An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Nestlé Trinidad and To­ba­go will change its dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el in Jan­u­ary 2027, with Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion Di­vi­sion be­com­ing the com­pa­ny’s main dis­trib­u­tor lo­cal­ly.

Nestlé’s head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Siti Jones-Gor­don, told Guardian Me­dia the move is sep­a­rate from the pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced sale of Nestlé’s fac­to­ry.

She stressed that the fac­to­ry sale has “noth­ing to do” with the new dis­tri­b­u­tion arrange­ment and con­firmed that Nestlé’s pri­ma­ry dis­trib­u­tors will con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing. Nestlé will al­so con­tin­ue dis­trib­ut­ing a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of its port­fo­lio across T&T.
Jones-Gor­don con­firmed there are em­ploy­ment im­pli­ca­tions from the change in dis­tri­b­u­tion and that Nestlé is con­sult­ing with the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), which rep­re­sents work­ers at the com­pa­ny’s Val­sayn fac­to­ry and of­fices.

“There are im­pli­ca­tions, but the com­pa­ny has been talk­ing with the union and con­tin­ues to en­gage to mit­i­gate any im­pact to jobs,” Jones-Gor­don ex­plained.

She added that ac­tive con­sul­ta­tions are un­der way to as­sess the po­ten­tial im­pact.

OW­TU first vice-pres­i­dent Sati Ga­jad­har-In­niss told Guardian Me­dia she could not com­ment on the agree­ment be­fore a union meet­ing sched­uled for this af­ter­noon.

The new part­ner­ship is in­tend­ed to strength­en Nestlé’s route-to-mar­ket ca­pa­bil­i­ties, mar­ket cov­er­age and cus­tomer ser­vice, while main­tain­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of its brands na­tion­wide.

In a Guardian news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment to­day, Nestlé de­scribed Massy as a lead­ing lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor with ex­ten­sive mar­ket reach and op­er­a­tional ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

Miguel Fal­con, Nestlé Caribbean’s Clus­ter Man­ag­er, said the arrange­ment would com­bine Nestlé’s of food and drinks port­fo­lio with Massy’s dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work.

“This new dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el al­lows us to lever­age the strengths of a high­ly ca­pa­ble part­ner while con­tin­u­ing to de­liv­er the qual­i­ty prod­ucts and ser­vice our cus­tomers ex­pect,” Fal­con ex­plained.

The tran­si­tion comes as Nestlé con­tin­ues to ad­just as­pects of its lo­cal op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing the ear­li­er fac­to­ry sale an­nounce­ment.

How­ev­er, Jones-Gor­don’s clar­i­fi­ca­tion dis­tin­guish­es that trans­ac­tion from the dis­tri­b­u­tion changes, with the em­ploy­ment im­pact of the new mod­el still be­ing dis­cussed with the union.

Massy’s role as main dis­trib­u­tor takes ef­fect in Jan­u­ary, while Nestlé and the OW­TU con­tin­ue con­sul­ta­tions on how the changes will af­fect work­ers.

The Ja­maican re­struc­tur­ing re­flect­ed a broad­er strat­e­gy of con­cen­trat­ing on core prod­uct cat­e­gories while re­ly­ing on third-par­ty part­ners for se­lect­ed op­er­a­tions.

The re­view in Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so comes as Nestlé pur­sues wider glob­al changes.

In Sep­tem­ber 2025, Busi­ness Stan­dard re­port­ed that new­ly ap­point­ed Nestlé SA chief ex­ec­u­tive Philipp Navratil told em­ploy­ees he would move quick­ly to ad­dress chal­lenges fac­ing the world’s largest food com­pa­ny af­ter years of slow­ing growth, high­er costs and weak­er con­sumer de­mand.

The re­port not­ed that Nestlé’s share price had fall­en more than 40 per cent from its 2022 peak as in­vestors grew in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned about the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance and strate­gic di­rec­tion.