Rhon­dor Dowlat

The glob­al paints and coat­ings mar­ket ac­count­ed for US$128.5 bil­lion in 2014 and ac­cord­ing to Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, that fig­ure is ex­pect­ed to reach US$196.2 bil­lion by 2022.

The min­is­ter high­light­ed that fact in her fea­ture ad­dress at the ANSA Coat­ings Lim­it­ed Sis­son's launch of its Trop­i­cal Mod­erne col­lec­tion on Thurs­day evening and ap­plaud­ed the com­pa­ny, a mem­ber of the ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies, for re­main­ing at the fore­front of man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of paint and coat­ing tech­nol­o­gy through­out the Caribbean.

"Among the fac­tors that al­low the or­gan­i­sa­tion to stay ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion is its will­ing­ness to be in­no­v­a­tive while stay­ing abreast of the newest in­ter­na­tion­al trends and in­dus­try stan­dards," she said.

"I am aware, for ex­am­ple, that ANSA Coat­ings is recog­nised for main­tain­ing the ISO 9001:2008 Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tem Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion there­by en­sur­ing con­sumer con­fi­dence. This strict ad­her­ence to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, to­geth­er with the util­i­sa­tion of state of the art tech­nol­o­gy and its com­mit­ment to pro­mot­ing in­no­va­tion, are wor­thy of em­u­la­tion by oth­er lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers in or­der to strength­en over­all com­pet­i­tive­ness."

Gopee-Scoon ac­knowl­edged ANSA McAL's con­tri­bu­tion to T&T, not­ing that it had been "mak­ing a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the eco­nom­ic growth."

She added: "The group cur­rent­ly em­ploys over 6,000 em­ploy­ees and was re­port­ed to have gen­er­at­ed over $1.1 bil­lion in prof­it be­fore tax in 2015."

The min­is­ter took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to an­nounce that a new board was ap­proved to steer Cre­ativeTT, one of a num­ber ini­tia­tives in the bol­ster­ing ex­ist­ing plat­forms "to en­sure that all cor­po­rate en­ti­ties are af­ford­ed an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment which is con­ducive to busi­ness."

"Gov­ern­ment's of­fi­cial pol­i­cy frame­work fo­cus­es on sus­tain­able growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and has iden­ti­fied spe­cif­ic in­dus­tries which have the po­ten­tial to pen­e­trate in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets," Gopee-Scoon said.

ANSA Coat­ings man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Roger Roach, pledged the com­pa­ny's con­tin­ued sup­port to Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts to boost ex­ports.

The new line of Sis­sons Paint launched at the event held at the Siam Cock­tail Lounge, Queens Park East, Port-of-Spain, are Youth­ful Vibes, Retro Mix and Re­fined El­e­gance. One of the high­lights was a fash­ion dis­play with mod­els in spe­cial­ly de­signed out­fits and match­ing lo­cal­ly made jew­el­ry, de­pict­ing the new colours. The lo­cal de­sign­ers fea­tured were Heather Jones, Charu Lochan-Dass, Rhi­an Ramkissoon and Afiya Bish­op.

In at­ten­dance were A Nor­man Sab­ga, Group Chair­man and CEO of the ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies, deputy chair­man An­drew Sab­ga and Andy Ma­hadeo, Sec­tor Head, Man­u­fac­tur­ing, ANSA McAL Group.