An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

A Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) ex­ec­u­tive said yes­ter­day that the Clax­ton Bay-head­quar­tered ce­ment pro­duc­er is not scared of com­pe­ti­tion, if the in­dus­try opens up to oth­er ce­ment com­peti­tors.

This fol­lows TCL’s price in­creas­es on Feb­ru­ary 19 of 6.63 per cent for Pre­mi­um Plus and 7.69 per cent for its Eco Ce­ment.

 Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon an­nounced three days af­ter the de­ci­sion that the quo­ta and reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem for ce­ment had been im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pend­ed.

She added: “Ce­ment re­mains on the im­port neg­a­tive list and will con­tin­ue to be sub­ject to a li­cens­ing regime. This regime will be non-au­to­mat­ic and ap­pli­ca­tions for a li­cence to im­port ce­ment must be sub­mit­ted to the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try.

She al­so in­di­cat­ed that im­port­ed ce­ment would, in the in­ter­im, con­tin­ue to be sub­ject to a 20 per cent Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff (CET) rate of du­ty.

Rock Hard Dis­trib­u­tors Ltd im­port­ed ce­ment for the T&T mar­ket but left in 2021 amid what it said were “chal­lenges” with Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian me­dia, at the launch of Plas­ta Mas­ta a mor­tar mix prod­uct, at Cara Ho­tel, in Clax­ton Bay, yes­ter­day, TCL’s gen­er­al man­ag­er, Guiller­mo Ro­jo said the ce­ment com­pa­ny re­mains open to com­pe­ti­tion as CE­MEX, which is a Mex­i­can-based com­pa­ny, is used to op­er­at­ing in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket.

“We com­pete in Guyana, so it is not a prob­lem for the com­pa­ny. We are ready,” a smil­ing Ro­jo said.

Delv­ing deep­er in­to the mat­ter, sales dis­trib­u­tor seg­ment man­ag­er, Resh­ma Gool­jar-Singh, said when a com­peti­tor en­ters the mar­ket, CE­MEX TCL will have to com­pete and strate­gise ways to re­main rel­e­vant in the mar­ket.

“I can­not say we will low­er our price, but I am say­ing that we have to do what we have to do, as an or­gan­i­sa­tion to com­pete. The ce­ment com­pa­ny is al­ready work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly on de­vel­op­ing our prod­uct port­fo­lio, we are dig­i­tal­is­ing our ser­vices. The com­pa­ny is al­so pre­sent­ing valu­able op­tions to our dis­trib­u­tors in lead­ing the dig­i­tal charge. CE­MEX TCL will have to do what we must do to com­pete,” Gool­jar-Singh ex­plained.

About the in­creas­es and whether the ce­ment com­pa­ny has seen a dip in rev­enue, the TCL’s gen­er­al man­ag­er said it has not af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions.

“We un­der­stand the in­crease we pass to the cus­tomer is not even what our cost in­crease is, as we have made a lot of valu­able in­vest­ments. So, we pass to the cus­tomer sev­en per cent, which hon­est­ly has not af­fect­ed the de­mand,” Ro­jo said.

Plas­ta Mas­ta

en­ters mar­ket

Ro­jo at the launch said Plas­ta Mas­ta, a mor­tar mix, has been de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mi­cro Milling Ltd.

“The con­cept em­bod­ies some of TCL’s key strate­gic pri­or­i­ties in­clud­ing health, safe­ty, in­no­va­tion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion, de­liv­er­ing an all-in-one mor­tar mix that is safer and clean­er to use, con­serves ma­te­ri­als, is bet­ter for the en­vi­ron­ment and gen­er­al­ly makes con­struc­tion projects sim­pler for our cus­tomers and oth­er in­dus­try stake­hold­ers. In the fu­ture peo­ple might move from ce­ment to this prod­uct,” he high­light­ed.

Ro­jo made it clear that the in­tro­duc­tion had noth­ing to do with the in­crease in ce­ment prices over a month ago, as this was in the mak­ing for three years.

Robert de Ver­teuil, a di­rec­tor of Mi­cro Milling Ltd said that the Plas­ta Mas­ta is for con­ve­nience and is a con­sis­tent prod­uct across the world.

“In­stead of the tra­di­tion­al sand and grav­el on site, with ce­ment, mix­ing up the prod­uct on the side of the road, the amount of ce­ment is not con­trolled, the amount of sand is not con­trolled, and it can lead to a lot of prob­lems with your ap­pli­ca­tions. You can have hair­line cracks, you can have a weak­er prod­uct. That’s where the Plas­ta Mas­ta comes in as it ap­plies smoother,” de Ver­teuil added.

Al­so speak­ing at the launch was Gool­jar-Singh, who said that the new prod­uct was an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so as the com­pa­ny recog­nised trends in the in­dus­try that re­flect­ed a need for prod­ucts that make con­struc­tion projects eas­i­er and more con­ve­nient.

Singh not­ed that TCL’s sug­gest­ed price to its dis­trib­u­tors is $38 VAT in­clu­sive per sack.

Pack­aged in 22.72 kg sacks Plas­ta Mas­ta will be­come avail­able at lo­cal hard­ware stores from this Mon­day.

TCL’s 2023 fi­nan­cial per­for­mance

TCL de­clared au­dit­ed net in­come of $170.19 mil­lion for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023. That was 195 per cent more than the $57.80 mil­lion the com­pa­ny earned in its 2022 fi­nan­cial year.

The com­pa­ny’s 2023 rev­enue of $2.22 bil­lion was 8.16 per cent more than the $2.06 bil­lion it gen­er­at­ed in 2022.