Re­gion­al pow­er­house ANSA McAL turned 140 years old this year. And the group’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III says the in­ten­tion is for the con­glom­er­ate to be around for at least an­oth­er 140 years more.

“Un­der­pin­ning every­thing we are and we do here, we con­tin­ue to recog­nise and re­mem­ber this is a 140-year-old con­glom­er­ate and we aim to be around and sus­tain­ing gen­er­a­tions for well be­yond an­oth­er 140 years,” Sab­ga stat­ed.

“And as such sus­tain­abil­i­ty re­mains a very crit­i­cal and key long term val­ue en­hanc­ing agen­da item for us and one where­by we test all that we do against these pa­ra­me­ters,” he stat­ed.

Sab­ga made the state­ment dur­ing a stock­hold­ers’ meet­ing this week where the con­glom­er­ate’s fi­nan­cial re­sults for the first half of this year were re­vealed.

The gen­e­sis of what is now ANSA McAL start­ed in 1881 when George R Al­ston found­ed Geo R Al­ston & Co which trad­ed in the buy­ing and ex­port­ing of lo­cal pro­duce par­tic­u­lar­ly co­coa.

Apart from ex­pand­ing its reach glob­al­ly, ANSA McAL in­tends on play­ing its part to save the plan­et, Sab­ga said.

“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not just a catch­word for us. The en­vi­ron­men­tal and sus­tain­able strat­e­gy of our group and be­ing a re­spon­si­ble and sus­tain­able part­ner and par­tak­er in the re­gion­al econ­o­my is some­thing that we hold very im­por­tant and dear to us and some­thing that qual­i­fies all of the key de­ci­sion mak­ing that we do,” Sab­ga said.

“We re­main the re­gion’s largest glass and plas­tic re­cy­cler. We are tran­si­tion­ing to CNG dis­tri­b­u­tion for our fleets and we con­tin­ue to re­main quite ag­gres­sive on the re­new­able en­er­gy front and are mak­ing deep­er in­vest­ments in­to the Latin Amer­i­can re­new­able en­er­gy space.

“We cer­tain­ly see op­por­tu­ni­ties and we will con­tin­ue to seek op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­ploit the ca­pa­bil­i­ty, ca­pac­i­ty and the key learn­ings we have had in those in­vest­ments out­side of the re­gion with po­ten­tial in­vest­ments with­in the re­gion to come” he said.

He said the sus­tain­abil­i­ty goal was one of four strate­gic pil­lars iden­ti­fied by the con­glom­er­ate for its post-pan­dem­ic agen­da.

“Pri­mar­i­ly we seek to de­liv­er qual­i­ty and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic val­ue cre­ation and we will do this in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate growth. A key pil­lar is in­creased ac­cess to for­eign ex­change, re­duc­tion of busi­ness risk whether from the ex­ist­ing port­fo­lio or through new port­fo­lio busi­ness­es, ac­qui­si­tions in oth­er sec­tors and ge­o­gra­phies,” Sab­ga stat­ed.

“So this is where we very ex­cit­ing­ly re­bal­ance and reimag­ine on an on­go­ing ba­sis the port­fo­lio and do so via eco­nom­ic val­ue cre­at­ing long term share­hold­er val­ue-en­hanc­ing lens,” he said.

An­oth­er pil­lar, Sab­ga said, is to con­tin­ue to de­liv­er ex­cep­tion­al ease of do­ing busi­ness and cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ences.

“We aim to be sec­ond to none in this area. We ac­tu­al­ly cham­pi­oned this at a cor­po­rate lev­el but ad­di­tion­al­ly, each of our par­tic­u­lar busi­ness units are do­ing what they need to do in or­der to cre­ate com­pelling and sus­tain­able cus­tomer val­ue propo­si­tions, con­tin­u­ous­ly grow rev­enue and en­hance the group’s cor­po­rate brand. This is of ut­most im­por­tance to us,” he said.

Sab­ga said an­oth­er post-pan­dem­ic pil­lar for the con­glom­er­ate is con­tin­u­ous­ly seek­ing to en­hance its op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

“We con­tin­u­ous­ly seek to en­hance our op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy in or­der to dri­ve mar­gins re­duc­ing op­er­at­ing costs and do­ing so in an en­abling man­ner where we can con­tin­ue to de­liv­er an ex­cep­tion­al mar­ket cre­at­ing and mar­ket­ing en­hanc­ing qual­i­ty of ser­vice,” he said.

Sab­ga said ANSA McAL main­tains a pos­i­tive out­look for the fu­ture. He said the con­glom­er­ate’s bev­er­age sec­tor con­tin­ues to in­no­vate in an ex­cep­tion­al and ac­cel­er­at­ed man­ner while de­riv­ing sig­nif­i­cant growth from the in­no­va­tion pipeline and var­i­ous ren­o­va­tions of the flag­ship brands.

“We con­tin­ue to in­vest heav­i­ly to en­sure that we keep our plants where they need to be and al­so seek­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness from a sus­tain­abil­i­ty stand­point across all of our var­i­ous plants and mar­kets,” Sab­ga said.

He added that the re­cov­ery of the re­cent­ly-re­brand­ed Carib Beer fa­cil­i­ty in Cape Canaver­al, Flori­da, was “very en­cour­ag­ing”.

“It is good to start to fi­nal­ly see that as­set per­form­ing in the man­ner in which we ex­pect it to. It has faced some in­cred­i­ble head­winds since pur­chase notwith­stand­ing the shut­ter­ing of an en­tire in­dus­try but it is cer­tain­ly where we want it to be and that is very en­cour­ag­ing,” Sab­ga said.

“And I am al­so hap­py to an­nounce that we are very close to­wards an­nounc­ing the ground­break­ing launch of our fifth brew­ery which is card­ed for 2022 in An­tigua,” he said.

Sab­ga said the ANSA McAL’s au­to­mo­tive sec­tor is “cer­tain­ly fac­ing some chal­leng­ing times.”

“But we are see­ing a great op­por­tu­ni­ty with the new­ly en­tered and in­vest­ed ANSA au­to­mo­tive in Guyana where we rep­re­sent the Suzu­ki line of busi­ness as well as a pipeline of ad­di­tion­al brands we are look­ing at,” he said.

“We con­tin­ue to see growth there along­side a ro­bust oil and gas econ­o­my and gold econ­o­my,” he said.

Sab­ga said a key fo­cus of ANSA McAL’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor is the on­board­ing and trans­for­ma­tion of ANSA Bank.

“The name change has been com­plete­ly fi­nalised. The trans­for­ma­tion plan is go­ing ex­cep­tion­al­ly well and the dig­i­tal cus­tomer in­ter­fac­ing in­no­va­tion is pro­ceed­ing quite nice­ly and the in­vest­ments in that area would bear sig­nif­i­cant fruit as we tight­en and seek to launch those in­no­v­a­tive of­fer­ings in­to the mar­ket,” he said.

The out­look on ANSA McAL’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is al­so “very promis­ing,” he said.

“I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly that we have put trans­fill­ing har­bours for our chem­i­cals or wa­ter treat­ment busi­ness in­to Ja­maica and that has start­ed to ma­te­ri­alise in very pro­found and mean­ing­ful ways and we were able to bring that unique ca­pa­bil­i­ty of wa­ter treat­ment and sup­port to the Ja­maican mar­ket,” he said.

“We have al­so re­launched what is the ANSA pack­ag­ing group which al­lows us to go to mar­ket as one uni­fied pack­ag­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion where we are a sig­nif­i­cant, as you guys are aware, glass pack­ag­ing and al­so plas­tic pack­ag­ing.

“This al­lows us to bring the syn­er­gies of those two busi­ness­es to­geth­er mean­ing­ful­ly to sup­port the uni­fied cus­tomer base that ex­ists out there for this cat­e­go­ry of ser­vices and that is pro­ceed­ing quite well and quite in­ter­est­ing­ly,” Sab­ga said.

ANSA McAL’s con­struc­tion sec­tor, Sab­ga said, is see­ing a lev­el of ex­pan­sion and in­no­va­tion in the colour of­fer­ings and colour shops of the paint busi­ness from as far north as Ja­maica to as far south as Guyana.

He said the in­te­gra­tion and in­cor­po­ra­tion of Berg­er in­to the port­fo­lio has helped in this re­gard.