GraceKennedy Group CEO Don Wehby told shareholders at the entity’s annual general meeting on Wednesday (May 29) that the plans are still on track to list GK Foods on an international stock exchange.

At present, he said that the group is now engaged with investment bankers and is in discussions with Citibank in the US, adding, “There is some work to be done.”

Wehby, however, pointed out that GK Foods would need to expand to be investible, and so the company is exploring acquisitions in North America and the United Kingdom to grow the business.

“In terms of acquisition, we have a nice pipeline working on. I can’t say too much about it and you can appreciate that, but we are making steady progress,” the group CEO continued.

In the meantime, group chief financial officer Andrew Messado and auditing and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers are looking at the structure of the balance sheet of Grace Foods to prepare it for listing. According to Messado, the balance sheet should be “ appropriate and attractive to an international investor”.

“So yes, we are working with PricewaterhouseCoopers. We have looked at some structured proposals, and right now we are at the point where we can look at what is the ideal selection to make, and then look at planning that over the next period. As was mentioned, you also need to be at the right size for it to be attractive to an international market,” Messado stated.

While noting that plans for the listing of Grace Foods are for the medium term, he reiterated that the company will continue to engage with investment bankers in terms of the timing of the listing and the size of the company.

“Our initial discussions with investment bankers in New York have been very positive, and there seems to be a lot of interest in ethnic food companies. So we will continue to monitor the market to ensure that the timing is the right thing to do” Wehby reiterated.