Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Ltd says it has achieved a ma­jor fi­nan­cial turn­around, re­duc­ing pro­duc­tion costs to be­low its sell­ing price for the first time in years, a de­vel­op­ment that could sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­ter the eco­nom­ic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed di­vest­ment of the State-owned en­ter­prise.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Quar­ries CEO Shel­don Gan­ga said turn­around could ease pres­sure on home­own­ers, sta­bilise ag­gre­gate prices and re­duce de­pen­dence on Gov­ern­ment fund­ing

The cost of build­ing homes, roads and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go could be­come more af­ford­able as the com­pa­ny re­port­ed a dra­mat­ic re­duc­tion in pro­duc­tion costs, po­ten­tial­ly eas­ing pres­sure on con­sumers while re­duc­ing the fi­nan­cial bur­den on tax­pay­ers.

Af­ter years of pro­duc­ing ag­gre­gate at more than twice its sell­ing price and record­ing av­er­age an­nu­al loss­es of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20 mil­lion, the state-owned com­pa­ny says it has brought pro­duc­tion costs be­low its sell­ing price for the first time in years.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Shel­don Gan­ga dis­closed that pro­duc­tion cost pre­vi­ous­ly ex­ceed­ed $300 per met­ric tonne, while ag­gre­gate was be­ing sold for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $140 to $150.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing sev­en months of re­struc­tur­ing, the com­pa­ny achieved a sig­nif­i­cant turn­around in Oc­to­ber, bring­ing pro­duc­tion costs be­low the sell­ing price of its prod­ucts.

The im­prove­ment, he be­lieves, could have wider im­pli­ca­tions for the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly home­own­ers al­ready con­fronting ris­ing build­ing ex­pens­es, as well as the Gov­ern­ment, which has been pro­vid­ing month­ly sub­ven­tions to sus­tain the com­pa­ny.

“So, for the home­own­er, that should re­sult in some price sta­bil­i­sa­tion,” Gan­ga said.

“As we in­crease our pro­duc­tion and as we in­crease our mar­ket share with­in the ag­gre­gate in­dus­try in Trinidad, that should re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the av­er­age per­son on the street in terms of the pric­ing and the prices of ag­gre­gate-based prod­ucts in the mar­ket.”

The dis­clo­sure comes at a crit­i­cal time for Na­tion­al Quar­ries, which has been ear­marked for di­vest­ment as the Gov­ern­ment seeks to re­duce its fi­nan­cial ex­po­sure to un­der­per­form­ing State en­ter­pris­es.

But Gan­ga be­lieves the com­pa­ny’s re­cent per­for­mance rais­es an im­por­tant ques­tion about whether di­vest­ment re­mains the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly ben­e­fi­cial op­tion for the coun­try.

“Whilst the Prime Min­is­ter may be jus­ti­fied in ask­ing for the di­vest­ment of Na­tion­al Quar­ries, and this would have been based on past fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion, we have been able to turn it around,” he said.

He main­tained that con­tin­ued ad­her­ence to im­proved man­age­ment prac­tices could trans­form the en­ter­prise in­to a fi­nan­cial­ly sus­tain­able op­er­a­tion.

Gan­ga, who as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Na­tion­al Quar­ries in March fol­low­ing the ap­point­ment of a new board in De­cem­ber 2025, said the com­pa­ny in­her­it­ed sig­nif­i­cant op­er­a­tional weak­ness­es.

These in­clud­ed in­ad­e­quate man­age­ment sys­tems, in­ef­fi­cient pro­duc­tion prac­tices and fi­nan­cial leak­ages that con­tributed to un­sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion costs.

“When we came here, we met a com­pa­ny that didn’t have the ad­e­quate man­age­ment sys­tems in place,” he ex­plained.

The new man­age­ment team in­tro­duced tighter con­trols, re­viewed pro­duc­tion process­es, strength­ened com­mu­ni­ca­tion with work­ers and ad­dressed ar­eas con­tribut­ing to un­nec­es­sary ex­pen­di­ture.

With­in sev­en months, the changes have pro­duced mea­sur­able im­prove­ments.

Gan­ga es­ti­mat­ed that pro­duc­tion costs had been re­duced by close to 50 per cent.

“It was all down to prop­er man­age­ment prac­tices and tak­ing con­trol of the op­er­a­tions, un­der­stand­ing what need­ed to be done, and plug­ging the gaps,” he said.

Nev­er­the­less, he ac­knowl­edged that Oc­to­ber rep­re­sent­ed the be­gin­ning of a po­ten­tial­ly sus­tain­able turn­around rather than con­fir­ma­tion that the com­pa­ny had achieved long-term prof­itabil­i­ty.

Cut here for the news­pa­per

“Oc­to­ber is like our wa­ter­shed month,” he said.

Man­age­ment must now demon­strate that the im­proved per­for­mance can be con­sis­tent­ly re­peat­ed be­fore de­ter­min­ing the com­pa­ny’s sus­tain­able prof­it mar­gins.

Na­tion­al Quar­ries’ his­tor­i­cal fi­nan­cial per­for­mance has made it a tar­get for re­struc­tur­ing and di­vest­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Gan­ga, the com­pa­ny ac­cu­mu­lat­ed av­er­age an­nu­al loss­es of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20 mil­lion while de­pend­ing on month­ly Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions to sup­port op­er­a­tions.

That rep­re­sent­ed a re­cur­ring bur­den on tax­pay­ers at a time when the coun­try faces sig­nif­i­cant fis­cal con­straints and com­pet­ing de­mands for pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture.

“That would have been a drain on the cof­fers or on the econ­o­my,” Gan­ga ac­knowl­edged.

How­ev­er, he ar­gued that the com­pa­ny’s eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion can­not be mea­sured by its fi­nan­cial loss­es alone.

Na­tion­al Quar­ries was es­tab­lished to main­tain an ad­e­quate sup­ply of ag­gre­gate for in­fra­struc­ture projects and help sta­bilise prices in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try.

With­out its par­tic­i­pa­tion, he sug­gest­ed, re­duced com­pe­ti­tion and sup­ply con­straints could con­tribute to high­er ag­gre­gate prices.

“If Na­tion­al Quar­ries were not in the mar­ket, the chances are that the price of ag­gre­gate will in fact in­crease,” he said.

He warned that such in­creas­es could con­tribute to in­fla­tion across the con­struc­tion sec­tor, af­fect­ing every­thing from con­crete pro­duc­tion to road con­struc­tion and res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment.

The com­pa­ny there­fore faces the chal­lenge of bal­anc­ing its pub­lic-ser­vice man­date with the need to op­er­ate com­mer­cial­ly.

For tax­pay­ers, suc­cess­ful re­struc­tur­ing could pro­vide two ben­e­fits: re­duced de­pen­dence on Gov­ern­ment fund­ing and con­tin­ued ac­cess to com­pet­i­tive­ly priced con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als.

The de­vel­op­ments at Na­tion­al Quar­ries come as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­PA) in­ten­si­fies calls for re­forms to strength­en the wider in­dus­try.

Fol­low­ing a meet­ing with En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal on No­vem­ber 11, as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Nigel Tenia said li­cens­ing de­lays, reg­u­la­to­ry un­cer­tain­ty and ad­min­is­tra­tive bot­tle­necks were af­fect­ing le­git­i­mate quar­ry op­er­a­tors.

Tenia wel­comed com­mit­ments to re­view out­stand­ing holdover ap­pli­ca­tions, im­prove co­or­di­na­tion among State agen­cies and ex­am­ine op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­port lo­cal­ly pro­duced ag­gre­gate to re­gion­al mar­kets.

“Our in­dus­try can­not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate un­der un­nec­es­sary ad­min­is­tra­tive un­cer­tain­ty,” Tenia said.

He ar­gued that an ef­fi­cient and trans­par­ent reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment was nec­es­sary to en­cour­age in­vest­ment, pro­tect em­ploy­ment and im­prove na­tion­al pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

The as­so­ci­a­tion be­lieves re­gion­al ex­ports could cre­ate ad­di­tion­al eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing for­eign ex­change earn­ings, ex­pand­ed pro­duc­tion and em­ploy­ment.

The Min­is­ter has com­mit­ted to fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the as­so­ci­a­tion with­in two weeks.

The de­vel­op­ments sug­gest that both the pub­lic and pri­vate seg­ments of the ag­gre­gate in­dus­try are now pur­su­ing greater ef­fi­cien­cy and com­pet­i­tive­ness, al­though their im­me­di­ate chal­lenges dif­fer.

While Na­tion­al Quar­ries is seek­ing to elim­i­nate op­er­a­tional loss­es, pri­vate op­er­a­tors are call­ing for reg­u­la­to­ry re­forms that would al­low them to ex­pand pro­duc­tion and in­vest­ment.

De­spite im­prove­ments in pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cien­cy, Gan­ga ac­knowl­edged that Na­tion­al Quar­ries faces chal­lenges in­volv­ing the avail­abil­i­ty and long-term man­age­ment of min­er­al re­serves.

The com­pa­ny op­er­ates sand and grav­el fa­cil­i­ties in Tu­rure and lime­stone op­er­a­tions in Blan­chisseuse.

Its lime­stone de­posits re­main sig­nif­i­cant, pro­vid­ing an im­por­tant re­source for the man­u­fac­ture of road-build­ing ma­te­ri­als and oth­er con­struc­tion prod­ucts.

How­ev­er, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 47 years of quar­ry­ing have de­plet­ed por­tions of its sand and grav­el re­serves.

Gan­ga re­vealed that man­age­ment is seek­ing ac­cess to ad­di­tion­al lands to sup­port fu­ture pro­duc­tion.

He al­so dis­closed that when the new man­age­ment team as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, sand and grav­el min­ing had ef­fec­tive­ly stopped, with work­ers re­cov­er­ing ma­te­r­i­al from ex­ist­ing pro­cess­ing ar­eas.

Op­er­a­tions have since been re­stored at two min­ing pits.

“Cur­rent­ly, right now, we have two pits pro­duc­ing ma­te­ri­als,” he said.

He ex­plained that for­mer­ly aban­doned ar­eas had been re­vis­it­ed to iden­ti­fy ad­di­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al suit­able for pro­cess­ing.

The avail­abil­i­ty of re­serves will be a ma­jor fac­tor in as­sess­ing the com­pa­ny’s com­mer­cial fu­ture and any po­ten­tial di­vest­ment.

Gan­ga said de­ter­min­ing the val­ue of Na­tion­al Quar­ries was dif­fi­cult be­cause of in­ad­e­quate in­dus­try da­ta, un­cer­tain­ty over mar­ket share and un­reg­u­lat­ed quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ty.

For Gan­ga, the im­me­di­ate ob­jec­tive is to en­sure that Oc­to­ber’s im­prove­ments are main­tained and that the com­pa­ny can even­tu­al­ly op­er­ate with­out re­ly­ing on Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions.

“Once we are able to keep our pro­duc­tion costs down, then it means that we will be prof­itable. And once we’re prof­itable, we wouldn’t re­quire sub­ven­tions,” he said.

He said the board’s man­date was clear: strength­en com­pli­ance, es­tab­lish prop­er man­age­ment sys­tems and pre­vent a re­turn to the prac­tices that con­tributed to the com­pa­ny’s his­tor­i­cal loss­es.

The broad­er sig­nif­i­cance of the re­struc­tur­ing, how­ev­er, ex­tends be­yond the bal­ance sheet of a sin­gle State en­ter­prise.

Ag­gre­gate is a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent of roads, hous­ing, drainage sys­tems, com­mer­cial build­ings and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture.

Any sus­tained im­prove­ment in its pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cien­cy and avail­abil­i­ty could sup­port greater price sta­bil­i­ty across the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

For Na­tion­al Quar­ries, the com­ing months will de­ter­mine whether its turn­around is sus­tain­able enough to in­flu­ence the Gov­ern­ment’s di­vest­ment plans.