Ja­maica’s Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC) says the sale of 100 per cent of Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica) to Caribbean Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ners (CPD), a sub­sidiary of T&T’s Agos­ti­ni Group, will cre­ate a mo­nop­oly in the sale of in­sulin in Ja­maica.

In a no­tice re­leased on No­vem­ber 20, Ja­maica’s FTC in­di­cat­ed that its re­view of the pro­posed sale of Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica) to CDP “iden­ti­fied sig­nif­i­cant com­pe­ti­tion con­cerns in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of in­sulin prod­ucts in Ja­maica. Cur­rent­ly, three brands are avail­able in Ja­maica, and all are dis­trib­uted by ei­ther Massy or Aven­ta,” the re­brand­ed name of Agos­ti­ni’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal con­cerns.

“The pro­posed trans­ac­tion would cre­ate a mo­nop­oly dis­trib­u­tor for these brands,” said the Com­mis­sion.

“To grant its non-ob­jec­tion, the FTC re­quires that com­pe­ti­tion be pre­served in the in­sulin mar­ket. This en­tails the ap­point­ing of an in­de­pen­dent dis­trib­u­tor for the brand(s) cur­rent­ly dis­trib­uted by ei­ther of the par­ties to the trans­ac­tion,” the reg­u­la­tor said.

“Once a dis­trib­u­tor is iden­ti­fied and a for­mal agree­ment or com­mit­ment is sub­mit­ted, the FTC will con­duct due dili­gence to con­firm that the new arrange­ment ad­dress­es its com­pe­ti­tion con­cerns. For ex­am­ple, the new dis­trib­u­tor must not be af­fil­i­at­ed with any com­pa­ny in­volved in the ac­qui­si­tion.”

The Ja­maican reg­u­la­to­ry body said the trans­ac­tion, re­port­ed on Feb­ru­ary 4, 2025, in the Trinidad & To­ba­go Guardian, in­volves CDP, a sub­sidiary of Agos­ti­ni Ltd., ac­quir­ing 100 per cent of Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica), a lead­ing dis­trib­u­tor of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and con­sumer prod­ucts in Ja­maica. CDP de­scribed the ac­qui­si­tion as “strate­gic to the re­gion­al ex­pan­sion of our group’s con­sumer prod­ucts and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal busi­ness­es.”

As of Feb­ru­ary 17, 2025, CDP be­gan op­er­at­ing un­der the name Aca­do Lim­it­ed (Aca­do). Aca­do is the par­ent com­pa­ny of sev­en dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies across the Caribbean, though on­ly one cur­rent­ly sells to Ja­maica.

Ac­cord­ing to the par­ties, Massy’s con­sumer prod­ucts di­vi­sion will be man­aged di­rect­ly by Aca­do, while its phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal op­er­a­tions will be in­te­grat­ed with Health Brands Ja­maica, which has since been re­brand­ed as Aven­ta Ja­maica un­der Agos­ti­ni’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal um­brel­la.

CDP is a 50/50 joint ven­ture be­tween Massy and God­dard of Bar­ba­dos.