Ser­vice so­lu­tions com­pa­ny Mag­ic Mist is ex­pand­ing its busi­ness port­fo­lio as it now looks to ven­ture in­to agri­cul­ture.

Wayne Her­bert, di­rec­tor/group ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent al­so re­spon­si­ble for the com­pa­ny’s day-to-day op­er­a­tions told the Busi­ness Guardian a three-acre par­cel of land was al­ready bought at Aranguez South, a lo­ca­tion known as one of the coun­try’s pop­u­lar food bas­kets.

The project is ex­pect­ed to be­gin by the sec­ond quar­ter of this year.

The land was pur­chased in 2017 but due to COVID-19 and its many im­pli­ca­tions plans were placed on the back burn­er.

“At that time, we had to en­sure Mag­ic Mist re­mained afloat. While COVID was good for the com­pa­ny in terms of our dis­in­fect­ing and sani­tis­ing ser­vices, we al­so recog­nised that com­ing out of the pan­dem­ic that we, as a coun­try, are heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on out­side in­flu­ences, food-wise.

“So, we are look­ing at the next area of op­por­tu­ni­ty to go in­to which is agri­cul­ture. We think now is a good time to do so. It is good not on­ly for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment but al­so for or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” Her­bert ex­plained.

As the com­pa­ny gears up to put its plan in­to ac­tion it has em­ployed the ex­per­tise of agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Dr Omar­dath Ma­haraj not on­ly for guid­ance but to en­sure the land is ef­fi­cient­ly max­imised.

“The space is small but if prop­er­ly utilised, the yield could be tremen­dous,” Her­bert not­ed.

Part of the ob­jec­tive is to in­vest in short-term crops but Mag­ic Mist is hop­ing there is pro­duce year-round.

“We are con­sid­er­ing a num­ber of things in­clud­ing sea­son­al crops but more so, we want to have crops that can en­dure both in the dry and wet sea­sons.

“Nor­mal­ly, farm­ers in that area (Aranguez) plant in the dry sea­son and when the rainy sea­son comes around, they tend to leave the area and then come back in­to the dry sea­son. We want to cap­i­talise on both sea­sons,” Her­bert re­it­er­at­ed.

But it’s more than just till­ing the land for Mag­ic Mist.

Aqua­cul­ture (al­so known as fish or shell­fish farm­ing) as well as em­ploy­ing mod­ern-day process­es in­to agri­cul­ture will be part of the ven­ture.

“We want to look at farm­ing from a per­spec­tive of us­ing more tech­nol­o­gy than tra­di­tion­al us­es,” Her­bert added.

He said not on­ly will this boost the sec­tor but will gen­er­ate jobs for the com­mu­ni­ty as CSR al­so is a big part of the com­pa­ny’s mot­to.

“Our his­to­ry is we usu­al­ly hire peo­ple from the area. We have con­tracts through­out Trinidad and sim­i­lar­ly, we would do the same with this ven­ture,” Her­bert added.

Sub­si­dis­ing the cost of meals

Recog­nis­ing that the in­creas­ing cost of both gro­cery items and fresh pro­duce can be bur­den­some on the pock­ets of their em­ploy­ees Mag­ic Mist re­cent­ly in­tro­duced a sub­sidised in-house meal plan.

Grow­ing its own food could al­so pro­vide the com­pa­ny with fresh in­gre­di­ents as it spends close to $10,000 in food bought in bulk per month; 40 per cent of which goes to meat in­clud­ing chick­en and fish.

Ac­cord­ing to Her­bert, two months ago, the com­pa­ny con­vert­ed its cafe­te­ria in­to a kitchen and hired a full-time cook, dish­ing out a va­ri­ety of break­fast and lunch­es.

Her­bert said the staff pays $250 a month which works out to $11 per day for both break­fast and lunch.

For those pre­fer­ring break­fast on­ly, this would cost them $80 per month which is around $3.80 per meal.

“That is bet­ter than a dou­bles,” Her­bert said adding, “We un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult it is fi­nan­cial­ly be­cause the av­er­age cost of ba­sic break­fast and lunch is about $20 and $50 re­spec­tive­ly and our staff can now save that mon­ey for some­thing else.”

There’s al­so the con­ve­nience of sav­ing time by not hav­ing to pre­pare break­fast at home or leav­ing the com­pound to get lunch.

“Our phi­los­o­phy is try­ing to take care of our peo­ple and I de­cid­ed if we are go­ing to do this we will do it right and so far, it has worked out pret­ty well,” Her­bert added.

A typ­i­cal lunch pro­vid­ed by Mag­ic Mist can con­sist of rice, coo coo, callaloo, a choice of meat and fresh sal­ad.

Ac­cord­ing to Her­bert eat­ing to­geth­er has al­so cre­at­ed a more har­mo­nious and pro­duc­tive work en­vi­ron­ment.

“All staff have lunch at the same time, and this cre­ates ca­ma­raderie, boosts pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­creas­es mo­ti­va­tion,” Her­bert said, not­ing that it has al­so en­gen­dered a greater sense of team spir­it and even im­proved the morale among staff.

Mag­ic Mist has around 500 em­ploy­ees, many of whom work off-site due to dif­fer­ent con­trac­tu­al du­ties through­out the coun­try.

While the meal plan is present­ly for of­fice-based em­ploy­ees such as ad­min­is­tra­tion, Her­bert said av­enues are be­ing ex­plored to in­clude every­one in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“We have to find ways to meet the rest of our ser­vice team mem­bers be­cause many of them go di­rect­ly to their re­spec­tive con­tracts through­out the coun­try. So, let’s say you work in Port-of-Spain, we can have a dis­cus­sion with a food out­let in that area.

“For in­stance, we could sub­sidise the val­ue of a meal which should not ex­ceed a cer­tain fig­ure. We can pro­vide a sys­tem where every meal they pur­chase, we will pay half of it. We have to come up with an in­no­v­a­tive way to do this be­cause of the dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions of our peo­ple,” Her­bert said.

It’s no sur­prise, there­fore, that Mag­ic Mist has al­ways been a peo­ple-cen­tred or­gan­i­sa­tion. In 2022 it won the Arthur C Bar­r­a­clough Com­pa­ny Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice Award which recog­nis­es vol­un­teer ef­forts and gen­er­ous acts for char­i­ties.

In April, Mag­ic Mist will cel­e­brate 45 years in the in­dus­try.

Mag­ic Mist Ser­vices Ltd be­gan its jour­ney in 1978 for­mer­ly as Mag­ic Mist Car­pet Clean­ers.

Over time, this car­pet clean­ing en­ti­ty made sev­er­al pro­gres­sive tran­si­tions.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion grew from a jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vice provider to a build­ing ser­vice con­trac­tor to an in­te­grat­ed fa­cil­i­ties main­te­nance ser­vice provider and fast-for­ward to to­day; it has em­barked on a jour­ney to be­com­ing an in­dus­try leader in pro­vid­ing to­tal fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment so­lu­tions.