By Keith Bernard
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. June 30, 2026: The recent groundbreaking ceremony for Massy Holdings’ US$75 million Massy Hub at Houston, East Bank Demerara, in Guyana was celebrated with considerable fanfare – ministers, executives, and the kind of optimism that oil-boom Guyana has grown accustomed to projecting. But amidst the ribbon-cutting, shareholders of this publicly listed company – on both the Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica Stock Exchanges – would be prudent to ask a question that went conspicuously unaddressed: who will reliably power this facility?
The Massy Hub, as announced, is a 190,000-square-foot state-of-the-art warehouse featuring advanced automation, an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS), temperature-controlled storage, 15 container receiving bays, and 28 dispatch bays – technology that is entirely dependent on a stable, uninterrupted electricity supply. The facility is scheduled for completion by 2028, an 18-month construction window. Yet the energy infrastructure needed to sustain such a facility does not yet exist in Guyana in any reliable form, and by even the most optimistic official projections, it will not for some time to come.
Guyana’s power supply remains among the most expensive and least reliable in the Caribbean region. The country currently pays electricity costs approaching US$0.32 per kilowatt-hour – among the highest in the region – and has been forced to rent two Turkish power ships from Karpowership International at a reported combined daily cost of approximately US$235,000, simply to prevent routine blackouts. As recently as March 2026, Guyana extended that power ship contract, with the Minister responsible acknowledging plainly: “If we don’t, you would get blackout.” That is not the energy backdrop one would choose for a facility dependent on warehouse automation, climate control, and precision logistics.
The government’s solution to this crisis – the US$1.9 billion Gas-to-Energy (GtE) project at Wales on the West Bank of Demerara – has been the subject of repeated, compounding delays since its original completion target of end-2024. A contractor dispute requiring adjudication, on-site soil complications, and transmission infrastructure challenges have repeatedly pushed the timeline forward. The government’s Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, has acknowledged that the timeline has shifted to end-2026 for a “simple cycle” of approximately 228 megawatts – not the full 300 megawatts of combined-cycle generation originally promised. Full operational capacity, requiring the two steam turbines, is not projected until mid-2027 at the earliest. Phase II of the project – needed to fully meet Guyana’s surging electricity demand – remains in the proposal stage, with gas volumes from the Hammerhead project not expected until 2029. Meanwhile, the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project has only recently gone back out to Request for Proposals.
Put plainly: by the time Massy’s Houston Hub is completed and operational in 2028, Guyana’s electricity grid may only just be stabilizing at the Phase I level – a single cycle plant that, if history holds, will face transmission and distribution constraints of its own. Full energy sufficiency remains years away.
Massy’s Q2 FY2026 results, covering the six months to 31 March 2026, show the Guyana segment contributing approximately 27% of Group profit before tax – a significant and growing share. Third-party revenue from continuing operations grew 7.4% year-on-year to TT$8.51 billion, and Guyana specifically recorded 16% revenue growth within the Integrated Retail Portfolio. The Board has rightly identified Guyana as a strategic growth market. But the same results also show that working capital absorbed cash during the period, with the Board intensifying focus on cash conversion and balance sheet discipline. Total equity stands at TT$8.58 billion, and cash and short-term funds from continuing operations increased to TT$2.0 billion – a resilient position, but one that leaves less margin for capital allocation errors.
A US$75 million commitment – approximately TT$510 million at current rates – is not a trivial line item. This is roughly equivalent to the Group’s entire Financial Services profit before tax for the six-month period, more than six times the capital allocated to previous Guyana warehousing ventures, and it sits on top of the Group’s own TT$210.2 million in dividends paid during the half-year and its ongoing investment in the Orange Grove automation project in Trinidad. The question of how this investment is being financed – equity, debt, or a combination – has not been disclosed in the financial highlights released to the market.
This brings us to a question shareholders deserve a direct answer to: will the Guyana government be acting as any form of backstop, co-guarantor, or credit support for debt financing associated with this investment?
The context matters. Guyana’s government is simultaneously managing a US$1.9 billion Gas-to-Energy project that has gone materially over budget and timeline, extended costly power ship contracts, entered a second gas-to-shore planning cycle, and made commitments toward Amaila Falls – all while managing the fiscal architecture of one of the world’s fastest-growing oil economies. GO-Invest, Guyana’s investment promotion agency, was represented at the Massy groundbreaking, as was the Minister of Public Utilities and Aviation. The presence of senior government figures at a private-sector sod-turning is not unusual in the Caribbean. But it raises a legitimate question about whether preferential arrangements – land, utilities commitments, fiscal incentives, or financing support – form part of this investment’s underpinnings. If government support is part of the structure, shareholders should know. If it is not, shareholders should equally understand that this US$75 million commitment will be serviced entirely by the Group’s own balance sheet in an environment where the electricity supply serving the facility may be unreliable for years.
Modern, automated distribution warehousing is not simply inconvenienced by power outages – it is operationally compromised by them. The ASRS technology Massy has deployed at Orange Grove in Trinidad, and proposes to replicate in Houston, Guyana, is sophisticated robotics and machine-learning infrastructure designed for seamless, continuous throughput. Temperature-controlled storage for food and pharmaceutical products is not a feature that tolerates intermittent supply. The business case for the Houston Hub is built on operational efficiency, inventory precision, and supply chain reliability. All of these are directly contingent on an energy supply that Guyana does not yet reliably have.
Diesel generators can serve as backup, but at a cost that materially erodes the efficiency gains the facility is designed to deliver, and which would need to be factored into every financial projection presented to the Board. Has it been?
Massy Holdings’ management has earned credibility through disciplined execution, and the Group’s track record in Guyana spans almost 60 years. This letter is not a counsel against investment in Guyana – it is a call for transparency proportionate to the scale and the risk of this specific commitment. Shareholders, in their quarterly dividend framework, deserve clarity on:
1. The financing structure of the US$75 million investment and whether any government facilitation forms part of it;
2. The contingency provisions for power supply during the period between facility completion (2028) and grid stabilisation;
3. The sensitivity of projected returns to electricity cost assumptions, including the cost of backup generation;
4. Whether independent energy risk due diligence was conducted prior to the investment decision.
Guyana’s economic ascent is real. So is its electricity problem. A company of Massy’s standing owes its shareholders a frank account of how it intends to navigate the gap between the two.
