Company forced to diversify to meet challenges of COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 severely affected the economic output of Goddard Enterprises Ltd (GEL), says its Managing Director and CEO Anthony Ali who admitted that the company has had a testing period so far.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday to mark GEL’s 100th year anniversary, Ali said that with a large part of the business relating to food catering for international airlines, profits were greatly slashed amid the COVID-19 pandemic as travel was curtailed, which led to job cuts.

“We’ve had mixed results because of the pandemic. The catering group, which is highly dependent on tourism – we operate 28 flight kitchens in 24 countries – with international air travel being reduced to 3.6 per cent of what it was pre-COVID, this has had a dramatic impact on the group.

“We have had to go through restructuring and re-engineering. We, unfortunately, had to part ways with a number of our employees, but at the same time it forced us to do what we had to do, which was to reinvent ourselves and figure out how we survive.

“So, we developed a strategy…which is a diversification strategy to broaden the group [and] have it not as reliant on one particular aspect of catering, and we are well on our way to doing that,” Ali explained.

The pivot to diversification is still ongoing for the group, as the stabilisation in investments for shareholders is seen now as priority one as Barbados and other countries come out of the pandemic. One surprise outcome of the pandemic so far, he said, has been McBride (Caribbean) Limited, whose investment in disinfectant solutions has paid off in a big way so far.

“We’ve had companies like McBride who were able to capitalise on the unfortunate situation, where we produced disinfectant sprays, and we have been able to launch a brand of disinfectant and have that be taken up regionally. So, our sales have more than doubled during the pandemic.”

Food-based companies, as well as manufacturing operations under the GEL group, have continued to operate well over the last year, Ali disclosed.

“We are at the point now where we [are starting] to see the turnaround. We see airlift coming back in excess of 30 per cent of the  pre-COVID volumes, and we see that increasing steadily. Our reliance on airline catering is no longer what it used to be 10-15 years ago. Even pre-pandemic, we were 45 per cent a non-airline business, so industrial catering and the pandemic have given us the opportunity to further broaden that part of the portfolio.

“Where we are seeing some big challenges is in some of the retail-facing organisations, like our car dealerships where discretionary spending has dropped. People are very nervous about what is happening in the economy and they are not going to make that luxury commitment to purchase that high-end vehicle,” Ali said.

He also admitted that though some workers had been let go earlier on in the pandemic, the rehiring of personnel had already started.

The company has predicted a slow but steady uptick in profits as the economy once again opens up. (SB)