Run­ning a com­pa­ny is not easy, as there are many ad­just­ments and chal­lenges to over­come along its jour­ney.

Three com­pa­nies that are ex­pand­ing in­to var­i­ous mar­kets are Cream­ery Nov­el­ties, owned by the Had­co group, Chief Brand Prod­ucts and oDe­liv­er.

At the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce on Thurs­day night, held at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Cream­ery won Break­through Ex­porter of the Year, Chief Brand Prod­ucts won In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, Known T&T Owned Com­pa­ny of the Year, and oDe­liv­er Caribbean won the SME Medi­um Award.

Cream­ery ex­port man­ag­er Vashish Sieu­ra­js­ingh told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the ice cream com­pa­ny’s jour­ney has been very ex­cit­ing, il­lu­mi­nat­ing, and some­times very dif­fi­cult.

Ex­plain­ing the chal­lenges, Sieu­ra­js­ingh said the most dif­fi­cult part of the whole ex­port process is the bar­ri­er to en­try in some coun­tries.

“Mean­ing we would have to do things like get or­ders done off the plant. There are a lot of re­stric­tions in cer­tain coun­tries be­cause it’s a milk-based prod­uct. So be­cause of that, we have to do a lot of ground­work on our end just to make sure we con­form to all the re­quire­ments of the coun­try which the dis­trib­u­tor is im­port­ing from,” he de­tailed.

On ex­pand­ing the busi­ness, the ex­port man­ag­er said the com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts can now be found in 13 re­gion­al coun­tries and the goal is to en­ter Latin Amer­i­ca and North Amer­i­ca mar­kets.

Asked how Cream­ery is deal­ing with the for­eign ex­change crunch, which is af­fect­ing many busi­ness­es, Sieu­ra­js­ingh in­di­cat­ed that a big rea­son the com­pa­ny fo­cuss­es on ex­ports is that the goal of the group is to earn more for­eign ex­change. This would mit­i­gate the prob­lems it has with get­ting forex to buy raw ma­te­ri­als.  

“Al­so, we re­ly a lot on Ex­im­bank and their ser­vices be­cause they help give us the forex that we need to turn all the raw ma­te­ri­als in­to vi­able prod­ucts, which we can then ex­port to earn more forex. Ex­ports have been grow­ing tremen­dous­ly and we will soon reach a point where our ex­port sales are greater than our lo­cal sales, which is where the com­pa­ny is aim­ing,” he said.

He not­ed that the com­pa­ny has been in ex­is­tence for the past sev­en years, and its fi­nan­cials have im­proved since Covid-19 with ex­ports grow­ing year on year.

How­ev­er, he said lo­cal sales are flat, as a re­sult of reach­ing about 1,500 touch­points, in the coun­try.

“We think we have reached a point where Cream­ery is tru­ly at the point in T&T where you can get it every­where. We don’t see right now a lot more growth com­ing from the lo­cal mar­ket, which is why all the growth now for the com­pa­ny would come from ex­ports,” said Sieu­ra­js­ingh.

Chief Brand Prod­ucts mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Es­ther Grace-Ra­goo­bars­ingh, de­scribed the award for the 67-year-old com­pa­ny as long-await­ed recog­ni­tion.

Ra­goo­bars­ingh said the man­u­fac­tur­er and ex­porter of spices, sea­son­ings, and condi­ments has been through dif­fer­ent highs and lows, dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. But each time the com­pa­ny has pre­vailed as it has been con­sis­tent through­out the trade.

She out­lined that the prod­ucts can be found in any of the mar­kets through­out Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, and in French and Dutch Caribbean as well. The com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts are al­so sold in­ter­na­tion­al.

Grace-Ra­goo­bars­ingh high­light­ed that the com­pa­ny re­cent­ly en­tered the Cu­ra­cao mar­ket and would be pen­e­trat­ing oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets with­in the com­ing months.

On the in­no­va­tion side, the mar­ket­ing man­ag­er said the com­pa­ny has a sub-brand called Chiffy’s and is about to launch a pre­mi­um ver­sion of Chiffy’s which is a black pep­per grind. This will be the first in­no­va­tion by Chief Prod­ucts of its kind.

Al­so, oDe­liv­er which de­liv­ers through­out the coun­try won the SME Medi­um Award. Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Jonathan Clay­ton said the com­pa­ny which be­gan in 2021 has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly with 150 be­ing em­ployed.  

“Our team is han­dling an im­pres­sive av­er­age of 30,000 ship­ments each month, reach­ing cus­tomers across T&T with ef­fi­cien­cy and re­li­a­bil­i­ty. We’ve suc­cess­ful­ly on­board­ed over 8,000 busi­ness­es, help­ing them ex­pand their reach and im­pact through our lo­gis­tics ser­vices. With over 600,000 suc­cess­ful de­liv­er­ies com­plet­ed to date, this jour­ney re­flects our deep com­mit­ment to meet­ing the grow­ing needs of our re­gion’s busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ties.

“Re­ceiv­ing this award has been a pro­found ho­n­our for oDe­liv­er, as it cel­e­brates our ded­i­ca­tion to in­no­va­tion and ser­vice ex­cel­lence,” Clay­ton dis­closed.

He stat­ed that the com­pa­ny’s ex­pan­sion plans are am­bi­tious, and they are con­tin­u­ous­ly en­hanc­ing its ca­pa­bil­i­ties to meet grow­ing de­mands.

“In the near term, we’re fo­cused on in­creas­ing de­liv­ery speed and ex­pand­ing in­to trans­port­ing larg­er items to sup­port a broad­er range of in­dus­tries. A bit fur­ther down the line, we’re prepar­ing to in­vest in more sub­stan­tial stor­age and ful­fill­ment so­lu­tions, en­abling oDe­liv­er to serve as a full-ser­vice lo­gis­tics part­ner for a wide range of busi­ness­es,” Clay­ton added.