An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Two of the re­gion’s lead­ing food man­u­fac­tur­ers have ex­pressed in­ter­est in ex­plor­ing the fu­ture of Nestlé Trinidad and To­ba­go’s dairy and juices busi­ness if the com­pa­ny opens dis­cus­sions with po­ten­tial buy­ers.

Nestlé an­nounced on Ju­ly 2 that it had be­gun a strate­gic re­view of its T&T op­er­a­tions as part of a wider glob­al re­struc­tur­ing. The com­pa­ny said it is ex­plor­ing sev­er­al op­tions for the dairy and juices busi­ness, in­clud­ing a pos­si­ble sale. More than 200 work­ers are em­ployed at its Val­sayn fa­cil­i­ty along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way.

Busi­ness Guardian reached out to sev­er­al busi­ness­es fol­low­ing Nestlé’s an­nounce­ment. While most said it was too ear­ly in the process to in­di­cate whether they would be in­ter­est­ed in ac­quir­ing the busi­ness, Richard Pan­do­hie, the CEO of Se­prod—the Ja­maican con­glom­er­ate which is the par­ent com­pa­ny of T&T’s AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings— and Had­co Lim­it­ed group co-CEO John Hadad both said they would re­main open to dis­cus­sions if the op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es.
Pan­do­hie said Se­prod is fa­mil­iar with Nestlé’s op­er­a­tions through pre­vi­ous busi­ness deal­ings.

“Nestlé is an ex­cel­lent or­gan­i­sa­tion and op­er­a­tion that we know well. We have worked with them on var­i­ous projects,” he said.

“In fact, Se­prod Ja­maica bought from Nestlé in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, glob­al­ly a few years ago. So, it’s an amaz­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

He in­di­cat­ed there have been no dis­cus­sions be­tween the com­pa­nies.

“At this point in time, I’m not aware of any ap­proach by ei­ther par­ty to this trans­ac­tion,” Pan­do­hie said.

He stopped short of rul­ing out fu­ture in­ter­est if a for­mal process be­gins.

“It’s not rul­ing it out as a ques­tion. But at this point in time, I’m not aware of any ap­proach by ei­ther par­ty,” he added.

Pan­do­hie said any de­ci­sion would ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend on Se­prod’s board and the com­pa­ny’s long-term strat­e­gy.

“There’ll be a process. It has to be con­sid­ered by the board, and we’ll have to look at our over­all strate­gic plan. But cer­tain­ly from where I sit, we re­main open to the pos­si­bil­i­ties as we look at our strate­gic di­rec­tion of build­ing out a re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate,” he said.

Hadad al­so con­firmed Had­co would wel­come the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­am­ine the busi­ness if Nestlé de­cides to en­gage po­ten­tial buy­ers.

“But we run an ice cream fac­to­ry. We kind of un­der­stand this busi­ness a bit. So it makes it in­ter­est­ing for us. Again, I have no prob­lem say­ing so quite open­ly. If Nestlé would have us, if Nestlé would talk to us, we’d be in­ter­est­ed in talk­ing, yes,” Hadad added.

He said man­u­fac­tur­ing re­mains an at­trac­tive sec­tor de­spite its chal­lenges and be­lieves a dairy and juices op­er­a­tion fits with­in Had­co’s ex­per­tise.
“That busi­ness has a lot of good op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause it’s com­mod­i­ty items. They’ve been around for a while. What does that mod­el look like? I don’t know. But man­u­fac­tur­ing is love­ly. We’re in­volved in man­u­fac­tur­ing,” he said.

“Not every­body wants to get in­volved in man­u­fac­tur­ing be­cause it’s a lot more dif­fi­cult. But we think we like it. We think we do well with it. And we un­der­stand it enough that we would want to look at any busi­ness like that as a mat­ter of fact,” Hadad con­tin­ued.

He said a food man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tion would make strate­gic sense for the com­pa­ny.

“Any­body clos­ing down a fac­to­ry right now, out­side of, ob­vi­ous­ly, if you have a fac­to­ry mak­ing clothes or you have a fac­to­ry mak­ing shoes, you might be in­ter­est­ed in that be­cause that’s not our core busi­ness. But a fac­to­ry mak­ing juice and milk, that is food. Hard­core place in that space. Makes sense,” he re­marked.

Al­though Had­co has ex­pressed in­ter­est, there is no in­di­ca­tion that dis­cus­sions have tak­en place be­tween the two com­pa­nies.

Busi­ness Guardian al­so con­tact­ed oth­er com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in the food man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. They in­di­cat­ed it was too ear­ly in the game to de­ter­mine whether they would be in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing Nestlé’s dairy and juices busi­ness.

One lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said the im­me­di­ate con­cern should be pro­tect­ing lo­cal dairy farm­ers rather than dis­cussing po­ten­tial buy­ers.

“Nestlé is sup­posed to be treat­ing the Gov­ern­ment, the farm­ers, more fair­ly than this. Nestlé is sup­posed to treat the farmer with more love and dig­ni­ty,” the man­u­fac­tur­er said.

He ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment should en­gage di­rect­ly with the com­pa­ny.

“The Gov­ern­ment is sup­posed to have a lot of di­a­logue with Nestlé to seek the farmer’s in­ter­est in this coun­try,” he stat­ed.

The man­u­fac­tur­er added that his com­pa­ny has no in­ter­est in pur­chas­ing the op­er­a­tion.

“But I am not in­ter­est­ed in buy­ing the Nestlé plant at this time,” he lament­ed.

Work­ers and farm­ers in fo­cus

The fu­ture of the more than 200 em­ploy­ees at the Val­sayn op­er­a­tion re­mains a ma­jor con­cern for the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union, which rep­re­sents work­ers at the fa­cil­i­ty.

OW­TU first vice-pres­i­dent Sati Ga­jad­har-In­niss said any sale would have to be ex­am­ined care­ful­ly be­cause a new own­er could de­cide to op­er­ate the busi­ness dif­fer­ent­ly.

“Com­pa­nies could buy it and not have the same mod­el as Nestlé,” she said.
“We have to look at the in­ter­ests of the work­ers. The re-em­ploy­ment. Look at all avail­able op­tions. Any­body could buy it,” Ga­jad­har-In­niss added.

The re­struc­tur­ing has al­so raised ques­tions about the fu­ture of lo­cal dairy farm­ers who have sup­plied Nestlé for decades. Busi­ness Guardian pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that Pro­fes­sor Wayne Gan­pat, agri­cul­tur­al ex­pert and for­mer Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, be­lieves dairy farm­ers could face the great­est im­pact if Nestlé ex­its the fresh milk pur­chas­ing busi­ness.

Gan­pat said con­sumers are un­like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence short­ages be­cause im­port­ed milk prod­ucts al­ready oc­cu­py sig­nif­i­cant shelf space across su­per­mar­kets.

“If they ex­it the sec­tor, farm­ers will suf­fer, but the mar­ket will not suf­fer be­cause peo­ple will just im­port pack­aged milk from oth­er coun­tries,” he said.

He be­lieves im­porters and oth­er lo­cal dairy proces­sors could even­tu­al­ly fill any sup­ply gap left by Nestlé, al­though the tran­si­tion would be far more dif­fi­cult for farm­ers whose liveli­hoods de­pend on sell­ing fresh milk lo­cal­ly.

Sources fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter have in­di­cat­ed that the dairy and juice man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tion is the first busi­ness cur­rent­ly un­der re­view and have claimed that the com­pa­ny has qui­et­ly been seek­ing a buy­er for some time.

Nestlé has not pub­licly iden­ti­fied any prospec­tive pur­chasers or con­firmed whether ne­go­ti­a­tions are un­der­way.

Glob­al re­struc­tur­ing

The Trinidad and To­ba­go re­view forms part of a broad­er re­struc­tur­ing tak­ing place across Nestlé’s in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions.

The com­pa­ny has pre­vi­ous­ly re­struc­tured busi­ness­es else­where in the Caribbean. In Ja­maica, Nestlé di­vest­ed its dairy busi­ness in 2017, sell­ing the Supli­gen and Bet­ty brands to Mus­son In­ter­na­tion­al Dairies. Around the same pe­ri­od, it trans­ferred dis­tri­b­u­tion of its pet food port­fo­lio, in­clud­ing Pu­ri­na One, Dog Chow and Friskies, to Cari-Med Ltd, while re­tain­ing its fo­cus on brands such as Mi­lo, Nescafé, Mag­gi and KitKat.

The Ja­maican re­struc­tur­ing re­flect­ed the com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy of con­cen­trat­ing on core prod­uct cat­e­gories while re­ly­ing on third-par­ty part­ners for se­lect­ed op­er­a­tions.
Out­side the Caribbean, Nestlé has con­tin­ued re­shap­ing its dairy port­fo­lio.

In March 2024, the com­pa­ny an­nounced its de­ci­sion to ex­it Ecuador’s dairy sec­tor through a part­ner­ship with Latin Amer­i­can food com­pa­ny Grupo Glo­ria. The agree­ment in­clud­ed the sale of a fac­to­ry and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre in Cayambe, north of Quito, to­geth­er with lo­cal brands La Vaqui­ta, Yo­gu Yo­gu, Natu­ra, Ce­reav­e­na and Hue­si­tos, as well as the li­cens­ing of in­ter­na­tion­al brands La Lechera and Svel­ty. The trans­ac­tion was made sub­ject to ap­proval by Ecuador’s com­pe­ti­tion au­thor­i­ty.

Ear­li­er this year, Nestlé al­so an­nounced plans to close a dairy plant in Nicaragua, cit­ing glob­al op­er­a­tional dy­nam­ics.
The re­struc­tur­ing comes as the world’s largest food com­pa­ny faces mount­ing pres­sure to im­prove per­for­mance amid slow­ing growth, ris­ing costs and soft­er con­sumer de­mand.

Busi­ness Stan­dard re­port­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2025 that new­ly ap­point­ed Nestlé SA chief ex­ec­u­tive Philipp Navratil told em­ploy­ees he in­tend­ed to move quick­ly to ad­dress the chal­lenges con­fronting the com­pa­ny. The re­port said Nestlé’s share price had fall­en more than 40 per cent from its 2022 peak as in­vestors be­came in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned about the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance and strate­gic di­rec­tion.