An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Massy Group has sold its Cater­pil­lar busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go to Ma­chin­ery Cor­po­ra­tion Mo­tors (MA­CORP), with the trans­ac­tion form­ing part of a strate­gic re­view of Massy Ma­chin­ery.

Dionne Ligoure, vice-pres­i­dent of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Cor­po­rate Af­fairs at Massy Group, con­firmed the sale to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

The val­ue of the trans­ac­tion has not been dis­closed.

Ligoure al­so clar­i­fied that the sale does not af­fect 200 work­ers, as re­port­ed by an­oth­er me­dia house.
Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that em­ploy­ees at the lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor of Cater­pil­lar will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be con­sid­ered for po­si­tions with MA­CORP, a lo­cal sub­sidary of a Mi­a­mi Flori­da com­pa­ny.

Ligoure ex­plained that Massy’s Cater­pil­lar busi­ness has been part of the Group for near­ly a cen­tu­ry and de­scribed the trans­ac­tion as a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly for em­ploy­ees who have helped build and op­er­ate the busi­ness over the years.

MA­CORP, which op­er­ates in Guyana and oth­er Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets, brings Cater­pil­lar ex­per­tise and re­gion­al reach to the busi­ness.

Its ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tions ex­tend across Guyana, The Ba­hamas, Colom­bia, Turks and Caicos, the Cay­man Is­lands, Aru­ba, Bonaire and Cu­raçao. The com­pa­ny serves in­dus­tries in­clud­ing min­ing, agri­cul­ture, road con­struc­tion, ma­rine, forestry, in­dus­tri­al op­er­a­tions and elec­tric pow­er gen­er­a­tion.

The sale fol­lows a re­view of Massy Ma­chin­ery Ltd. and the fu­ture po­si­tion­ing of its busi­ness­es.

Ligoure ex­plained that Massy rou­tine­ly re­views its busi­ness­es and as­sets to as­sess op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth, val­ue cre­ation and de­vel­op­ment for its peo­ple.

For the Cater­pil­lar op­er­a­tion, the re­view fo­cused on the scale, spe­cial­ist ex­per­tise and re­gion­al reach need­ed to sup­port the busi­ness over the long term.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that a town meet­ing was held yes­ter­day at which em­ploy­ees were in­formed of the de­vel­op­ment. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU), which rep­re­sents work­ers at the com­pa­ny, were present.

The de­vel­op­ment has trig­gered an emo­tion­al re­sponse among some em­ploy­ees.

One work­er de­scribed the meet­ing in a so­cial me­dia post as “tough, emo­tion­al and a men­tal­ly drain­ing day”, adding: “we just need to take time to process”.

Ligoure in­di­cat­ed that Massy is fo­cused on man­ag­ing the tran­si­tion while meet­ing its oblig­a­tions to em­ploy­ees.

She ex­plained that af­fect­ed work­ers would re­ceive sup­port dur­ing the tran­si­tion, in­clud­ing ac­cess to the com­pa­ny’s Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme and oth­er re­sources.

Where ap­pro­pri­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist, em­ploy­ees will al­so be able to pur­sue po­si­tions with­in Massy Group.

The trans­ac­tion trans­fers the Cater­pil­lar busi­ness from Massy Ma­chin­ery to MA­CORP, a com­pa­ny with an es­tab­lished Cater­pil­lar pres­ence across sev­er­al Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets.