Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

T&T will ben­e­fit from an an­nu­al pur­chase of US$100 mil­lion in fu­el and oth­er key ser­vices from Old­en­dorff Car­ri­ers Trinidad Ltd, a 72-year-old Ger­man fam­i­ly-owned trans­ship­ment com­pa­ny. Old­en­dorff, one of the world's largest car­ri­ers of bulk car­go, op­er­ates 400 ships. Two weeks ago Old­en­dorff signed off on a US$45 mil­lion for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment con­tract with the Trade and In­vest­ment Min­istry and T&T Free Zone Com­pa­ny Ltd. In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Scott Jones said T&T stands to ben­e­fit much more as the US$45 mil­lion was just an ini­tial in­vest­ment, which was spent on equip­ment on­ly. Jones said the com­pa­ny's core busi­ness is iron, ore and coal.

"We al­so have a lot of cus­tomers in the bulk busi­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly steel and min­ing com­pa­nies and pow­er sta­tions that need coal." Jones said the com­pa­ny was look­ing for an ide­al lo­ca­tion to trans­ship its iron and ore from Brazil to Chi­na and T&T seemed to be that place. "Old­en­dorff's client--An­glo Amer­i­can--one of the largest min­ing com­pa­nies, is lo­cat­ed up the Ama­zon Riv­er, but be­cause they are up the riv­er, they are re­strict­ed to medi­um-sized ves­sels. The big prob­lem is that the huge mar­ket for iron and ore is in Chi­na and some Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries, which are very far away." "So it is not cost-ef­fec­tive for medi­um-sized ships to go all the way from Brazil to Chi­na on a 75-day voy­age, "Jones said. "There­fore, we agreed with the cus­tomer that Trinidad seems to be that ide­al place to tran­ship the car­go." Pro­vid­ing fur­ther de­tails on the process, Jones said five mil­lion tonnes of iron and ore would be shipped out of Brazil to T&T via four small­er ships, each with a ca­pac­i­ty of 50,000 tonnes.

"Two of the small­er ships would stop in Trinidad, where Old­en­dorff's has two float­ing cranes six miles out in the Gulf of Paria. The iron and ore car­go would be trans­ferred in­to a larg­er ves­sel--a 200,000-tonne Cape­size bulk car­ri­er," he said. "It takes about four of the 50,000-tonne ships to fill the larg­er one and rough­ly about two days to un­load the small­er ship and about nine days to load the 200,000-tonne Cape­size ship."

Jones said it's a con­tin­u­ous op­er­a­tion, so when one ship leaves, an­oth­er one ar­rives, where the ship takes eight to nine days to come back from Brazil and 65 to 70 days sail­ing from Trinidad to Chi­na.

Ben­e­fits to T&T

"T&T has ben­e­fit­ted al­most dou­ble the amount we have con­tributed due to the dif­fer­ent types of ser­vices we re­quire," Jones said. The round-the-clock op­er­a­tion, he said, would have more than 125 ships a year load­ing and un­load­ing car­go. He said the fu­el alone would be well over US$100 mil­lion a year in pur­chas­es, while the com­pa­ny has al­ready spent mon­ey on ho­tels, apart­ments, car rentals, spare parts, food and oth­er sup­plies. He said Petrotrin sup­plies fu­el and they have en­tered in­to a part­ner­ship agree­ment with Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion to use such equip­ment as its tugs. Mean­while, he said they re­ceived ex­cel­lent ser­vice from GCM Air and Mar­itime Cus­toms Bro­ker­age Com­pa­ny Ltd, a Cou­va-based com­pa­ny, which is re­spon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing cus­tom bro­ker­age ser­vices for all of Old­en­dorff's trans­ship­ment car­go. Jones said he was thrilled to ex­pe­ri­ence a quick turnover in the time it took to set up his op­er­a­tion. "Our ex­plorato­ry vis­its were just over a year, but in Feb­ru­ary, we de­cid­ed to go ahead with this project, which was premised on re­ceiv­ing an ap­proval from the Gov­ern­ment by May, which we got.

"By mid-Ju­ly, we were op­er­a­tional. It hap­pened quick­ly. We were thrilled be­cause we heard there are a lot of is­sues and we could have got­ten blocked, but we ac­tu­al­ly had great sup­port from sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate com­pa­nies." He said the Trade Min­istry was the ini­tial con­tact and In­vesTT, as the fa­cil­i­ta­tor, was very in­stru­men­tal in guid­ing and as­sist­ing them in re­ceiv­ing all ap­provals. Old­en­dorff al­so li­aised with the Min­istry of En­er­gy, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, the di­rec­tor of Sur­veys, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, T&T Free Zone Com­pa­ny and Coastal Dy­nam­ics. The com­pa­ny, he said, had to ob­tain let­ters of no ob­jec­tion from Petrotrin and Cen­tri­ca En­er­gy that drill for oil near­by. "We dealt with a lot of oth­er coun­tries and I was very im­pressed with the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, the qual­i­ty of ques­tions and is­sues we had to go through and I found it to be very rea­son­able."

Why T&T?

Be­sides it strate­gic lo­ca­tion, Jones said T&T has a great labour pool. The com­pa­ny has al­ready em­ployed 85 lo­cals, in­clud­ing:

• 12 crane dri­vers

• 12 pay load­ers--trac­tor dri­vers--who clean up the car­go

hole on the ship

• 30 lines­men--They con­trol the move­ment of the barges and help with the tugs

• Su­per­vi­sors and man­agers

"We on­ly have 15 ex­pa­tri­ates, but this fig­ure would be re­duced as it's our in­ten­tion for it to be­come a Trinida­di­an op­er­a­tion," Jones said.

He said Old­en­dorff chose T&T for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

• Its prox­im­i­ty to the Ama­zon Riv­er to Brazil: "We were look­ing for a place that was rel­a­tive­ly close so these medi­um-sized ves­sels wouldn't have to go very far."

• High-qual­i­ty labour: "Peo­ple that could ser­vice this kind of op­er­a­tion

• A place that has deep wa­ters, but not rough and is pro­tect­ed

• Trinidad is be­low the hur­ri­cane belt be­cause we did want to have dis­as­ters in the event of a hur­ri­cane.

Jones said there is one chal­lenge im­ped­ing his busi­ness. Cus­toms and Ex­cise has a law called a Droghers Act, a li­cence or stamp of ap­proval giv­en by Cus­toms to ships/boats trad­ing from port to port with­in T&T's coastal wa­ters. "It means that every time we move from one point to an­oth­er, I have to get my book stamped. It's te­dious process and a waste of time. It's too bu­reau­crat­ic." Jones said it's an ar­cha­ic law that no oth­er coun­try us­es. Re­gard­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, he said they had a lot of dis­cus­sions with Cus­toms. Jones said where Old­en­dorff op­er­ates up the Ama­zon Riv­er is not a drug ex­port­ing area. "We have reg­u­lar search­es on the ships and CCTV cam­eras mon­i­tor­ing all our op­er­a­tions 24/7 and we have an agree­ment with Cus­toms that they can come and view our videos at any time." "I have been stopped by Cus­toms in my boat and have it in­spect­ed. I wel­come that and I en­cour­age it be­cause it dis­cour­ages any kind of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties."