Standard Distributors to close after 80 years

Af­ter 80 years in busi­ness, Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors Lim­it­ed will close its re­tail op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing the sale of the com­pa­ny by ANSA McAL Lim­it­ed to Term Fi­nance Hold­ings Lim­it­ed.

In a state­ment, ANSA McAL con­firmed it has “en­tered in­to an agree­ment to sell Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors Lim­it­ed and its Bar­ba­dos sub­sidiary, Stan­dard Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Sales Bar­ba­dos Lim­it­ed, to Term Fi­nance Hold­ings Lim­it­ed.”

The Group said the move re­flects its “on­go­ing com­mit­ment to long-term port­fo­lio align­ment and dis­ci­plined growth” un­der its 2X Strate­gic Agen­da.

Stan­dard’s re­tail op­er­a­tions of­fi­cial­ly closed on No­vem­ber 1, 2025, but the brand will con­tin­ue un­der the name Stan­dard Cred­it — a new cred­it and e-com­merce plat­form to be op­er­at­ed by Term Fi­nance.

ANSA McAL ac­knowl­edged the emo­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance of the clo­sure, say­ing the com­pa­ny “recog­nis­es the ded­i­ca­tion and pride that have de­fined Stan­dard’s peo­ple and his­to­ry.”

The Group said its pri­or­i­ty dur­ing the tran­si­tion was en­sur­ing that all em­ploy­ees were treat­ed “with fair­ness and care.” Some staff have been of­fered con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment with­in the ANSA McAL Group or with Term Fi­nance, while oth­ers re­ceived en­hanced sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages.

All em­ploy­ees will con­tin­ue to have ac­cess to the com­pa­ny’s Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2025, which in­cludes well­be­ing and fi­nan­cial-plan­ning sup­port. A vir­tu­al fi­nan­cial coun­selling ses­sion will al­so be held dur­ing the week of No­vem­ber 10 for all Trinidad, To­ba­go and Bar­ba­dos em­ploy­ees.

Job fairs are be­ing host­ed in both coun­tries this month to help work­ers iden­ti­fy new em­ploy­ment and ca­reer-plan­ning op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The re­lease end­ed with a trib­ute to the peo­ple who built the com­pa­ny’s rep­u­ta­tion, stat­ing: “We are deeply ap­pre­cia­tive of every Stan­dard em­ploy­ee and their pro­fes­sion­al­ism dur­ing this pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion.”