Ter­rance Ortt, CEO of Do­mus Win­dows and Doors, is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to do more to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness, es­pe­cial­ly as he sees man­u­fac­tur­ing as play­ing an in­stru­men­tal role in im­prov­ing ex­ports.

He al­so not­ed that the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion is a “ter­ri­ble blight” on the coun­try.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing a tour of his Fac­to­ry Road, Ch­agua­nas fa­cil­i­ty on Fri­day, Ortt said, “Hav­ing dealt in Cana­da, St Kitts, An­tigua, sev­er­al ju­ris­dic­tions, and the US, I must say it is most un­for­tu­nate that this coun­try shoots it­self in the foot,” as he de­scribed T&T’s ease of do­ing busi­ness.

How­ev­er, he not­ed things are im­prov­ing.

Do­mus is a Caribbean-based man­u­fac­tur­er of UP­VC (Un­plas­ti­cised Polyvinyl Chlo­ride) win­dows and doors that has in­vest­ed about $70 mil­lion in­to T&T.

Ortt, who is a Cana­di­an na­tion­al, found­ed Do­mus in 2006 and his first en­trance in­to the Caribbean mar­ket was in St Kitts, where he opened a fac­to­ry in 2007.

The com­pa­ny was cre­at­ed for the sole pur­pose of de­vel­op­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing a wide range of prod­ucts to be pro­duced in the Caribbean, specif­i­cal­ly for the Caribbean.

By 2011, the com­pa­ny had out­grown its start-up fac­to­ry in St Kitts.

It was on a vis­it to this coun­try he met with busi­ness­man Arthur Lok Jack, who per­suad­ed him about the ad­van­tages of man­u­fac­tur­ing in Trinidad.

In 2018, man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions were opened in Trinidad.

How­ev­er, Ortt had planned the open­ing for 2013.

“I was very un­hap­py with the de­lays. There were a lot of bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays...get­ting the land for in­stance, that took years longer than it was sup­posed to. Cus­toms grant­i­ng ap­provals for a bond­ed ware­house de­layed things months and months and then we had trou­ble with the EMA (En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty)...it was pret­ty well across the wa­ter­front,” he ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he said the com­pa­ny con­front­ed these chal­lenges “one af­ter the oth­er” adding that things are “a lot bet­ter than it used to be.”

“On­ly be­cause we have squat and we have pushed and we have re­fined our process­es so at this point I don’t have too many com­plaints,” Ortt added.

Re­gard­ing the spi­ralling crime rate and is lo­cat­ed in a “hot spot,” Ortt de­tailed the mea­sures he has im­ple­ment­ed to pro­tect his busi­ness.

“We have at least 150 dif­fer­ent sen­sors around the fac­to­ry, 28 cam­eras and armed se­cu­ri­ty. We don’t take any cash.

“We re­al­ly have not been af­fect­ed by it (crime) but we have tak­en all sorts of pre­cau­tions,” he added.

In shar­ing some in­sights about the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cials, Ortt said year-on-year rev­enues have in­creased by about 20 per cent.

The im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic as well as dis­rup­tions in the glob­al sup­ply chains how­ev­er have re­sult­ed in cost in­creas­es and Do­mus was not spared as the com­pa­ny im­ports its raw ma­te­r­i­al from North Amer­i­ca.

Ortt said glass for in­stance has dou­bled in the last two years as well as the cost of alu­minum.

“Our oth­er hard­ware has in­creased to any­where be­tween 50 and 80 per cent and so we have had to pass that along. We ac­tu­al­ly process 50 mil­lion com­po­nents a year to make our win­dows and doors and 90 per cent of out­put is cus­tomised,” he ex­plained.

He said the price of the com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts to cus­tomers in­creased by about 35 to 40 per cent, not­ing that there’s al­so the cost of labour which he said, “has not gone up as much.”

“I think we are on our sixth price in­crease in the last two and a half years,” said Ortt, an en­gi­neer.

Giv­ing an idea of the prices of prod­ucts, he said, on av­er­age, if a piece orig­i­nal­ly cost $1,000, it would now cost $1,300.

“As you go up in per­for­mance, you pay for it as well,” Ortt said.

De­spite the in­crease in prices, Do­mus has not on­ly main­tained its mar­ket share but is ac­tu­al­ly grow­ing.

“The mar­ket share has gone up. I think the mar­ket has con­tract­ed to some de­gree, but we are do­ing much bet­ter now as the brand gets known.

“Peo­ple are al­so tak­ing a longer-term view of their own­er­ship of the prod­uct. They are not just look­ing at the cost on­ly, but they are look­ing at main­te­nance cost, longevi­ty, etc,” Ortt added.

He said this is al­so re­flect­ed in the fact that the con­struc­tion in­dus­try is al­so im­prov­ing its ac­qui­si­tion of high­er-qual­i­ty prod­ucts.

“I think the Caribbean is a bit of a ‘back­wa­ter’ but as it is com­ing in­to its own, it is now up­grad­ing and all the qual­i­ty is go­ing up,” Ortt added.

He said the com­pa­ny has al­so kept its mar­gins very low on en­try-lev­el prod­ucts.

On whether the coun­try’s con­tin­u­ing for­eign ex­change crunch has im­pact­ed busi­ness, Ortt said the Ex­port Im­port Bank of T&T (EX­IM­BANK) has helped to en­sure busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity.

Re­gard­ing the com­pa­ny’s foot­print, he said Do­mus has a ma­jor dis­trib­u­tor in Guyana as well as Grena­da and all the way up the chain to Ja­maica.

“We don’t fall in­to the French is­lands but all the oth­er ones...We have of­fices in St Kitts, An­tigua and then we have dis­trib­u­tors in all of the oth­er is­lands,” he ex­plained.

Not­ing the par­tic­u­lar vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of the Caribbean re­gard­ing cli­mate change and the im­pact of hur­ri­canes, Ortt said there is still very lit­tle ef­fort made to in­crease the per­for­mance of build­ings.

“There’s is al­most no hur­ri­cane pro­tec­tion or very, very lit­tle,” he said.

As such Do­mas is try­ing to ed­u­cate the mar­ket about the im­por­tance of hav­ing prop­er hur­ri­cane re­sis­tance units, not­ing that 80 per cent of all build­ing fail­ures oc­cur due to win­dows and doors and not the roofs.

“The roof failed be­cause the win­dow or door failed,” Ortt added.

He al­so not­ed that the com­pa­ny has bagged ma­jor projects in­clud­ing with con­struc­tion com­pa­ny Home So­lu­tions, whose lat­est de­vel­op­ment is 32 apart­ment build­ings in Ari­ma.

Mov­ing for­ward, he said the com­pa­ny does not in­tend to open any oth­er fac­to­ries in Trinidad, but in its cur­rent site, it has room for ex­pan­sion.

“Right now we oc­cu­py 50 per cent of the site so we can dou­ble the size and even now we are on­ly run­ning about 20 per cent of ca­pac­i­ty,” Ortt added.