An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Sil­ver­line Sys­tems has in­vest­ed mul­ti­ple mil­lions of US dol­lars in Trinidad and To­ba­go as the Bar­ba­dos-found­ed of­fice fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­tur­er strength­ens its re­gion­al op­er­a­tions and po­si­tions the coun­try as its man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion hub.

Founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ben Fran­cis dis­closed the in­vest­ment dur­ing an in­ter­view at the com­pa­ny's new show­room at In­vaders Bay, Port of Spain, on Wednes­day evening, where Sil­ver­line marked its 30th an­niver­sary by open­ing the high-end fa­cil­i­ty.

He said the in­vest­ment in­cludes the pur­chase of land and con­struc­tion of a build­ing in­cor­po­rat­ing a ware­house, show­room and man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty. Fran­cis con­firmed that fur­ther in­vest­ment is con­tin­u­ing, al­though he did not dis­close the to­tal cap­i­tal out­lay.

The ex­pan­sion comes as the com­pa­ny tar­gets the top po­si­tion in the Caribbean mar­ket for of­fice in­te­ri­ors, us­ing Trinidad as a base to man­u­fac­ture and dis­trib­ute prod­ucts to Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries.

Fran­cis iden­ti­fied ac­cess to US dol­lars as one of the com­pa­ny's biggest op­er­at­ing chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it im­ports raw ma­te­ri­als, com­po­nents and fin­ished fur­ni­ture. How­ev­er, ex­port earn­ings and sup­port from the Ex­im­Bank have helped Sil­ver­line man­age its for­eign ex­change re­quire­ments.

The com­pa­ny's re­gion­al ex­ports gen­er­ate US-dol­lar re­ceipts, which are then used to pur­chase raw ma­te­ri­als and com­po­nents from over­seas sup­pli­ers.

The Ex­im­Bank has al­so pro­vid­ed a crit­i­cal source of for­eign ex­change, with Sil­ver­line qual­i­fy­ing for al­lo­ca­tions to pur­chase man­u­fac­tur­ing in­puts be­cause of the val­ue added through its lo­cal pro­duc­tion op­er­a­tions.

"That has been re­al­ly a sav­iour for us as far as for­eign cur­ren­cy is con­cerned to pay our sup­pli­ers," Fran­cis ex­plained.

Sil­ver­line be­gan op­er­a­tions in Bar­ba­dos in 1996 and es­tab­lished its Trinidad op­er­a­tions in 2012. It sub­se­quent­ly ex­pand­ed its lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty, open­ing its first show­room at the O'Meara In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in Ari­ma in 2025, along­side a man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

The com­pa­ny now sup­plies the lo­cal mar­ket and ex­ports to Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, with Trinidad play­ing a cen­tral role in ful­fill­ing re­gion­al con­tracts.

Fran­cis ex­plained that Trinidad's po­si­tion as a ship­ping hub, com­pared to Bar­ba­dos, made it a strate­gic lo­ca­tion for the com­pa­ny's re­gion­al op­er­a­tions. Projects des­tined for oth­er Caribbean mar­kets are fre­quent­ly se­cured through Trinidad, man­u­fac­tured lo­cal­ly and shipped to their re­spec­tive des­ti­na­tions.

It al­so im­ports fur­ni­ture, giv­ing it a com­bined man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion op­er­a­tion to serve work­places across the re­gion.

While Sil­ver­line us­es lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers for cer­tain prod­ucts and com­po­nents, Fran­cis in­di­cat­ed that this rep­re­sents about 10 per cent of its man­u­fac­tur­ing re­quire­ments.

The com­pa­ny prefers to re­tain con­trol of most pro­duc­tion in-house to main­tain qual­i­ty stan­dards, man­age de­liv­ery times and con­tain costs.

"We like to con­trol as much as we can in-house. That way we can con­trol the qual­i­ty, we can con­trol the lead times, we can con­trol costs a lot more," he ex­plained.

The new In­vaders Bay show­room is ex­pect­ed to strength­en the com­pa­ny's abil­i­ty to at­tract larg­er projects by giv­ing ar­chi­tects, in­te­ri­or de­sign­ers and re­gion­al clients di­rect ac­cess to its prod­ucts and ser­vices.

Fran­cis de­scribed the open­ing as a sig­nif­i­cant step in Sil­ver­line's Trinidad op­er­a­tions, with the com­pa­ny seek­ing to draw in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als from across the Caribbean to ex­pe­ri­ence its ex­pand­ed show­room.

Through that ex­po­sure, Sil­ver­line ex­pects to se­cure more projects lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly.

Al­though the com­pa­ny has ex­pand­ed be­yond its orig­i­nal Bar­ba­dos mar­ket, Fran­cis clar­i­fied that its op­er­a­tions in Ghana are fo­cused on sales rather than man­u­fac­tur­ing. Prod­ucts sup­plied to that mar­ket are shipped from Trinidad.

Sil­ver­line's 30-year mile­stone comes as the com­pa­ny pur­sues its am­bi­tion of be­com­ing the Caribbean's lead­ing sup­pli­er of of­fice in­te­ri­ors.

Fran­cis ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the com­pa­ny's re­gion­al of­fer­ing, in­di­cat­ing that about 95 per cent of its clients are hap­py with its work.