Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Nu­trien’s strate­gic re­view of its Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions is con­tin­u­ing, with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from third-par­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions ex­pect­ed to con­duct site vis­its at the Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty this week.

The vis­its form part of Nu­trien’s on­go­ing eval­u­a­tion of the fu­ture of its Trinidad op­er­a­tion, which has re­mained shut down since a con­trolled shut­down in Oc­to­ber last year.

Guardian Me­dia has been made aware of doc­u­ments cir­cu­lat­ed in­ter­nal­ly to em­ploy­ees which in­di­cate that third-par­ty site vis­its are tak­ing place as part of the re­view.

The doc­u­ment, dat­ed last Mon­day, said Nu­trien con­tin­ues to eval­u­ate “all strate­gic op­tions” for the fa­cil­i­ty, in­clud­ing the ex­plo­ration of a po­ten­tial sale.

It al­so makes clear that no de­ci­sion has been made and that the re­view has “no pre­de­ter­mined out­come”.

Nu­trien’s vice pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Trinidad Ni­tro­gen, Ed­mond Thomp­son, told em­ploy­ees that third-par­ty site vis­its would take place as part of the process.

“While there are cur­rent­ly no de­ci­sions to share, we want to keep you in­formed about im­por­tant de­vel­op­ments as they oc­cur,” Thomp­son said.

He ac­knowl­edged that the vis­its could gen­er­ate ques­tions or spec­u­la­tion among em­ploy­ees, but stressed that they did not sig­nal a par­tic­u­lar out­come from the re­view.

“This does not sig­nal any spe­cif­ic out­come,” Thomp­son said.

Em­ploy­ees were told to con­tin­ue fo­cus­ing on their day-to-day re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and safe op­er­a­tions while the re­view con­tin­ues.

Nu­trien, in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, con­firmed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from third-par­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions would vis­it the site but de­clined to iden­ti­fy the or­gan­i­sa­tions in­volved or pro­vide de­tails about any dis­cus­sions.

“To main­tain the in­tegri­ty of the process and pro­tect the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of all par­ties in­volved, we do not com­ment on the iden­ti­ty of po­ten­tial in­ter­est­ed par­ties, or the na­ture of any dis­cus­sions,” Nu­trien said.

Nu­trien pre­vi­ous­ly said it was eval­u­at­ing op­tions for its Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing a po­ten­tial sale of the fa­cil­i­ty.

The com­pa­ny has not in­di­cat­ed whether any po­ten­tial buy­er has emerged or whether a sale is be­ing ac­tive­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed.

For now, Nu­trien says the re­view re­mains on­go­ing and that no de­ci­sion has been made on the fu­ture of the Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty.

The com­pa­ny has main­tained its 322 full-time em­ploy­ee po­si­tions while the re­view con­tin­ues.