GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers are brac­ing for po­ten­tial fall­out af­ter a pow­er­ful cat­e­go­ry five hur­ri­cane struck Ja­maica, caus­ing wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion and rais­ing con­cerns about the con­ti­nu­ity of re­gion­al trade and busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Ramesh Ramdeen, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the full ex­tent of the dam­age is still be­ing as­sessed, with ear­ly re­ports in­di­cat­ing that in­fra­struc­ture and com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty may have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed.

“An as­sess­ment still needs to be done as to the im­pact of the hur­ri­cane on the Ja­maica’s in­fra­struc­ture. What we are told is that in some form or fash­ion, there will be neg­a­tive im­pact based on the hur­ri­cane...It is the most dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­cane that would have ever hit and there will be dev­as­ta­tion.

“The ex­tent is what we’re try­ing to fig­ure out right now and as we speak, that is tak­ing place. Peo­ple are go­ing through the process,” he said.

He stressed that T&T has a strong man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print in Ja­maica, with nu­mer­ous lo­cal com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing through sub­sidiaries, part­ner­ships, joint ven­tures or by ex­port­ing goods di­rect­ly in­to the mar­ket.

As such, Ramdeen added Ja­maica con­tin­ues to be this coun­try’s num­ber one trad­ing part­ner with­in the re­gion, un­der­scor­ing its im­por­tance as an im­por­tant des­ti­na­tion for com­mer­cial en­gage­ment and eco­nom­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The Massy Group—one of the re­gion’s largest con­glom­er­ates—which al­so has op­er­a­tions in Ja­maica such as Massy Gas, is al­so ac­tive­ly as­sess­ing the hur­ri­cane’s po­ten­tial im­pact.

Dionne Ligoure, vice-pres­i­dent of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions and cor­po­rate af­fairs at Massy, said the com­pa­ny’s im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty is the safe­ty and well-be­ing of its em­ploy­ees and their fam­i­lies.

“The ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee and our teams in Ja­maica and through­out the com­pa­ny, I’m hap­py to say, were quite proac­tive,” Ligoure stat­ed adding, “We met in the lead-up to the hur­ri­cane and again ear­li­er to­day (yes­ter­day) to as­sess and ad­dress risk, putting so­lu­tions in place to sup­port the re­cov­ery.”

She con­firmed that Massy has ini­ti­at­ed con­tact with its var­i­ous busi­ness units in Ja­maica and that a full as­sess­ment is un­der­way.

While the com­pa­ny re­mains hope­ful that there has been no sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to em­ploy­ees’ homes or cor­po­rate as­sets, Ligoure em­pha­sised that Massy’s lead­er­ship and staff are ac­tive­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with lo­cal agen­cies to sup­port re­cov­ery ef­forts.

The TTMA not­ed that T&T’s pri­ma­ry ex­port sec­tors to Ja­maica in­clude: Food and bev­er­age, chem­i­cal and house­hold prod­ucts, con­struc­tion and build­ing ma­te­ri­als, print­ing and pack­ag­ing, tex­tiles and gar­ments, lo­gis­tics, ship­ping, and ser­vices.

Sev­er­al T&T-based com­pa­nies main­tain a phys­i­cal pres­ence in Ja­maica, in­clud­ing As­so­ci­at­ed Brands In­dus­tries Ltd, Bermudez Group, Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd and the ANSA McAL Group.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a wide range of man­u­fac­tur­ers ex­port sig­nif­i­cant vol­umes to the Ja­maican mar­ket.

These in­clude An­gos­tu­ra Ltd, Ad­vance Foam, Cream­ery Nov­el­ties, CGA Ltd, Caribbean Bot­tlers, Caribbean Pack­ag­ing Lim­it­ed, Nestlé, Chief Brand Prod­ucts, RHS Mar­ket­ing, EIG, SM Jaleel, ACA­DO Foods, TCL, Schweppes In­ter­na­tion­al, and John Dick­in­son and Co, among oth­ers.

In 2024, T&T’s ex­ports to Ja­maica to­talled ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$207.77 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade.