Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

In­con­sis­tent sup­ply of pro­duce and pric­ing con­tin­ue to plague the small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es in the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try. Mar­cus Sun Kow, mar­ket­ing di­rec­tor of Fresh Start Ltd, a lo­cal juices com­pa­ny, said the bot­tom line of his 19-year-old fam­i­ly-op­er­at­ed busi­ness has been hit hard by these is­sues. In a May 17 in­ter­view at the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) held at the Hy­att Trinidad Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, Sun Kow said these chal­lenges have hit his bot­tom line.

Fresh Start is a small fam­i­ly owned agro pro­cess­ing busi­ness found­ed in 1994. Among its juices are sor­rel, mau­by, or­ange, grape­fruit, por­tu­gal, tamarind and pas­sion fruit. The com­pa­ny, which has a 25-mem­ber staff, pro­duces about 2,000 gal­lons of con­cen­trate a month and for the small­er sin­gle strength juices, 500,000 bot­tles a year. Sun Kow, whose fa­ther was once a co­coa farmer, said they de­cid­ed to sup­port lo­cal farm­ers by buy­ing their pro­duce. "We use 40 per cent of lo­cal in­puts from farm­ers and the rest from mid­dle­men and oth­er proces­sors, but we need a greater sup­ply of pro­duce be­cause our com­pa­ny is grow­ing."

Sun Kow said Fresh Start los­es when there's a short­age of sup­ply and it has to com­pete with re­tail­ers as farm­ers get more mon­ey from re­tail­ers. "Which brings in the oth­er is­sue: price," he said. "Even though the farm­ers have the sup­ply, they would not sell it to us. If we are of­fered to buy the pro­duce, the price is ridicu­lous." Or­anges were $2 each. "We can't buy at that price to make juice," Sun Kow com­plained. Asked about the com­pa­ny's back-up plan, Sun Kow said, "We man­aged to se­cure a sup­pli­er from Ce­dros, who gave us a lot of land where all the tress on the land would be har­vest­ed for us."

The on­ly set­back in this arrange­ment, he said, was Fresh Start had to pro­vide its own labour, like pick­ers and trans­port for the work­ers and to get the pro­duce from Ce­dros to the Diego Mar­tin plant. "It in­creased our cost sig­nif­i­cant­ly and af­fect­ed our pro­duc­tion time. There is a huge de­mand for lo­cal sup­plies for busi­ness­es like Fresh Start." Those neg­a­tives notwith­stand­ing, Sun Kow said the com­pa­ny's prices are com­pet­i­tive when com­pared to his com­peti­tors: Na­tion­al Can­ners Ltd and Caribbean Flavours.

Search for new mar­kets

Fresh Start ap­pears to be out­grow­ing its 2,000 square foot of land at the fam­i­ly's Diego Mar­tin home base, a home-cum-fac­to­ry. Al­ready dis­trib­ut­ing up to 300 gal­lons of juice con­cen­trate a week to ma­jor ho­tels, 600-800 gal­lons to pop­u­lar fast­food restau­rants and su­per­mar­kets, Fresh Start is look­ing to sup­ply re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. "This is why we at­tend­ed the TIC. We have been spon­sored by the Food and Bev­er­age In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee and we have re­ceived a lot of in­ter­est." Sun Kow said the com­pa­ny had ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est from com­pa­nies in Suri­name, St Vin­cent, the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States. To make this a re­al­i­ty, he said, "We need more sup­ply and sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment. We need a big­ger fac­to­ry space."The fam­i­ly rents an­oth­er prop­er­ty on the same street as a stor­age fa­cil­i­ty and an­oth­er for a car park. "We are ex­pand­ing and re­quire about 5,000 square foot of land for a new fac­to­ry." Sun Kow said the Gov­ern­ment could as­sist SMEs in this area, as it once had an arrange­ment through Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, now In­vesTT, to lease or rent land. "e-TecK gave out ware­hous­es in the 1980s and 1990s to a lot of big­ger com­pa­nies that pur­chased it, de­vel­oped it and now some of them rent­ing out the fa­cil­i­ty. "It is hard for SMEs to pur­chase a prop­er­ty for mil­lions of dol­lars when we could con­struct our own for much less." He rec­om­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cates space un­der a lease or rental agree­ment for no less than 30 years.