PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Ce­mex, the par­ent com­pa­ny of TCL, has an­nounced plans to re­duce us­age of nat­ur­al gas at its op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Gon­za­lo Rue­da Castil­lo, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Ce­mex/TCL, stressed the com­pa­ny, in its bid to re­duce its CO2 emis­sions and be­come a net-ze­ro com­pa­ny by 2050, was look­ing at sus­tain­able strate­gies.

“We are in­cor­po­rat­ing the use of waste oil, not on­ly to re­duce the con­sump­tion of nat­ur­al gas, which is im­por­tant, be­cause there’s no not that much nat­ur­al gas in the coun­try. So, what­ev­er ef­fort that we can do to re­duce the con­sump­tion of nat­ur­al gas, it is im­por­tant and it counts be­cause not on­ly are we re­duc­ing the nat­ur­al gas con­sump­tion, we are ac­tu­al­ly us­ing the waste oil that oth­er­wise will prob­a­bly end up in the ocean and that’s some­thing that we would be very hap­py to be able to ac­com­plish. That’s prob­a­bly one of our main projects that we will be work­ing on sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” said Castil­lo at a break­fast busi­ness brunch host­ed by the ce­ment com­pa­ny at the Trinidad Hilton on Mon­day.

He al­so an­nounced the com­pa­ny part­nered with Uni­com­er Trinidad to an­nounce Con­stru­Cred­it.

The part­ner­ship would pro­vide a new fi­nanc­ing op­tion for po­ten­tial home own­ers or those hop­ing to ren­o­vate their hous­es through the ini­tia­tive.

“We all know that at some point we might have some fi­nan­cial needs for projects that we have, like, build­ing a new house, or some­body else wants to re­fur­bish to the kitchen or re­mod­el the house. And some­times it’s not aligned with our fi­nan­cial re­sources at the mo­ment. So that’s when Con­stru­Cred­it comes in­to pic­ture,” said Castil­lo.

“It’s a scheme so that peo­ple can have the fi­nan­cial re­sources that they need through our al­ly Uni­com­er that will be en­able them to fin­ish your project on time with the re­sources that you need,’ said Castil­lo.

Sharon Ma­haraj, di­rec­tor of con­sumer fi­nance, Uni­com­er Trinidad Ltd said the ini­tia­tive would help both com­pa­nies achieve sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals.

“Con­stru­Cred­it marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for both TCL and Uni­com­er, as we em­bark on this ex­cit­ing jour­ney … We un­der­stand that true progress means meet­ing the needs of our cus­tomers while al­so ful­fill­ing our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the com­mu­ni­ties we serve the en­vi­ron­ment and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” said Ma­haraj.

“This of­fer­ing al­lows cus­tomers to pur­chase from par­tic­i­pat­ing hard­ware stores on cred­it, which will di­rect­ly boost your sales and pro­mote sus­tain­able fi­nanc­ing, en­hance cus­tomer well-be­ing and fos­ter eco­nom­ic growth with­in the com­mu­ni­ties,” said Ma­haraj.