Seprod, Bryden to cohabit in Trinidad

Seprod Limited will be sharing office space in Trinidad & Tobago with its newly acquired consumer products business, A.S. Bryden & Sons Holdings.

Seprod operates a four-member unit in that country, who are moving out of rented space to reside with A.S. Bryden in Port-of-Spain, Seprod CEO Richard Pandohie said. The unit will continue to operate; it is just its location that is changing.

“The idea is that one plus one must make three. They’ll continue to run separately, because they are both registered entities. We’re physically moving the staff out of rented space to an A.S. Bryden facility,” Pandohie said.

Seprod’s country manager for the Trinidad unit, Tricia Hill, resigned on May 4, but Pandohie said her departure was unrelated to its deal to buy A.S. Bryden. Hill’s departure was announced on May 31, a week before the June 6 closure of the A.S. Bryden deal.

“Her resignation is a personal matter that is purely coincidental and has nothing to do with the transition,” he said.

Seprod is still to disclose the purchase price and the structure of the deal, saying more information would be reported with time.

“All we can say is that it was an outright purchase. We bought it as an ongoing entity. The shareholders sold and we bought,” he said.

As interim Group CEO, Pandohie says he will be spending the rest of this year mostly in Trinidad to oversee the A.S. Bryden operation, but would journey back and forth between Kingston and Port-of-Spain.

“For all intents and purposes, I’ll be moving down to Trinidad to manage the integration. We have a tremendous group of people down here who are highly skilled. That gives me a chance to focus less on day-to-day operation and more on integration and synergy identification,” he said.

The two companies already have common IT systems, and would be assessing their other areas of compatibility, he said.

neville.graham@gleanerjm.com