An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

One day af­ter Nu­trim­ix Flour Mills an­nounced a min­i­mum of a ten per cent price re­duc­tion on its flour prod­ucts, Sheik Lisha Ltd says they too will be pass­ing on sim­i­lar sav­ings to cus­tomers ef­fec­tive next week.

Mean­while, the Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) has said they are cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing the sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing the price of grain and oth­er in­puts, and would soon is­sue an an­nounce­ment.

The Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Sheik Lisha Ltd in Cunu­pia, Churchill Azad Akaloo, yes­ter­day as­sured that from next week, “all the flour prod­ucts will be 10 per cent cheap­er.”

At­tribut­ing this re­duc­tion main­ly to a de­cline in low­er freight rates, Akaloo said, “Where a con­tain­er was cost­ing be­tween US $13,000 and $14,000 be­fore, that same con­tain­er is now be­tween US $3,000 and $4,000, so we can af­ford to go down.”

He ex­plained, “If the con­tain­er rates go down, com­modi­ties like plas­tic resin, will al­so go down. The pa­per will al­so go down, so this is why we have a cheap­er price, be­cause we want to pass this on to the con­sumer.”

In­di­cat­ing his com­pa­ny could have con­tin­ued sell­ing at the same price, Akaloo said it was on­ly right to pass on what­ev­er sav­ings they could to cus­tomers who still have to face high­er prices on oth­er items at the cash reg­is­ter.

Call­ing on oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers to of­fer sim­i­lar sav­ing costs to con­sumers, Akaloo said, “A lot of them can de­crease their price on oth­er com­modi­ties, it don’t have to be on pa­per and plas­tic bags... They could be de­creas­ing prices on oth­er com­modi­ties be­cause if the freight rate is cheap­er, def­i­nite­ly they can sell cheap­er.”

Re­flect­ing on just how high freight costs had risen dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic as sup­ply chains de­clined and glob­al lock-downs dis­cour­aged ease of ship­ping, Akaloo said this had now gone down dras­ti­cal­ly, hence, “this is why we can af­ford to de­crease prices now.”

He said a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign was nec­es­sary–and with­out sin­gling out any one sup­pli­er or re­tail­er, he agreed there were a lot more sav­ings that could be passed on to the cus­tomer.

NFM to make an­nounce­ment soon

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day to clar­i­fy just where NFM stood on the is­sue of a price re­duc­tion, and if they too in­tend­ed to fol­low Nu­trim­ix and Sheik Lisha Ltd,NFM’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Ian Mitchell said, “We were ac­tu­al­ly in the process of plan­ning a re­duc­tion in price and we have been mon­i­tor­ing the cost of grain and oth­er in­puts for a while.”

He said, “As mar­ket lead­ers, what we didn’t want, was to end up in a sit­u­a­tion where we did not prop­er­ly es­ti­mate what the re­duc­tion in cost in­puts would be, and we took a step to re­duce prices to a point where, with­in a very short pe­ri­od of time, we would be forced to come back and in­crease prices.”

He added, “We un­der­stand how sen­si­tive flour is, and what we don’t want is to have volatil­i­ty and to cre­ate anx­i­ety and so on, not with­stand­ing that, we are in fact look­ing at those fac­tors and we are very close to com­ing out with an an­nounce­ment. We are not go­ing to give you a num­ber as yet be­cause we just want to make sure that when we do make an ad­just­ment, it is some­thing that is sus­tain­able.”

He claimed that NFM’s cost struc­ture dif­fered from that of its com­peti­tors, say­ing:“Be­ing the on­ly food safe­ty cer­ti­fied mill in the Caribbean, it means our cost struc­ture is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from that of oth­er com­pa­nies, so we are very care­ful about what we do.”

SATT wel­comes re­duc­tions

Wel­com­ing the re­duc­tion in prices that have so far been an­nounced, pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) Ra­jiv Diptee said, “That is go­ing to ben­e­fit the av­er­age con­sumer at the lev­el of the two kg, and at the bulk dis­counts, you should see some im­prove­ments from the food ser­vice sec­tor.”

He said it was note­wor­thy to see if these price re­duc­tions ac­tu­al­ly re­dound to the fi­nal cus­tomer.

He said, “I think it is very good and pro­gres­sive for the milling com­pa­nies with­in T&T be­cause it is some­thing where we have seen sig­nif­i­cant cool­ing of the com­modi­ties mar­ket, and it is im­por­tant be­cause it means the sup­ply chain has be­come a lit­tle bit more re­li­able.”

Ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 3, Nu­trim­ix an­nounced a price re­duc­tion on its Coun­try Pride and Nu­trim­ix Pre­mi­um Grade 2 kg and 10 kg flour prod­ucts–with a ten to 13 per cent re­duc­tion, and a rten to 12 per cent re­duc­tion, on each re­spec­tive­ly.

They have al­so said there will be an im­mi­nent re­duc­tion on the 45 kg pack­age of flour.

Al­though Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon was con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, she was un­able to speak as she was at a pub­lic en­gage­ment.