Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) yes­ter­day an­nounced a prof­it af­ter tax of $10.2 mil­lion for the three-month pe­ri­od end­ing March 31, 2024. That was a 35.2 per cent in­crease in its prof­its for its first quar­ter, com­pared with the same quar­ter the pre­vi­ous year.

In the com­pa­ny’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, 2024, chair­man Nigel Ro­mano ex­plained the com­pa­ny’s rev­enue dropped by 10 per cent de­cline in rev­enue.

Ro­mano said, “This de­cline in rev­enue was main­ly due to the re­duc­tion in prices as we passed on the re­duc­tion in the cost of grain to our cus­tomers. Notwith­stand­ing, we achieved a 14 per cent in­crease in gross prof­it of $37.2 mil­lion, up from $32.5 mil­lion in 2023. A re­duc­tion in fi­nance costs al­so con­tributed to an in­crease in prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion to $14.5 mil­lion.”

NFM dropped its re­tail price on flour items in Ju­ly 2023 by an av­er­age of 10 per cent. This price drop came short­ly af­ter oth­er flour sup­pli­ers Nu­trim­ix and Sheik Lisha an­nounced price re­duc­tions as well.

Two weeks ago, Nu­trim­ix an­nounced an­oth­er price re­duc­tion, with prod­ucts see­ing costs slashed from 5 to 17 per cent.

In the re­view, Ro­mano said the com­pa­ny was al­so pay­ing at­ten­tion to lo­cal trends and would con­tin­ue to to mon­i­tor the geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion glob­al­ly and its im­pact on the cost of grain and trans­port as he ex­plained this added a lot of volatil­i­ty to the com­pa­ny’s op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“We are al­so mon­i­tor­ing changes in the eco­nom­ic and com­mer­cial en­vi­ron­ment lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly as we fo­cus on of­fer­ing val­ued prod­ucts to sat­is­fy the needs of our cus­tomers. In this re­gard, our top pri­or­i­ty for 2024 is per­for­mance man­age­ment to im­proved ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of all busi­ness process­es,” said Ro­mano, who stressed that the NFM would con­tin­ue to fo­cus on main­tain­ing an ac­cept­able lev­el of prof­itabil­i­ty, which will al­low NFM to sus­tain our op­er­a­tions for the long-term, in­vest in new ma­chin­ery and tech­nol­o­gy and weath­er eco­nom­ic down­turns, while meet­ing its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.

Ro­mano closed, “The ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment will con­tin­ue to pro­vide chal­lenges, and we will re­spond by fo­cus­ing on what we can con­trol. With the com­mit­ment of our team of ded­i­cat­ed em­ploy­ees we will con­tin­ue to cre­ate val­ue for our cus­tomers and oth­er stake­hold­ers.