Caribbean Cement Co to refinance operating lease

Caribbean Cement Co plans to refinance the operating lease for its Rockfort plant in Kingston, the Jamaica Gleaner reports.

The company is to set up a dedicated advisory board to address its operating lease, payable to immediate parent company Trinidad Cement Ltd.

"The structure of the lease is not the most efficient and might have made sense five years ago when Caribbean Cement had no possibility to finance its assets," said Caribbean Cement General Manager, Peter Donkersloot Ponce, at the company's annual general meeting on Thursday.

Caribbean Cement will negotiate new rates with TCL for the period January 2019 to December 2028, according to the annual report. TCL owns 74 per cent of Caribbean Cement, while Cemex owns 69 per cent of TCL.

At the same time, the cement maker will be investing in a new oal mill and kiln and implement green energy programmes over the next 12 months. The capex aims to push cement production from 0.91Mta to 1.2Mta by 2019.