An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) has ad­vised the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change that its sub­sidiary, Readymix (West In­dies) Lim­it­ed (RML), will per­ma­nent­ly shut down its ag­gre­gates and ready-mix op­er­a­tions with ef­fect from March 31, 2026.

The dis­clo­sure fol­lows a writ­ten res­o­lu­tion ap­proved by RML’s board on Ash Wednes­day, in which di­rec­tors unan­i­mous­ly agreed to wind up the sub­sidiary af­ter re­view­ing its per­for­mance and out­look.

Re­spond­ing to queries yes­ter­day in a state­ment, TCL said, “This de­ci­sion fol­lows an ex­ten­sive busi­ness eval­u­a­tion, ini­ti­at­ed in re­sponse to de­creased sales, es­ca­lat­ing op­er­a­tional costs and in­creased cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture re­quire­ments that have ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed the com­pa­ny’s prof­itabil­i­ty.”

The com­pa­ny dis­closed that the clo­sure will re­sult in re­dun­dan­cies, with all RML em­ploy­ees to be sep­a­rat­ed by March 31. Man­age­ment in­di­cat­ed that the tran­si­tion process will be han­dled in keep­ing with ap­plic­a­ble labour leg­is­la­tion and that af­fect­ed work­ers will re­ceive guid­ance and sup­port dur­ing the sep­a­ra­tion pe­ri­od.

TCL al­so ac­knowl­edged RML’s long-stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the do­mes­tic con­struc­tion in­dus­try and ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to its work­force, cus­tomers, and busi­ness part­ners for their com­mit­ment over the years.

RML has been a sig­nif­i­cant sup­pli­er of ready-mix con­crete, ag­gre­gates, and pitrun, and op­er­ates sev­er­al quar­ries across Trinidad.

The an­nounce­ment comes rough­ly one month af­ter TCL gen­er­al man­ag­er Gon­za­lo Rue­da Castil­lo cau­tioned that the 70 to 80 per cent in­crease in nat­ur­al gas prices by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny would ma­te­ri­al­ly im­pact pro­duc­tion costs and like­ly trans­late in­to high­er ce­ment prices. TCL in­creased the price of its 42.5 kilo­gramme ce­ment bags by 15 per cent on Feb­ru­ary 9.

The Cen­tral Bank’s Dat­a­Pack out­lines the state of do­mes­tic de­mand for ce­ment.

Lo­cal ce­ment sales stood at 110,000 tonnes in the third quar­ter of 2023 be­fore ris­ing to 127,000 tonnes in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2024. Sales then slipped to 113,000 tonnes in the third quar­ter and 108,000 tonnes in the fourth quar­ter of 2024.

In 2025, vol­umes have re­mained sub­dued, reg­is­ter­ing 110,000 tonnes in the first quar­ter, 108,000 tonnes in the sec­ond and 105,000 tonnes in the third, re­flect­ing a clear soft­en­ing trend from the mid-2024 high.

Lo­cal ce­ment pro­duc­tion fig­ures show sim­i­lar volatil­i­ty. Out­put mea­sured 170,000 tonnes in the third quar­ter of 2023, de­clined to 145,000 tonnes in the first quar­ter of 2024, then re­bound­ed to 189,000 tonnes in the sec­ond quar­ter and 176,000 tonnes in the third. Pro­duc­tion eased to 163,000 tonnes in the fi­nal quar­ter of 2024, be­fore climb­ing to 181,000 tonnes in the first quar­ter of 2025 and 196,000 tonnes in the sec­ond quar­ter, then mod­er­at­ing again to 177,000 tonnes in the third quar­ter.

For­mer pres­i­dent of the Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion, Mikey Joseph, de­scribed TCL’s an­nounce­ment that it was clos­ing RML next month as trou­bling for the sec­tor. He said it was per­haps in­evitable that ma­jor high-qual­i­ty, ready-mix pro­duc­ers would be­gin to feel pres­sure in a mar­ket­place in­creas­ing­ly dri­ven by price com­pe­ti­tion rather than strict ad­her­ence to tech­ni­cal stan­dards.

Joseph ar­gued that the growth of small­er op­er­a­tors sup­ply­ing low­er-cost ma­te­r­i­al has com­pressed mar­gins for es­tab­lished pro­duc­ers with high­er com­pli­ance and qual­i­ty-con­trol costs. He added that many cur­rent projects lack rig­or­ous en­gi­neer­ing over­sight and test­ing, al­low­ing sub­stan­dard con­crete to en­ter the mar­ket un­de­tect­ed un­til de­fects emerge.

Joseph point­ed to a broad­er slow­down in mean­ing­ful con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty, not­ing that both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor projects have thinned. While some res­i­den­tial build­ing con­tin­ues, he con­tend­ed that many home­own­ers pri­ori­tise up­front cost over ver­i­fied strength and dura­bil­i­ty stan­dards, of­ten fore­go­ing in­de­pen­dent test­ing that would con­firm com­pli­ance with 28-day strength re­quire­ments.

An in­dus­try source, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the clo­sure re­flects dif­fi­cult trad­ing con­di­tions across the con­struc­tion land­scape. The source sug­gest­ed that re­duced project pipelines and weak pri­vate sec­tor de­mand have con­strained con­crete sales, leav­ing op­er­a­tors to scale back or con­sol­i­date. How­ev­er, the in­di­vid­ual main­tained that oth­er quar­ries and con­crete pro­duc­ers, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Quar­ries and small­er sup­pli­ers, could ab­sorb mar­ket share re­sult­ing from the clo­sure of RML.