“When peo­ple think about sus­tain­abil­i­ty, it’s not on­ly about en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, it’s al­so about peo­ple.”

It was a can­did state­ment from ANSA McAL’s chief le­gal and ex­ter­nal af­fairs of­fi­cer, Frances Bain-Cum­ber­batch as she re­flect­ed on the con­glom­er­ate’s Eu­rochamTT’s award on March 15.

ANSA McAL was pre­sent­ed with the over­all Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Cham­pi­on 2024 large com­pa­nies award by the Eu­ro­pean Busi­ness Cham­ber in T&T (Eu­rochamTT) which held its sec­ond edi­tion of such recog­ni­tion.

Mean­while, RESS­COTT Ltd took home the Eu­rochamTT/ UN Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Cham­pi­on 2024 in the small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.

The over­all sus­tain­abil­i­ty award is a crown­ing mo­ment fol­low­ing sev­er­al years of hard work from the likes of Bain-Cum­ber­batch, cor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty spe­cial­ist Na­tal­ie Bib­by, and the head of cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ca­tions at ANSA McAL, Sarah In­gle­field.

Bib­by said among the ma­jor sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives emerg­ing across the group is Carib re­cap­tur­ing car­bon diox­ide to reuse in its op­er­a­tion while al­so us­ing less wa­ter.

The bev­er­age com­pa­ny has been do­ing so since 2002 and re­cap­tured 423 thou­sand kilo­grammes in 2023 and 485 thou­sand kilo­grammes in 2022.

The same process takes place at the fac­to­ry in St Kitts and Nevis where 73 thou­sand kilo­grammes of car­bon were re­cap­tured last year.

She added that in Ju­ly 2022, ANSA Mer­chant Bank and ANSA Bank part­nered with The Crop­per Foun­da­tion to launch the Na­tion­al Cap­i­tal Hub while Berg­er Bar­ba­dos runs on 30 per cent so­lar en­er­gy and Sis­sons Grena­da re­cent­ly in­stalled so­lar light­ing in its car park.

“Each of the sec­tors has En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG) Key Per­for­mance In­di­ca­tors (KPIs) that have been set since 2022 and there are pro­gress­ing ef­forts to push those plans for­ward every year,” Bib­by ex­plained.

Bain-Cum­ber­batch was quick to note that ANSA McAL’s thrust to­ward sus­tain­abil­i­ty did not start four years ago.

In­stead, she not­ed, “Carib Glass­works is the on­ly re­cy­cling com­pa­ny there is in terms of re­cy­cling glass. They’ve been do­ing that for the last 60 years.

“The Carib brew­ery mod­el is a re­turn­able bot­tle mod­el - the on­ly suc­cess­ful re­turn­able glass bot­tle mod­el in the coun­try so sus­tain­abil­i­ty on an en­vi­ron­men­tal ba­sis has been at the root of many things.”

Bain-Cum­ber­batch said what they have done since 2020 is for­malise and be­gin em­bed­ding that in­to the op­er­a­tions of the group, “so to see our work be­ing recog­nised like this is a phe­nom­e­nal feel­ing.”

Be­yond the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact, an­oth­er key as­pect that arose was the well-be­ing of the em­ploy­ees.

Some of the com­pa­nies with­in the ANSA McAL group have be­gun ini­ti­at­ing “well­ness spaces” in their day-to-day op­er­a­tions where em­ploy­ees can take a time­out if they need to.

Mean­while, the ANSA con­struc­tion sec­tor has cre­at­ed a lac­ta­tion room for women to cater to new moms or soon-to-be new moms. In­gle­field said, “Well-be­ing and look­ing af­ter our peo­ple are very im­por­tant as­pects of our sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices out­side of the great things be­ing done in the op­er­a­tions them­selves.”

She said the award gives them a great deal of con­fi­dence that they are on the right track.

“It is one thing for us to do it which is bril­liant, but it’s im­por­tant we com­mu­ni­cate to our em­ploy­ees and our wider com­mu­ni­ty like busi­ness part­ners, gov­ern­ment, stake­hold­ers, col­leagues and com­peti­tors in the in­dus­try what we are do­ing and why it’s im­por­tant and how it is im­pact­ing on our peo­ple and our plan­et and that’s an in­cred­i­bly im­por­tant part of this,” she added.

In­gle­field said she aims to ul­ti­mate­ly have each ANSA McAL em­ploy­ee across each of the sev­en ter­ri­to­ries be the cham­pi­on of sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Bain-Cum­ber­batch went fur­ther adding, “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is good for busi­ness.”

She said she hopes the award in­spires oth­er com­pa­nies to see the im­por­tance of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, not just be­cause it is the right thing to do but be­cause it can help their busi­ness.

“If you op­er­ate more ef­fi­cient­ly, you use less wa­ter and you use less en­er­gy, you save while pre­serv­ing the en­vi­ron­ment. You cre­ate bet­ter ef­fi­cien­cies by op­er­at­ing more sus­tain­ably. That, in and of it­self should en­cour­age busi­ness­es and if they see a com­pa­ny such as ANSA McAL ac­tu­al­ly throw­ing it­self 100 per cent, if we set an ex­am­ple as one of the old­est and largest con­glom­er­ates in the re­gion and we have cho­sen to go this route to en­sure we con­tin­ue to sur­vive and to thrive then it should be an au­to­mat­ic ex­am­ple,” she added.

At an in­di­vid­ual lev­el, In­gle­field chal­lenged peo­ple to think about one small step they can take in their home life or busi­ness-and adopt it and feel the change in how they are adding to the mo­men­tum of sus­tain­abil­i­ty across the coun­try.

Eu­ro­pean Busi­ness Cham­ber push­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty

The Eu­ro­pean Busi­ness Cham­ber in T&T has al­so been push­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty move­ment on both sides of the At­lantic.

The cham­ber was es­tab­lished to sup­port Eu­ro­pean busi­ness in­ter­ests in T&T while sup­port­ing lo­cal com­pa­nies that want to ex­port, part­ner, or do busi­ness with Eu­rope.

Ac­cord­ing to the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the cham­ber, Marie Louise Nor­ton-Mur­ray, one of the main pil­lars is trade sup­port.

“Sup­port­ing lo­cal com­pa­nies to do busi­ness in Eu­rope is not an easy task,” she said.

Out­lin­ing some of those chal­lenges, Nor­ton-Mur­ray ex­plained, “One of the first ar­eas is meet­ing food safe­ty stan­dards and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and not just food safe­ty, it could be oth­er qual­i­ty stan­dards. We now have sus­tain­abil­i­ty stan­dards, and some of these are not just vol­un­tary stan­dards, some of them are manda­to­ry. That is the first sup­port that com­pa­nies need - to meet the stan­dards and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

She not­ed the stan­dards and reg­u­la­tions are not bad for busi­ness be­cause con­sumers are con­cerned about their health and safe­ty.

Nor­ton-Mur­ray fur­ther ex­plained some of the chal­lenges fac­ing lo­cal com­pa­nies in­clude la­belling as well as qual­i­ty pack­ag­ing.

“Con­sumers are con­cerned about sus­tain­abil­i­ty so they are con­cerned about pack­ag­ing that is re­cy­clable,” which she iden­ti­fied are among some of the things that are chang­ing the face of the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket when it comes to im­por­ta­tion.

This is where the Eu­ro­pean Cham­ber is hop­ing to as­sist lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors.

“We see our role as be­ing able to in­form peo­ple of the chang­ing reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment like when you have a new reg­u­la­tion such as Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment Mech­a­nism (CBAM) or an­ti-de­for­esta­tion reg­u­la­tion or sus­tain­abil­i­ty reg­u­la­tions such as the cor­po­rate due dili­gence, so one role we play is in­for­ma­tion. We have ac­cess to the in­for­ma­tion and tools which we could share with peo­ple to get in­to the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket,” she said.

Eu­rope is al­ready a ma­jor des­ti­na­tion for T&T goods.

Co­coa and choco­late-re­lat­ed prod­ucts are ma­jor ex­ports from this coun­try.

Less­er known prod­ucts in­clude agro-processed ex­ot­ic food sources, co­conut-based sources, and fruit-based prod­ucts.

“All of these prod­ucts have po­ten­tial es­pe­cial­ly if they are us­ing lo­cal raw ma­te­ri­als or raw ma­te­ri­als from the re­gion and they are dif­fer­ent and can meet the food safe­ty re­quire­ments,” Nor­ton-Mur­ray added.

Agri­cul­ture is one of the sec­tors that has be­come a ma­jor point of con­ver­sa­tion be­tween both par­ties.

A pro­gramme called Com­mit­tee Link­ing En­tre­pre­neur­ship-Agri­cul­ture-De­vel­op­ment (COLEAD) pro­vides a se­ries of train­ing pro­grammes and a plat­form for train­ing where farm­ers do not have to phys­i­cal­ly at­tend a course but can com­plete the train­ing on­line.

They can al­so net­work with oth­er farm­ers in places like Africa and the Pa­cif­ic.

Nor­ton-Mur­ray al­so high­light­ed the shap­ing of the fu­ture of in­no­va­tion project which is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Eu­ro­pean Union in T&T, the In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute, and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment.

The project helps com­pa­nies with their in­no­v­a­tive go-to-mar­ket strate­gies.

Nor­ton-Mur­ray added some com­pa­nies are get­ting help un­der that project with bet­ter pack­ag­ing, mar­ket­ing strate­gies and at­tend­ing trade shows to ex­port to Eu­rope.

How­ev­er, ex­port­ing to Eu­rope is set to be­come more dif­fi­cult with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of its CBAM.

CBAM will tax car­bon-in­ten­sive prod­ucts that are be­ing im­port­ed in­to the EU.

On a list of coun­tries to be af­fect­ed out­side Eu­rope, T&T will be af­fect­ed the most af­ter Mozam­bique.

This coun­try ex­ports car­bon-in­ten­sive prod­ucts in­clud­ing am­mo­nia and fer­tilis­ers to Eu­rope.

Nor­ton-Mur­ray said the Eu­ro­pean Cham­ber has been sen­si­tis­ing lo­cal busi­ness­es on CBAM.

They have al­so pro­vid­ed tools that can cal­cu­late car­bon bor­der tax­es.

While T&T and Eu­rope have had a long his­to­ry of trade re­la­tions, many with­in the Eu­ro­pean sphere don’t want lo­cal com­pa­nies to see CBAM as an ob­sta­cle to do­ing busi­ness across the At­lantic, but rather as a rev­o­lu­tion of the long-stand­ing re­la­tions.

The Eu­rochamTT Awards

Eu­rochamTT in part­ner­ship with the UN T&T and PA­HO/WHO suc­cess­ful­ly cel­e­brat­ed the sec­ond sus­tain­abil­i­ty cham­pi­on awards on March 15.

The pur­pose is to recog­nise and cel­e­brate those busi­ness­es that have put in place the poli­cies, struc­tures, and sys­tems to iden­ti­fy, mea­sure, as­sess, and dis­close im­pact in terms of ESG and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.