Raphael John-Lall

Tiger Tanks Trinidad Un­lim­it­ed, a La Brea-based com­pa­ny that has an Amer­i­can part­ner, op­er­ates in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent sec­tors that are en­er­gy re­lat­ed. In­cor­po­rat­ed in 2003, Tiger Tanks was the first com­pa­ny to pro­vide cer­ti­fied car­go car­ry­ing equip­ment (CCEs) in T&T. To­day, Tiger Tanks has grown to be a ma­jor ser­vice provider in the pe­tro­le­um and down­stream petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try, pro­vid­ing new meth­ods of haz­ardous waste trans­port and dis­pos­al, which com­ple­ment some of its ma­jor ser­vices, in­clud­ing tank clean­ing and spill re­sponse con­trol. The T&T reg­is­tered com­pa­ny gets sup­port from Tiger Off­shore of Beau­mont, Texas, Unit­ed States, Den­nis Lat­iff, gen­er­al man­ag­er and part own­er, Tiger Tanks Trinidad Un­lim­it­ed, met with the Busi­ness Guardian last Thurs­day at the com­pa­ny's head of­fice at the La Brea in­dus­tri­al es­tate, which is run by the La Brea In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Labid­co).

"Tiger Tanks is a for­eign-based com­pa­ny. Our head of­fice is in Beau­mont, Texas. We are a sub­sidiary, of which I am part own­er in Trinidad," Lat­iff said. He said most of the equip­ment the com­pa­ny us­es are man­u­fac­tured by the head com­pa­ny, Tiger Off­shore, which pro­vides "back up" ser­vice for Tiger Tanks.

Tiger Tanks was orig­i­nal­ly lo­cat­ed at Ch­aguara­mas, but cost forced him to re­lo­cate to La Brea , a move he said was the best de­ci­sion he made. "We start­ed off in Ch­aguara­mas in 2003. We spent five years there. We then moved here be­cause the cost was cheap­er here. We have grown three-fold since then. We pro­vid­ed spe­cialised tanks for off­shore, like car­go car­ry­ing equip­ment. We then ex­pand­ed to clean­ing tanks when the tanks came in emp­ty, (form­ing) a tank clean­ing com­pa­ny. We have now ex­pand­ed in­to a waste treat­ment site. It's the on­ly one we know of in the Caribbean."

Waste dis­pos­al fa­cil­i­ty

Lat­iff said most com­pa­nies are look­ing for ways to dis­pose of their waste. To meet this de­mand, Tiger Tanks has in­tro­duced new equip­ment, which cost $23 mil­lion to build. The fa­cil­i­ty will be ful­ly op­er­a­tional this week. "Our lat­est ad­di­tion for treat­ment of haz­ardous waste is the in­tro­duc­tion of a ther­mal des­orp­tion unit and some in­frared units, one of which is ca­pa­ble of re­cu­per­at­ing oil from con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed ma­te­r­i­al. "This tech­nol­o­gy is be­ing in­tro­duced here for the first time. With the Gov­ern­ment's op­tion of keep­ing a healthy en­vi­ron­ment, these units will be a so­lu­tion for the treat­ment of spe­cial types of wastes that are not eas­i­ly dis­posed of, like pen­tachlorophe­nol (PCPs) and per­sis­tent or­gan­ic pol­lu­tants (POPs)," he said. Lat­iff called it a much bet­ter al­ter­na­tive to the biore­me­di­a­tion that ex­ists now in T&T.

This is the use of mi­cro-or­gan­ism me­tab­o­lism to re­move pol­lu­tants. "There are oth­er com­pa­nies who are in­to waste dis­pos­al and it is their line of work alone. But with bio-re­me­di­a­tion, it takes time, even months. With our equip­ment, it's in­stant dis­pos­al."

Down­stream in­dus­try

Lat­iff said Tiger Tanks is do­ing its part to help the de­vel­op the down­stream sec­tor. There are plans to con­struct a man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in 2012. "There are some ar­eas that the head of­fice would want to shut­down and we will take it up here and, from here, we will dis­trib­ute through Latin Amer­i­ca. It will be a big step for the coun­try. We will man­u­fac­ture off­shore car­go car­ry­ing equip­ment. We had planned this even be­fore the waste dis­pos­al unit. "The man­u­fac­tur­ing plant should cost $4.2 mil­lion. We'll be pro­vid­ing labour, we'll be ex­port­ing," he said. Com­pa­nies must be cre­ative to de­vel­op their own niche mar­ket, Lat­iff said. "I think every­body should have a lit­tle ini­tia­tive to look at dif­fer­ent ways to de­vel­op. We have ways for dif­fer­ent us­es of our equip­ment apart from what they were orig­i­nal­ly built for.

So we give dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies dif­fer­ent kinds of ser­vices. There is mon­ey to be made. We even take the small­est jobs. Noth­ing is too small for us. We look for work and when we see an op­por­tu­ni­ty, we grab at it." Tiger Tanks works with ma­jor com­pa­nies in T&T. "We deal with the pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try, the down­stream in­dus­try in Pt Lisas. We have done work for Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) run­ning pipelines, we have used our equip­ment to trans­port de-min­er­alised wa­ter and haz­ardous waste flu­ids.

"We have our dif­fer­ent di­vi­sions, like en­gi­neer­ing sec­tion, trans­port ser­vices for haz­ardous waste, health and safe­ty de­part­ment."

Latin Amer­i­ca

Tiger Tanks al­so does work with oth­er sub­sidiaries of its par­ent com­pa­ny. "The of­fice in Trinidad is the head of­fice for Latin Amer­i­ca. I have been to Venezuela and next week will be to Colom­bia. In Venezuela, the pe­tro­le­um and down­stream in­dus­try is huge. We rent equip­ment in Venezuela. "We do some sales of equip­ment there. Pdvsa-Petr&oa­cute;leos de Venezuela, SA, the Venezue­lan State-owned pe­tro­le­um com­pa­ny-al­so wants to work di­rect­ly with us now, so we want to see how we well go for­ward in rental and ser­vices in tanks and trans­port of waste dis­pos­al."

Tremen­dous growth

He said Tiger Tanks has grown at a "tremen­dous rate" over the last sev­en years. "We made $46 mil­lion in rev­enue last year for 2010, which, com­pared to $35 mil­lion in 2009, we are do­ing pret­ty good. We found ways to do things dif­fer­ent­ly. We came up with ideas to get around econ­o­my. Most com­pa­nies op­er­ate in one sec­tor, so if that sec­tor goes down, they go down. We do busi­ness with sev­er­al sec­tors, so that ben­e­fit­ed us," Lat­iff said. Un­like oth­er com­pa­nies in Tiger Tanks in­dus­try, it did not lay off em­ploy­ees when the lo­cal econ­o­my slumped due to the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis. "By the end of this year, we ex­pect to be bet­ter than last year. We haven't laid peo­ple off. We have ac­tu­al­ly hired new en­gi­neers, labour­ers, elec­tri­cians, and this would be for our ex­pan­sion once things pick up in the in­dus­try and econ­o­my."

A win­ning em­ploy­er

Tiger Tanks won the Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion's (ECA) 2010 Cham­pi­on Em­ploy­er of the Year Award in the small com­pa­ny cat­e­go­ry, an achieve­ment Lat­iff called a "sur­prise." Tiger Tanks em­ploys has 57 full-time and 22 part-time work­ers. Lat­iff con­sid­ers his com­pa­ny a mod­el em­ploy­er in that it pro­vides sup­port train­ing and is flex­i­ble with em­ploy­ees. "It was the first time we en­tered some­thing like that. All our em­ploy­ees are high­ly trained. The most im­por­tant part of this is the peo­ple who work here. This is an open com­pa­ny for em­ploy­ees. We have a wide spec­trum of em­ploy­ees here. We have em­ploy­ees here who can bare­ly read and write to en­gi­neers and high­ly skilled peo­ple. They are all treat­ed equal­ly," he said.

Lat­iff said when the com­pa­ny start­ed in Ch­aguara­mas, most of the em­ploy­ees were from Diego Mar­tin, Paramin and sur­round­ing ar­eas. "Since mov­ing to La Brea, not one per­son left. They all come here for 7 am. I have a girl from Paramin who start­ed with us in Ch­aguara­mas and who comes here every day and she re­mains com­mit­ted to the com­pa­ny. We gave her a com­pa­ny ve­hi­cle." He said they have em­ploy­ees from Ch­agua­nas, Moru­ga, Ari­ma, Biche, Rio Claro and oth­er parts of Trinidad. "I pay them well and they are prop­er­ly trained to en­sure they are cer­ti­fied."