On Saturday the Citrus Growers Association held its third general meeting for this year alone. On the agenda was the proposed sale of 47% of the company to Blue Water, an investor company from Trinidad. Priced at $25 million, the sale was pitched to the general membership of the CGA. That was met with what can only be described as open hostilities.
It was not up until Saturday that the entire proposed contract for the sale of the company was made available to the entire membership of the association. As the representative from Blue Water and another company Banks International tried to present their proposal for purchase, they were openly chastened by the membership. The meeting became so heated that very hard words were being thrown from those who were trying to make the sale to those opposing it.
Those include CEO Henry Canton, and Ernest Raymond the chairman of the board for the sale and Eugene Zabaneh and Denzil Jenkins against it. The back and forth continued to a point where brothers Eugene and Johnny got into a verbal confrontation with accusations being hurled in both directions. At this point the police had to intervene to calm things down.
The difficulties that the general membership has with the sale are numerous. Among them is the fact that they claim that the 47% in shares are worth $37 million and they are being sold at $25 million, a loss for the CGA. Another point is that the minority shareholder will have too much control over the pricing limits for citrus products with them having to agree with the growers over the price. Finally the minority shareholder would force the citrus company to declare profits of up to $5 million a year which would minimize the payment growers receive for their product.
In the end a resolution was passed during which a 5 member team including Anthony Chanona, Trevor Roe, Bill Tillet, Arsenio Burgos and Victor Quan, including legal representative, would assess the contract for its feasibility. They have 30 days to finish that study.
