Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) joined more than 100 lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­hibitors at this year's Trade & In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, ear­li­er this month.

TCL, which cel­e­brates its 60th an­niver­sary this year, at­tend­ed TIC in style, sport­ing a vi­su­al­ly-cap­ti­vat­ing booth, out­fit­ted with pho­tos, brochures and sam­ples de­pict­ing and de­tail­ing TCL's con­crete roads, the soil ce­ment sta­bil­i­sa­tion tech­nique, TCL's oil well (Class G) ce­ment and dec­o­ra­tive con­crete–all un­der the apt­ly ti­tled ban­ner, The Road to Sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The main fo­cus of the booth was the pro­mo­tion of TCL's con­crete roads: a tech­nol­o­gy which is be­ing high­light­ed through­out the TCL Group. The com­pa­ny ad­vo­cates the dura­bil­i­ty, longevi­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal-friend­li­ness and over­all cost-ef­fec­tive­ness of con­crete roads.

An­oth­er fo­cal point was the soil ce­ment sta­bil­i­sa­tion tech­nique for mod­i­fi­ca­tion of soils with ce­ment, in an ef­fort in­crease its com­pact­ness and strength. The tech­nique is al­ready be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by the TCL Group to im­prove the qual­i­ty of struc­tures such as road­ways and car parks. It was suc­cess­ful­ly utilised ear­li­er this year to strength­en one of the roads lead­ing to TCL's Guyanese sub­sidiary, TCL (Guyana) Inc., in George­town, Guyana. The process was spear­head­ed by TCL Group's civ­il en­gi­neer Avaleen Mooloo.

TCL's oil well (Class G) ce­ment re­ceived rave re­views through­out 2014 thus far for mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant in-roads in­to the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket in May. With the hope of in­creas­ing mar­ket share in that re­gion and be­yond, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to pro­mote oil well ce­ment heav­i­ly. This is a high­ly-spe­cialised brand of ce­ment, which, due to its high-tem­per­a­ture and high-sul­phate re­sis­tant qual­i­ties, is best suit­ed to form the cas­ing around oil wells.

In Jan­u­ary, at the com­pa­ny's 60th An­niver­sary In­ter­faith Cer­e­mo­ny, TCL's gen­er­al man­ag­er Sat­nar­ine Bachew spoke in glow­ing terms about TCL's prospects for the oil well ce­ment prod­uct.

When the com­pa­ny record­ed its maid­en ship­ment to Colom­bia four months lat­er, Bachew com­ment­ed: "This ship­ment to Co­lum­bia is the first step in the jour­ney to de­vel­op­ing a glob­al brand. It has the po­ten­tial to ex­pand to Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil and Africa. The po­ten­tial is huge."

Al­so in Ju­ly, TCL was an Emer­ald spon­sor of the T&T Green Build­ing Coun­cil's Break­fast Sem­i­nar, Green Build­ing: Mak­ing Prof­its Sus­tain­able, at the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain. This was an­oth­er fo­rum in which TCL's en­vi­ron­men­tal prac­tices and achieve­ments were pro­mot­ed.