Ramesh S Ma­haraj, gen­er­al man­ag­er, Ven Caribbean Pa­per Prod­ucts, land­ed an or­der for a ship­ment of hy­gien­ic pa­per prod­ucts at the first TIC in which he ex­hib­it­ed. "I ac­tu­al­ly got paid on the floor–and be­fore the show was over, we shipped it, to Guyana. Ac­tu­al­ly, that cus­tomer, a dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny, has re­mained with us and has been with us for the last 11 years," said Ma­haraj, who start­ed off as the com­pa­ny's sales and op­er­a­tions man­ag­er. What made ex­hib­it the sec­ond year? "Be­cause we got busi­ness the first year. Bot­tom line. I ac­tu­al­ly col­lect­ed the dol­lar bills on the floor," Ma­haraj said. In which cur­ren­cy? "US," he said, laugh­ling­ly.

Ma­haraj said Ven Caribbean, whose par­ent com­pa­ny is Venezuela-based MAN­PA–Man­u­fac­turas de Pa­pel–has two or three cus­tomers in Ja­maica, but the is­land is large enough to get new cus­tomers in an­oth­er part of Ja­maica. The same ap­plies to Guyana."Our ex­ports stretch from Suri­name to Ja­maica, Do­mini­ca, An­tigua, St Kitts, Montser­rat, Guyana, Grena­da. Forty per cent of our pro­duc­tion is ex­port­ed. "We have been for­tu­nate that each TIC show, we have at least got­ten one, and, in most cas­es, up to three, four new cus­tomers," Ma­haraj said. He said while Ven Caribbean, based at Tumpuna Road South, Ari­ma, en­tered TIC the first year to sup­port the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion new ven­ture, "I wasn't do­ing them a favour be­cause I knew there was a re­turn to be had." Ma­haraj said when VEN Caribbean first dis­played at TIC, it was sup­ply­ing the cruise ship in­dus­try–Car­ni­val Cruise Lines–with prod­ucts. "We ac­tu­al­ly asked them not to buy be­cause we were chang­ing our equip­ment."

Ear­li­er this year, Ma­haraj went to Mi­a­mi to restart ne­go­ti­a­tions to sup­ply the com­pa­ny with prod­ucts, which he ex­pects to do by ear­ly next year. "That in­dus­try, un­like any oth­er, a con­tain­er can't af­ford to be late. There's no such thing as not get­ting it when they need it. And their or­ders are like eight (40-foot con­tain­ers) a month. So if you don't get those eight out when they re­quire it, don't both­er," Ma­haraj said. He said the $25 mil­lion equip­ment change out was to more prod­uct, bet­ter prod­uct and im­proved pre­sen­ta­tion, pack­ag­ing. "It's a very, very com­pet­i­tive mar­ket. One of our biggest com­peti­tors in the re­gion right now is from Chi­na, be­lieve it or not. "Every lit­tle nook and cran­ny out of Chi­na is ex­port­ing in­to the Caribbean right now. An­tho­ny Farah, of MDC UM, in­ter­rupt­ed to say, "When you com­pete with a Chi­nese com­pa­ny, you are not com­pet­ing with a com­pa­ny, you are com­pet­ing with a coun­try."

"That is right," Ma­haraj said.