Rock Hard Ce­ment of­fi­cial­ly re­turned to the T&T mar­ket yes­ter­day af­ter an ab­sence of al­most four years.

Ryan Ramhit, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Rock Hard Ce­ment in Trinidad, said the com­pa­ny was pleased by day one sales.

“The sales start­ed off pret­ty well to­day. The sales are go­ing ac­cord­ing to what we an­tic­i­pat­ed. So we’re do­ing pret­ty good so far,” said Ramhit in a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, “Every­body is hap­py. Every­body is re­al­ly hap­py that we’re back on the mar­ket and they’re just hap­py for the Rock Hard Ce­ment to be back on on­to the open mar­ket.”

The com­pa­ny stopped op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go in Sep­tem­ber 2021 af­ter it lost a le­gal chal­lenge against the Min­istry of Trade’s im­po­si­tion of a quo­ta and tar­iff regime re­lat­ing to im­ports of hy­draulic ce­ment. The com­pa­ny con­tend­ed that the ad­just­ment made to the quo­ta in 2020 would crip­ple its op­er­a­tions in the coun­try.

Rock Hard had been Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed’s main com­peti­tor in the lo­cal mar­ket pri­or to the pull out.

Since then TCL has raised ce­ment prices five times, most re­cent­ly in Feb­ru­ary of this year.

In April, the Trade Min­is­ter opt­ed to re­duce the du­ty rate on hy­draulic ce­ment to ze­ro per cent, in re­sponse to TCL ‘s sev­en per cent in­crease in the price of the com­mod­i­ty in Feb­ru­ary. Those poli­cies pavedthe way for Rock Hard’s re­turn.

Ramhit said the com­pa­ny had re­sumed busi­ness with over 400 hard­ware stores.

Rock Hard Ce­ment cur­rent­ly sells at a whole­sale price of $56, Ramhit said.