lio’s strat­e­gy to ex­pand its re­tail foot­print in the US mar­ket. Rowe’s IGA was es­tab­lished in 2005 and is a well recog­nised brand with­in the Jack­sonville area,” the no­tice added.

Massy Hold­ings, which has been in op­er­a­tion since 1923, is a large con­glom­er­ate with di­ver­si­fied in­ter­ests and busi­ness­es span­ning the Caribbean, in­clud­ing Ja­maica.

Re­gard­ing Air Liq­uide a press re­lease ex­plained as a con­se­quence of this di­vesti­ture, the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 em­ploy­ees of this busi­ness will be in­te­grat­ed with­in MG­PHL.

It added this trans­ac­tion is part of Air Liq­uide’s strat­e­gy to reg­u­lar­ly re­view its as­set port­fo­lio and fo­cus on se­lect­ed fast de­vel­op­ing ar­eas and ac­tiv­i­ties.

The re­lease al­so not­ed that Air Liq­uide is well-po­si­tioned to fur­ther grow its pres­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca where it in­tends to pur­sue the op­por­tu­ni­ties emerg­ing with the clean en­er­gy tran­si­tion, in­clud­ing hy­dro­gen en­er­gy lever­ag­ing the area’s abun­dant nat­ur­al re­sources.