J Mac In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed is the first To­ba­go com­pa­ny to re­ceive fund­ing from Gov­ern­ment’s Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty (GFF).

En­tre­pre­neurs, Mr. Ed­ward Jones and Ms. Glewis Jones, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tors of J Mac In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed, re­ceived fund­ing for their com­pa­ny’s busi­ness op­er­a­tions and ex­port ex­pan­sion.

J Mac In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed, lo­cat­ed in a small ‘at-home’ fac­to­ry in Or­ange Hill, To­ba­go, man­u­fac­tures and dis­trib­utes eco-friend­ly de­ter­gents and dish­wash­ing liq­uids un­der the brand “Sup­porT”.

The com­pa­ny took the de­ci­sion to re­lo­cate to a larg­er fa­cil­i­ty and re­quired fund­ing to au­to­mate its process­es to sat­is­fy the in­creas­ing de­mand for its prod­ucts. While the com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly dis­trib­utes with­in To­ba­go, the ex­pan­sion will fa­cil­i­tate in­creased pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in Trinidad, as well as ex­ports to sev­en (7) CARI­COM mar­kets and even­tu­al prod­uct di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter, Sen­a­tor Paula Gopee-Scoon, com­mend­ed the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors for their strate­gic move and over­all vi­sion.

“Now more than ever, Trinidad and To­ba­go re­quires the in­no­v­a­tive think­ing and the fore­sight of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to se­cure this coun­try’s present and fu­ture eco­nom­ic suc­cess,” she stat­ed. “This com­pa­ny’s growth tra­jec­to­ry is a di­rect prod­uct of the Di­rec­tors’ busi­ness acu­men, strate­gic vi­sion and util­i­sa­tion of Gov­ern­ment’s busi­ness sup­port pro­grammes.”

J Mac In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed has been able to cap­i­talise on sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment pro­grammes of­fered to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing: the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Unit Loan Pro­gramme; fund­ing from the Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Eq­ui­ty Fund Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed; and ex­port train­ing of­fered by Ex­porTT.

“Such pro­grammes, in­clud­ing the re­cent­ly ex­pand­ed GFF, un­der­score the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing and grow­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty,” Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon ob­served.

J Mac In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed has rep­re­sent­ed To­ba­go and show­cased its prod­ucts in sev­er­al busi­ness shows in­clud­ing: the 2019 To­ba­go Road Show; the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s 2019 Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion; and the 2019 Ex­po Caribe Trade Show held in San­ti­a­go de Cu­ba.

The To­ba­go com­pa­ny is the lat­est man­u­fac­tur­er to re­ceive fund­ing un­der the GFF, which of­fers up to a max­i­mum of $250,000 to pro­duc­ers of ex­port-ori­ent­ed/im­port-sub­sti­tut­ing prod­ucts.

The Fa­cil­i­ty was ex­pand­ed in Au­gust 2019 and now makes fund­ing avail­able for SMEs in eight (8) dif­fer­ent sec­tors, in­clud­ing: Fi­nan­cial ser­vices; Mar­itime ser­vices; Avi­a­tion ser­vices; Fish­ing and fish pro­cess­ing; Soft­ware de­sign and ap­pli­ca­tions; Cre­ative In­dus­tries; Agri­cul­ture and Agro-pro­cess­ing; and Man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty can be found at https://tradeind.gov.tt/ap­pli­ca­tion-ap­proval-grant-fund­ing/.