Shas­tri Boodan

Ca­roni Green Lim­it­ed (CGL) plans on as­sist­ing To­ba­go's pep­per sauce pro­duc­ers with raw ma­te­r­i­al, CEO Shar­ma Lal­la has said.

A team from the com­pa­ny re­cent­ly met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the To­ba­go Agro Proces­sors As­so­ci­a­tion (TAPA) led by pres­i­dent Dar­i­lyn Smart and Bernard Mitchell, CEO of Eco-In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of To­ba­go (E-ID­COT).

"In pre­sent­ing an overview of the To­ba­go agro-sec­tor, Ms Smart in­di­cat­ed that To­ba­go's pre­dom­i­nant­ly small-scale agro-pro­cess­ing en­ter­pris­es con­tin­ue to face pro­duc­tion prob­lems on ac­count of in­ad­e­quate and in­con­sis­tent sup­ply of raw ma­te­ri­als," he said.

"Ms Smart re­it­er­at­ed that un­re­li­able raw ma­te­r­i­al sup­plies was one of the ma­jor con­straints to re­li­able pro­duc­tion flows ex­pe­ri­enced by agro-proces­sors in To­ba­go. Proces­sors claim that there is not enough raw ma­te­r­i­al pro­duced lo­cal­ly for pro­cess­ing at com­pet­i­tive prices. She added that lo­cal agro-pro­cess­ing al­so suf­fers from sat­u­ra­tion of the avail­able lo­cal mar­ket which re­sults in far too lim­it­ed mar­ket op­tions.

"On the oth­er hand, she not­ed that there is a grow­ing mar­ket for spe­cialised food items in the ma­jor met­ro­pol­i­tan cen­tres of Toron­to, New York, Mi­a­mi and Lon­don which presents a host of op­por­tu­ni­ties for en­tre­pre­neurs to carve a niche for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Shar­ma said meet­ing was in­tend­ed to ex­plore pos­si­ble col­lab­o­ra­tive ini­tia­tives to move the sec­tor for­ward and to dis­cuss ways in which col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween agro-proces­sors and man­u­fac­tur­ers of lo­cal val­ue-added prod­ucts and pro­duc­ers of the raw ma­te­ri­als and pro­cess­ing in­puts could be im­proved.

"The ob­jec­tive is to for­mu­late so­lu­tions to the prob­lems of se­ri­ous ma­te­r­i­al and tech­ni­cal de­fi­cien­cies that re­tard their de­vel­op­ment and slow the pace of their emer­gence as a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic sec­tor," he ex­plained.

Mitchell not­ed that agri­cul­ture is a key area of fo­cus of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and its Di­vi­sion of Agri­cul­ture, which is sup­port­ing and en­cour­ag­ing a num­ber of ini­tia­tives to de­vel­op this sec­tor even fur­ther.

The CGL team toured the mul­ti-pro­duc­er units con­struct­ed at the Cove Eco In­dus­tri­al and Busi­ness Park which pro­vide ful­ly-equipped fa­cil­i­ties for agro proces­sors and light man­u­fac­tur­ing in sup­port of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment of the agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors.

TAPA has leased space in one of the units and is set­ting up state-of-the-art pack­ag­ing and la­belling equip­ment fi­nanced by the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion.

Lal­la said CGL con­tin­ues to fo­cus on es­tab­lish­ment of strate­gic part­ner­ships in agri­cul­ture and has been in­volved in ini­tia­tives aimed at build­ing ca­pac­i­ty in agro-pro­cess­ing and im­prov­ing mar­ket ac­cess.