Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Na­tion­al Flour Mills Ltd (NFM) yes­ter­day re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $39.28 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2026, a drop of 1.2 per cent com­pared the $39.76 mil­lion it record­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

The com­pa­ny at­trib­uted its per­for­mance to high­er in­ter­na­tion­al grain prices, ship­ping costs and wage set­tle­ments that squeezed mar­gins, as well as the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to main­tain con­sumer prices.

Gross prof­it fell to $119.4 mil­lion from $131.1 mil­lion in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year, while rev­enue de­clined mar­gin­al­ly by one per cent to $396.4 mil­lion from $401.5 mil­lion.

In his re­view of the com­pa­ny’s nine-month per­for­mance, NFM chair­man Ham­lyn Jailal ac­knowl­edged the im­pact of in­ter­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty prices and in­creased freight ex­pens­es on the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions.

The cost of sales rose by two per cent to $277 mil­lion, com­pared with $271.6 mil­lion in the pre­vi­ous year. Jailal al­so iden­ti­fied the set­tle­ment of back­pay wages as an­oth­er fac­tor af­fect­ing pro­duc­tion costs.

De­spite the pres­sure on mar­gins, NFM has opt­ed to main­tain its prices, tak­ing con­sumer feed­back in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

Jailal de­scribed the com­pa­ny’s progress to­wards build­ing a sus­tain­able plat­form for growth as en­cour­ag­ing, al­though the third-quar­ter re­sults un­der­scored the need for tighter cost man­age­ment and greater op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

The com­pa­ny’s ex­po­sure to in­ter­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty mar­kets re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant risk to its fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. As a ma­jor im­porter of wheat, corn and soy­beans, NFM is vul­ner­a­ble to fluc­tu­a­tions in glob­al grain prices, freight rates and ship­ping ex­pens­es.

These ex­ter­nal pres­sures leave the com­pa­ny ex­posed to cost move­ments over which it has lim­it­ed con­trol, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it seeks to bal­ance prof­itabil­i­ty with the need to keep prices af­ford­able for con­sumers.

With the fi­nal quar­ter of 2026 un­der way, NFM’s fo­cus is shift­ing to­wards strength­en­ing its fi­nan­cial per­for­mance and iden­ti­fy­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties to gen­er­ate rev­enue.

Jailal dis­closed that man­age­ment has been man­dat­ed to pre­pare a re­vised rolling strate­gic plan cov­er­ing the next three years.

The plan will fo­cus on iden­ti­fy­ing rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and mak­ing bet­ter use of the com­pa­ny’s core com­pe­ten­cies in flour and feed man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The strate­gic re­view is ex­pect­ed to guide NFM’s op­er­a­tions as it seeks to es­tab­lish a more sus­tain­able growth path while nav­i­gat­ing an in­creas­ing­ly chal­leng­ing op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

The com­pa­ny’s lat­est re­sults re­flect the dif­fi­cul­ty of main­tain­ing prof­itabil­i­ty in a busi­ness heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on im­port­ed agri­cul­tur­al com­modi­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly when high­er in­ter­na­tion­al costs can­not be ful­ly passed on to con­sumers.

Jailal ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to NFM’s man­age­ment team and em­ploy­ees for their con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions as it works to­wards im­prov­ing per­for­mance and strength­en­ing its po­si­tion in the mar­ket.