Roy­al Caribbean Cruise Line is ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of en­ter­ing in­to part­ner­ship with lo­cal farm­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers to pro­cure goods for their ves­sels.

This can take place as ear­ly as No­vem­ber with the dock­ing of Jew­el of the Sea ex­pect­ed to call at Port-of-Spain when the cruise sea­son opens.

Roy­al Caribbean is the world’s sec­ond-largest cruise line in the world with 26 ves­sels in its fleet,

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the com­pa­ny vis­it­ed the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), which con­clud­ed last Sat­ur­day, to con­nect with lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs, whole­salers and po­ten­tial busi­ness part­ners.

Wendy Mc­Don­ald, re­gion­al vice-pres­i­dent, gov­ern­ment re­la­tions for Roy­al Caribbean spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian about the ven­ture.

She said con­ver­sa­tions ac­tu­al­ly be­gan last year through Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, fol­low­ing which talks then in­clud­ed the Min­istry of Trade and In­vest­ment.

“We are here be­cause Roy­al Caribbean is very in­ter­est­ed in sourc­ing lo­cal prod­ucts across the re­gion. Its im­por­tant for us to not just vis­it our des­ti­na­tions but to part­ner with our des­ti­na­tions.

“We look for the op­por­tu­ni­ties where we can buy prod­ucts/pro­duce from our dif­fer­ent is­lands across the re­gion to en­sure that we are able to pro­vi­sion our ships and to en­sure that we cre­ate part­ner­ships with our re­gion­al des­ti­na­tions,” Mc­Don­ald ex­plained.

She added that a meet­ing with lo­cal farm­ers al­ready took place.

“We looked at with Namde­v­co (Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion) and we al­so vis­it­ed a cou­ple farms to see the pro­duce that are grown out there. We saw some cu­cum­bers, kale and pep­pers.

“This is sort of a dis­cov­ery trip for us and we will con­tin­ue to have the con­ver­sa­tions with our sup­pli­ers and pro­duc­ers but we have seen some re­al­ly good qual­i­ty prod­ucts so far so we are very ex­cit­ed about this part­ner­ship,” she added.

Al­so present at TIC with Mc­Don­ald was Vina Jumpp, food and bev­er­age di­rec­tor, pro­cure­ment at Roy­al Caribbean.

A first-time vis­i­tor to T&T, Jumpp al­so echoed that Roy­al Caribbean’s role is to help sup­port var­i­ous economies where pos­si­ble.

“We have a ves­sel that will be home port­ed in­to Trinidad soon; The Jew­el of the Sea. We are here to look at lo­cal farm­ers to see the items that are pro­duced lo­cal­ly such as ba­nanas, plan­tains and wa­ter­mel­on.

“We are look­ing at lo­cal di­ary com­pa­nies and see prod­ucts that fit in­to the port­fo­lio and hope­ful­ly we can start a part­ner­ship to sup­ply the ves­sel while she’s call­ing in the port here (in (T&T),” Jumpp fur­ther de­tailed, adding that the com­pa­ny has been suc­cess­ful in work­ing with coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean as it con­tin­ues to forge fruit­ful link­ages.

Jumpp added that Jew­el of the Sea will have 20 calls in Trinidad.

“So we ex­pect that on a week­ly ba­sis the itin­er­ary will be sev­en days so, on a week­ly ba­sis, we will look to get pro­vi­sions for this ship,” she said.

Nir­mala De­bysingh-Per­sad, CEO of Namde­v­co, who wel­comed the move, ex­pressed con­fi­dence that lo­cal farm­ers can meet the de­mand.

“For the va­ri­eties that they (Roy­al Caribbean) re­quire yes and for the dif­fer­ent com­modi­ties that they re­quire yes,” she said, not­ing that the re­quired pro­duce in­clud­ed pineap­ple, cel­ery, cit­rus, cab­bage, let­tuce and toma­toes.

More­so, De­bysingh-Per­sad said this will en­able farm­ers to step up their game to meet in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments.

“This is a pos­i­tive mar­ket­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty for the farm­ers on the Namde­v­co cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme. For Roy­al Caribbean food safe­ty and trace­abil­i­ty is im­por­tant and our pro­gramme of­fers those fea­tures where we are able to mon­i­tor farm­ers and have a trace­abil­i­ty sys­tem in place so that we are aware at all times where the pro­duce is com­ing from and how it is han­dled be­fore it goes to the ship,” she added.

Ac­cord­ing to De­bysingh-Per­sad in the event of a re­call, this will en­sure that all of the per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion is avail­able.

On the man­u­fac­tur­ing side, pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tures As­so­ci­a­tion Roger Roach al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers to en­sue the sup­ply is met.

“We have lo­cal­ly-man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts on the shelves all over the world. We sup­ply all the di­as­po­ra coun­tries; Cana­da, the Unit­ed States, the UK and Eu­rope so there are com­pa­nies that stand ready, have been ready and they are cher­ish­ing this op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause we all know that we need to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my away from the hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor and this is yet an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to do that and to earn for­eign ex­change so that we are not de­pen­dent on the com­mer­cial bank for all our for­eign ex­change,” the TTMA pres­i­dent said.

Roach re­in­forced that this was a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty to have lo­cal­ly made goods on­to the in­ter­na­tion­al cruise line which con­stant­ly tra­vers­es the Caribbean.

Speak­ing on the ini­tia­tive Mitchell said, “Roy­al Caribbean is an im­por­tant part­ner in the de­vel­op­ment of our lo­cal cruise in­dus­try. Their re­turn to the des­ti­na­tion dur­ing the 2022 to 2023 sea­son and the in­creased num­ber of calls ex­pect­ed for the 2023 to 2024 sea­son are tes­ta­ments to their com­mit­ment to T&T. This, cou­pled with their re­cent re­cruit­ment dri­ve in the des­ti­na­tion, au­gurs well for a strength­ened re­la­tion­ship go­ing for­ward.

“We are hap­py to have Roy­al Caribbean Cruis­es as one of our guests dur­ing this im­por­tant event. They are a val­ued part­ner in our tourism in­dus­try and a key con­trib­u­tor to our eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

“We ap­pre­ci­ate their com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty cruise ex­pe­ri­ences to our vis­i­tors and their sup­port for our lo­cal goods, ser­vices, cul­ture and arts. We hope that their vis­it dur­ing TIC 2023 will not on­ly in­spire more col­lab­o­ra­tion but al­so ben­e­fit the lo­cal sup­pli­ers.”

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Tourism Trinidad, Car­la Cu­pid, al­so wel­comed Roy­al Caribbean Cruis­es dur­ing the TIC 2023.

“We are nat­u­ral­ly very in­ter­est­ed in the out­comes of Roy­al Caribbean Cruis­es be­ing here. They are a lead­ing cruise com­pa­ny with a glob­al rep­u­ta­tion and a loy­al cus­tomer base. They al­so share our vi­sion of re­spon­si­ble trav­el and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, which are cru­cial to the fu­ture of tourism on our is­land. We look for­ward to work­ing with them to pro­mote Trinidad as a pre­mier cruise des­ti­na­tion,” she added.