Ce­mex Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd’s (TCL) new gen­er­al man­ag­er Gon­za­lo Rue­da Castil­lo aims to dri­ve cap­i­tal, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty and keep im­prov­ing the safe­ty cul­ture.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, Castil­lo said he start­ed on Ju­ly 1 at the ce­ment com­pa­ny and that most of his ca­reer has been in the com­mer­cial sales de­part­ment.

He said he was man­ag­ing sales in Colom­bia and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and al­so ran the Ce­mex op­er­a­tion in Haiti.

Castil­lo is over­see­ing TCL’s op­er­a­tions in T&T, Bar­ba­dos, and Guyana and has over 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence at Ce­mex, which is the ma­jor­i­ty own­er of TCL

Castil­lo em­pha­sised that there are a  few strate­gic pri­or­i­ties at the com­pa­ny.

“So one of the first man­dates that I have is ob­vi­ous­ly to keep the safe­ty cul­ture of the com­pa­ny. Keep im­prov­ing the safe­ty in­di­ca­tors, and the KPIs that we man­age in­ter­nal­ly in the com­pa­ny.

The sec­ond strate­gic pri­or­i­ty is sus­tain­abil­i­ty. And that’s al­so part of my man­date to work on all the ini­tia­tives of sus­tain­abil­i­ty that we have in oth­er op­er­a­tions with­in the group,” he ex­plained.

Asked how the Clax­ton Bay-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny’s has been per­form­ing fi­nan­cial­ly, the gen­er­al man­ag­er re­spond­ed by say­ing “I think that the com­pa­ny is pro­gress­ing a lot and I see that the com­pa­ny is get­ting more ef­fi­cient every day in its process­es. The ex­ports of the com­pa­ny have con­tin­ued to grow.”

Castil­lo in­di­cat­ed that the com­pa­ny is ex­port­ing around 220,000 tonnes per year, which is an im­por­tant num­ber, and an im­por­tant as­pect is that the ce­ment com­pa­ny brings for­eign cur­ren­cy to the coun­try.  

“Our role is to keep our plant pro­duc­ing as much as we can so we can boost our ex­ports. It’s prob­a­bly around $100 mil­lion in sales for ex­ports. So, it’s an im­por­tant thing. But I see that the com­pa­ny is not on­ly work­ing more ef­fi­cient­ly, we are still work­ing on projects like find­ing ways to get more vol­ume out of the plant than we al­ready have. We are in­cor­po­rat­ing new ways to do the pro­duc­tion process, in or­der to get more prod­ucts out of the same in­stal­la­tion that we have,” he de­tailed.  

As it re­lates to up­grades of the plant, he said that, that is some­thing that hap­pens con­tin­u­ous­ly.

He high­light­ed that every year, there is a bud­get for cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture that is ded­i­cat­ed specif­i­cal­ly to im­prov­ing its process­es. 

“So, every year, we have in­vest­ment in our plant.”

Touch­ing on the op­er­a­tions in Guyana, he said it is an im­por­tant mar­ket with good busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties as there are many projects be­ing un­der­tak­en now, of which Ce­mex wants to be part.

Castil­lo point­ed out that the Ce­mex op­er­a­tion in Bar­ba­dos is chal­leng­ing be­cause it is a coun­try where now is prob­a­bly not in the best mo­ment in terms of in­vest­ment.

“What I’m as­sess­ing is that con­struc­tion is kind of stalled to some ex­tent. I mean, es­pe­cial­ly when you com­pare, what is hap­pen­ing in Guyana, which is the op­po­site. Guyana is like they’re build­ing five ho­tels, and five hos­pi­tals all at the same time and build­ing many bridges all at the same time,” he de­tailed.

About the new plas­ter­ing mix, called Plas­ta Mas­ta, which TCL in­tro­duced in April, Castil­lo said it has been per­form­ing well on the mar­ket.

He praised the com­mer­cial team who came up with the prod­uct and stat­ed that there is a niche that was cap­tured by this Plas­ta Mas­ta prod­uct, which fa­cil­i­tates con­struc­tion works and is al­so very en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly.

In April, TCL said the mix can be stored for be­tween six months and a year in a se­cure, mois­ture-free en­vi­ron­ment. The prod­uct it said had been de­vel­oped over three years in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mi­cro Milling Ltd.

Giv­ing more in­sight on the oil com­press­ing sys­tem at Clax­ton Bay, Castil­lo said it is an im­por­tant ini­tia­tive for the com­pa­ny as it sees the pol­lu­tion that waste oil can cause to the wa­ter. That is a main is­sue for the com­pa­ny.  

“I men­tioned in the meet­ing be­fore that there was an event here that hap­pened not that long ago. So we want to con­tribute to prop­er­ly dis­pose of the waste oil. And that’s where we start­ed that project. So now we are in the tri­al phase. We are al­ready us­ing waste oil to re­duce the con­sump­tion of nat­ur­al gas. But al­so, again, it’s a good way to dis­pose of the waste oil that is be­ing gen­er­at­ed for dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries in the coun­try,” Castil­lo dis­closed.

Ex­plain­ing how plas­tic is be­ing used by the ce­ment com­pa­ny, he said Ce­mex/TCL is us­ing plas­tic to re­place some of the al­ter­na­tive fu­els.

 “Ba­si­cal­ly, what we do is we find ways to col­lect and re­cov­er some of the plas­tic that is be­ing pro­duced for any in­dus­try. We take the plas­tic, we process the plas­tic and then we re­place fu­els by us­ing the plas­tic in our kilns. So it is an im­por­tant, again, way to dis­pose of the plas­tic that oth­er­wise might end up in land­fills or the ocean in the worst case.”

Fur­ther, Castil­lo not­ed that the first chal­lenge is to ed­u­cate the com­mu­ni­ty so they can start sep­a­rat­ing the waste.  

“Now, once we can do that, then our project is to in­stall col­lec­tion points in the hard­ware stores so that peo­ple can start giv­ing us that plas­tic which oth­er­wise ends up in a land­fill.  And we can use it ei­ther for fu­el in our kilns or we can re­process the plas­tic and con­vert the plas­tic in­to, for ex­am­ple, bench­es for the com­mu­ni­ty. Give them re­cy­cled plas­tic bench­es. That’s one of the things we want to do with that,” he men­tioned.

Asked where the bench­es will be lo­cat­ed, Castil­lo said that would be worked out with the com­mu­ni­ty de­part­ment at TCL, but he iden­ti­fied pos­si­ble re­cip­i­ents as schools or a chil­dren’s sports cen­tre.  
Al­so, speak­ing about agri­cul­tur­al sta­tions that the com­pa­ny is em­bark­ing on, the gen­er­al man­ag­er said it would be like a plant­i­ng pot made out of re­cy­cled wood.

He said the idea is that TCL can give those to the com­mu­ni­ty so they can start plant­i­ng veg­eta­bles, like toma­toes and dif­fer­ent things that they can start grow­ing in those agri­cul­tur­al mi­ni-sta­tions.  

“ We are work­ing with Fly­ing Tree. They pro­posed the idea of build­ing these plant­i­ng sta­tions with re­cy­cled plas­tic. They are the ones who are go­ing to be ex­e­cut­ing the strat­e­gy be­hind that. So, our par­tic­i­pa­tion will first help in the col­lec­tion of plas­tic. They will process that plas­tic in­to those agri­cul­tur­al sta­tions, and then we will find the right lo­ca­tions to start dis­trib­ut­ing those agri­cul­tur­al sta­tions. Ide­al­ly, that would be in com­mu­ni­ties, where we can have an im­pact,” Castil­lo added.