(Barbados Nation) The trade dispute between Pine Hill Dairy (PHD) and the food and drug authorities in Trinidad and Tobago is on the way to being resolved.
Managing director and chief executive officer of parent company Banks Holdings Ltd Richard Cozier was expected to travel to Port of Spain to meet with officials of the Food and Drugs Division in the Ministry of Health yesterday.
He told the Midweek Nation on Tuesday he would be accompanied in the deliberations by representatives of the company’s Trinidad distributor, M&D.
Last month, a frustrated Cozier lamented that all the milk products and some juices produced by PHD were being deliberately blocked from entering the Trinidad market.
While labelling adjustments were made to some juices that the Trinidadians insisted on, he said PHD had not been able to sell any milk to Trinidad in the past 18 months, and it had nothing to do with product quality.
He said the conglomerate was not prepared to incur the costs of relabelling all its milk to meet standards that Trinidad’s authorities were only imposing on Bajan products.
However, an optimistic Cozier said on Tuesday that Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade senator Maxine McClean and Barbados’ Ambassador to Caricom Robert “Bobby” Morris had “presented a case” to their counterparts in the twin-island republic.
Subsequently, he said authorities in Trinidad were prepared to “look favourably” on a request to allow a transition period which would open the door for PHD products to enter the market under the current labelling for a period of time.
The CEO said he expected the meeting yesterday to address the changes that would need to be made, as well as whether the same labelling standard would be made to apply to all goods in the same category, regardless of the country of origin.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Trade Ministry has apologised for the actions of the country’s food safety agency in refusing the entry of PHD juices and milk products.
He suggested a revamping of the agency was pending but said his Government was moving to remove the obstacles to Barbadian goods.
