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

Lead­er­ship up­heaval hit two ma­jor state-con­trolled com­pa­nies this week, with Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) CEO Ter­rence Kalloo abrupt­ly ter­mi­nat­ed and An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd’s group gen­er­al coun­sel and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Kathry­na Bap­tiste As­see re­sign­ing.

Kalloo’s ter­mi­na­tion took ef­fect im­me­di­ate­ly on Mon­day, while Shya­mal Chan­dra­daths­ingh was ap­point­ed act­ing CEO from yes­ter­day un­til fur­ther no­tice.

NFM is ma­jor­i­ty state-owned, while An­gos­tu­ra is state-con­trolled, plac­ing both com­pa­nies’ man­age­ment de­ci­sions un­der par­tic­u­lar scruti­ny.

Kalloo, who as­sumed du­ties at NFM on June 1, 2026, con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that his em­ploy­ment was ter­mi­nat­ed on Mon­day af­ter­noon but de­clined to pro­vide fur­ther de­tails.

Ef­forts to con­tact NFM chair­man Ham­lyn Jailal for an ex­pla­na­tion of the de­ci­sion proved un­suc­cess­ful.

Kalloo was ap­point­ed to the board of di­rec­tors of the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd in Au­gust 2025.

Bap­tiste As­see’s de­par­ture comes as An­gos­tu­ra faces de­clin­ing rev­enue and prof­its, ris­ing op­er­at­ing costs, pres­sure from weak­er con­sumer de­mand and grow­ing ques­tions from em­ploy­ees about man­age­ment com­pen­sa­tion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the com­pa­ny’s spend­ing pri­or­i­ties.

She re­signed from An­gos­tu­ra yes­ter­day, hav­ing joined the com­pa­ny on March 1, 2020.

An­gos­tu­ra Ho­lid­ings chair­man Gary Hunt de­clined to dis­cuss the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her de­par­ture, in­di­cat­ing that a com­pa­ny re­lease would be forth­com­ing.

The rea­son for her res­ig­na­tion re­mains un­clear. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise is un­der­way to make the com­pa­ny more nim­ble and ef­fi­cient.

A town hall meet­ing was held with em­ploy­ees yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, where man­age­ment ad­dressed the fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional pres­sures fac­ing the busi­ness. No an­nounce­ment was made about Bap­tiste As­see’s de­par­ture.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer Amar Seechan point­ed to high ex­cise du­ties and weak­er con­sumer de­mand as fac­tors putting pres­sure on the busi­ness. Low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ad­verse man­u­fac­tur­ing costs were al­so iden­ti­fied as chal­lenges.

Em­ploy­ees ques­tioned why man­agers were re­ceiv­ing sub­stan­tial salaries while work­ers were fac­ing fi­nan­cial pres­sure.

An­gos­tu­ra CEO Ian Forbes in­di­cat­ed that a com­pen­sa­tion and job eval­u­a­tion sur­vey was be­ing un­der­tak­en, with the re­sults of the sur­vey to be re­viewed by the board.

One em­ploy­ee al­so ques­tioned the com­pa­ny’s spend­ing on an All Fours com­pe­ti­tion and a dog show while work­ers were feel­ing squeezed fi­nan­cial­ly.

The con­cerns come against the back­ground of de­te­ri­o­rat­ing fi­nan­cial per­for­mance.

Last week, An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $87.97 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2026, a 15.36 per cent de­cline from the $103.94 mil­lion record­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

Rev­enue al­so fell by 4.96 per cent to $719.88 mil­lion for the nine months.

In his chair­man com­ments on the unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cials, Hunt at­trib­uted the weak­er per­for­mance to “a chal­leng­ing op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment char­ac­terised by soft­er de­mand, con­strained con­sumer spend­ing and el­e­vat­ed do­mes­tic ex­cise du­ties.”

De­spite the de­cline, the chair­man point­ed to growth in the do­mes­tic busi­ness and en­cour­ag­ing per­for­mances in North Amer­i­ca and the Unit­ed King­dom.

The Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU), which rep­re­sents work­ers at An­gos­tu­ra across three bar­gain­ing units, is mon­i­tor­ing the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise.

Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ trade union Michael An­nisette told Guardian Me­dia that the union had re­ceived no in­di­ca­tion that the re­struc­tur­ing would ex­tend to work­ers on the ground.

“There’s no in­ti­ma­tion to the union that the re­struc­tur­ing is go­ing to reach the ground floor or ground ze­ro,” he de­clared.

He added that un­til the ex­er­cise reached that lev­el, his ap­proach would be to ob­serve and as­sess de­vel­op­ments.

An­nisette al­so raised con­cerns about the com­pa­ny’s on­go­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, which have in­volved of­fers of three and four per cent that prompt­ed work­ers to protest on two oc­ca­sions.

The union has en­gaged a con­sul­tant and held sev­er­al meet­ings, with An­nisette in­ter­ven­ing to ex­press con­cern about the di­rec­tion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

He ar­gued that man­age­ment need­ed to adopt a more col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach with em­ploy­ees to ad­dress the com­pa­ny’s dif­fi­cul­ties and im­prove sales.

“My phi­los­o­phy is that the best PR is your work­ers,” An­nisette de­clared.

He warned that An­gos­tu­ra could not ad­dress its com­mer­cial chal­lenges with­out in­volv­ing the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing and sell­ing its prod­ucts.

An­nisette al­so point­ed to the prospect of in­creased com­pe­ti­tion from an­oth­er dis­tillery be­ing built in the coun­try, ar­gu­ing that An­gos­tu­ra must strength­en its mar­ket­ing and busi­ness mod­el to pro­tect its es­tab­lished mar­ket po­si­tion.

He main­tained that the union was pre­pared to work with man­age­ment and the board to im­prove the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance.

For the six months end­ed June 30, 2026, NFM de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it of $22.24 mil­lion, which was a 2.4 per cent de­cline com­pared to the $22.83 mil­lion the com­pa­ny earned for the first six months of its 2025 fi­nan­cial year. The com­pa­ny’s rev­enue for the six-month pe­ri­od was $263 mil­lion, which was a 1.1 per cent over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od one year pre­vi­ous­ly.