During a tour of the local plant on Tuesday, Bender told reporters that the Lombard Street facility has always demonstrated flexibility in its operations, thereby meeting demands of various sizes. Bender said the largest amount of cement that the plant has had to supply since its establishment is 10,888.5 tonnes, which it did in September, 2008. However, this year the demand for cement has yet to reach such proportions. The highest total of cement TGI sold or the year so far was in July when the company sold 7,767.4 tonnes. Last month, the company sold approximately 3,056 tonnes of cement.
Bender explained that the local market does not normally exceed 12, 000 tonnes on a monthly basis. He said that the company could easily supply this amount of cement. According to him, in addition to what may already be in stores, the local plant has a storage capacity of 6,000 tonnes in its silos and a further 2,000 in its warehouse. He also noted that more cement can also easily be accessed from one of its sister companies in Barbados, Trinidad or Jamaica. He pointed out that TGI has access to two vessels, one with a capacity of 5,000 tonnes and the other with a capacity of 3,000 tonnes. However, both these vessels are currently being underutilised, Bender disclosed.
He stated that the cement produced was of an exceptionally high quality. According to him, the chances of cement on the plant getting contaminated are almost zero percent. As part of its quality assurance initiative, he said samples of cement are regularly sent to its sister company, the Trinidad Cement Limited (TCL) to be tested.
Recently, President Bharrat Jagdeo lashed out at the TCL Group and called for the Common External Tariff (CET) to be removed from cement. He said that the company wanted to monopolise the region’s market while being unable to meet the market demands. He also questioned the quality of cement produced by the company, and said he had received reports of local persons being supplied with “lumpy cement”. Jagdeo, however, said he was yet to verify this information first-hand.
However, senior officials of the TCL Group, including its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Rollin Bertrand have since strongly refuted the statements by the President. Bender, while not seeking to directly engage the President, said that recent negative statements about the quantity and quality of TCL cement were untrue.
Meanwhile, Bender and senior executives of TGI also responded to the recent statements made by the President that TGI had built their facility on state land and was not paying rent. Stabroek News was told that the land occupied by TGI has been sub-leased to the company from the Guyana National Industrial Company (GNIC). TGI presented a receipt to Stabroek News indicating that it was up-to-date with its payments to GNIC. The TGI management pointed out that if the government was not receiving rent for the state land it was clearly not because the company was negligent.
TGI was incorporated in 2004 and is involved in packaging of bulk cement for sale on the Guyana market. According, to the Plant Manager, TGI sells cement mainly to Ready-mix companies and other large and small distributors. The plant has the capacity to bag 1,400 bags of cement per hour which is equivalent to 60 tonnes.
Meanwhile, last week during a tour of the Arawak Cement Company Limited (ACCL) in Barbados, General Manager of the plant Jinda Mahharaj told reporters that Guyana was one of the main markets for its cement. Mahharaj explained that the plant produces 30,000 tonnes of cement per month to meet its local and overseas markets. He noted that 12,000 tonnes is sold to the Barbadian market, 10,000 to Guyana and 8,000 other markets. ACCL is a subsidiary of the TCL Group of Companies.
Mahharaj emphasised that quality cement is sent to Guyana since the company has stringent testing measures to ensure that the product meets international requirements. The plant has its own laboratory where it conducts tests on its produces. Apart from this, the General Manager noted that there are three other measures implemented to ensure that tested regime is of an international standard. He noted that there is inter-group testing programmes within TCL Group, where the labs in Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica test would test the cement coming from the other plants. Additionally, the Barbadian plant has an arrangement with the US- based CTL internationally accredited lab, which does testing of cement samples from the plant. The results of these periodic tests are then compared with the results from the local lab. Additionally, he noted that there was strict adherence to the ISO standards by the firm, which is audited by internal and external agents.
