Wednesday, April 22 2009

Methanol Holdings (Trinidad) Limited (MHTL), which was hived off by its parent company CL Financial to Government in exchange for a bailout package, maintains that there are no plans to change the shareholding of the company.

MHTL CEO Rampersad Motilal, in a press statement last week, said the company is a stand-alone independent and private company which has always been managed and operated as a separate entity from that of its majority shareholder, CL Financial.

“This status,” Motilal said “including the shareholding structure, continues as before and there are no immediate plans to dispose of or change the shareholding in MHTL.”

Motilal assured that the current financial situation of its majority shareholder, has in no way impeded or impacted the operations or financial position of the company. On its website, MHTL listed CL Financial as the majority shareholder with a shareholding of 56.53 percent and Consolidated Energy Limited (CEL), comprising MAN Ferrostaal AG, OPAG and Helm AG, which has a shareholding of 43.47 percent.

In a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between the Government and CL Financial, the conglomerate in exchange for Clico’s bailout divested its shareholding in MHTL as well as its 55 percent shareholding in Republic Bank to Government.

Motilal said like most other petrochemical operations, MHTL’s first-quarter financial results were lower than the corresponding levels of 2008.

This, he said was in no way related to the difficulties associated with Clico, the CL Financial subsidiary that is now in the hands of the Government, and said MHTL’s performance was entirely due to the current global economic situation

On MHTL’s operations, Motilal said the company continued to be strong and all its methanol plants had excellent first quarter performance, including the M5000 plant which resumed operations in mid-January.

“All our sales, commitments and other obligations were fulfilled during the quarter, despite the prevailing softened market conditions,” he said.

“Our current low production cost profile continues to allow us to maintain overall profitable operations for 2009 even if the softened methanol market conditions continue,” Motilal said and pointed out that the company’s financial position, and in particular its liquidity position remains very strong.

On the company’s AUM project, he said its mechanical completion was achieved at the beginning of March 2009, approximately three months ahead of schedule and ammonia production began on April 14.

The downstream UAN and melamine plants all remain within budget and schedule and are due for successful start up of commercial operations during the fourth-quarter of 2009, the CEO said.