De­spite drop­ping prices mid­way through last year, the Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) has re­port­ed in­creased prof­its for fis­cal 2023 com­pared to 2022.

In the com­pa­ny’s au­dit­ed sum­ma­ry con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023, chair­man Nigel Ro­mano said the com­pa­ny’s re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax in­creased by $28.6 mil­lion, from $6.9 mil­lion to $35.5 mil­lion in 2023.

He ex­plained that in 2023, the com­pa­ny’s rev­enue in­creased to $577 mil­lion through pru­dent grain pur­chas­ing and oth­er cost man­age­ment ini­tia­tives.

This, he said, led to in­creased gross prof­it from $93 mil­lion in 2022 to $152 mil­lion in 2023 while op­er­at­ing prof­it al­so in­creased by $46.9 mil­lion year-on-year from $12.4 mil­lion to $59.3 mil­lion.

Af­ter oth­er flour pro­duc­ers dropped prices last year, NFM re­duced flour prices by ten per cent in Ju­ly last year.

The com­pa­ny had in­creased prices twice in 2022 amid in­crease costs as a re­sult of in­creased grain main­ly dri­ven up by the Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict.

In his chair­man’s state­ment, Ro­mano said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to be af­fect­ed by changes in the glob­al en­vi­ron­ment, dri­ven by lin­ger­ing fall­out from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the im­pact of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

He said these events “con­tin­ued to in­flu­ence the way we do busi­ness”, adding, “As a food and feed man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, NFM is par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the im­pact of cli­mate change on the yield and price of grains.”

Ro­mano added that the NFM, there­fore, re­mained con­cerned about the im­pact of cli­mate change as ev­i­denced by in­creas­ing lev­els of green­house gas­es, ris­ing sea lev­els and record low Antarc­ti­ca sea ice, with 2023 be­ing cat­e­gorised as the warmest year on record.

“Ris­ing tem­per­a­tures and car­bon diox­ide lev­els will neg­a­tive­ly af­fect crop yields pos­ing threats to glob­al food se­cu­ri­ty and the en­tire agri­cul­tur­al ecosys­tem,” he added.