Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) yes­ter­day in­formed its cus­tomers—most­ly hard­ware stores, con­trac­tors and house­holds look­ing to do ren­o­va­tions—that the ex-fac­to­ry price of its ce­ment bags would in­crease by 15 per cent next week Mon­day.

In a com­mu­ni­ca­tion yes­ter­day to a “val­ued cus­tomer,” the pub­licly list­ed, Clax­ton Bay-head­quar­tered ce­ment pro­duc­er said that fol­low­ing its com­mu­ni­ca­tion on Jan­u­ary 26, it want­ed to share an im­por­tant up­date re­gard­ing re­cent de­vel­op­ments af­fect­ing our op­er­a­tions with po­ten­tial im­pact on the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

“As the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s (NGC) pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced in­crease in nat­ur­al gas prices has now been con­firmed retroac­tive to 1 Jan­u­ary 2026, this is hav­ing a di­rect and sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on TCL’s pro­duc­tion costs.

“While TCL re­mains deeply con­cerned about the broad­er im­pact of these gas prices on your busi­ness, end users and the con­struc­tion sec­tor, it ne­ces­si­tates a 15 per cent price ad­just­ment, ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 9, 2026, on sacks,” TCL said.

A com­pa­ny source con­firmed that the ref­er­ence to “sacks,” meant a bag of ce­ment.

TCL said it re­mains firm­ly com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing its op­er­a­tions in T&T, sup­port­ing more than 350 di­rect em­ploy­ees and over 400 lo­cal con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers, and con­tin­u­ing its con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my as a lead­ing for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tor, with ex­ports ex­pect­ed to ex­ceed US$40 mil­lion in 2026.

“We val­ue our long-stand­ing part­ner­ship with you and will con­tin­ue to work to­geth­er to nav­i­gate these chal­leng­ing mar­ket con­di­tions,” said TCL’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Gon­za­lo Rue­da Castil­lo, in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

In the last Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Rock Hard Ce­ment’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Ry­na Ramhit, said the com­pa­ny, which im­ports ce­ment in­to T&T, was com­mit­ted to hold­ing its prices steady.

“There’s no in­crease in price in the fore­see­able fu­ture. Of course, if some­thing dras­tic hap­pens to af­fect my end price, my end cost ... Rock Hard is here to sup­port Trinidad and To­ba­go. So, I will al­ways do my best to en­sure that my prices are low so I can bring af­ford­able ce­ment in­to the en­tire coun­try,” said Ramhit.

Con­trac­tors told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that “un­of­fi­cial­ly,” the an­tic­i­pat­ed in­crease in TCL’s ce­ment prices could be be­tween 15 and 20 per cent, though the fi­nal ad­just­ment has not been an­nounced.

When con­tact­ed on Fri­day, Bhag­wans­ingh’s Hard­ware, one of T&T’s largest chains, said a bag of TCL ce­ment re­tails for $68 VAT in­clu­sive, while a bag of Rock Hard ce­ment sells for $62 VAT in­clu­sive.

The pro­posed 15 per cent in­crease in the price of TCL’s ce­ment could take the es­ti­mat­ed ex-fac­to­ry price of a bag of ce­ment to $68.42 and the VAT in­clu­sive price of a bag to $77.