GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

The name An­gos­tu­ra has been known world­wide for decades for its pop­u­lar bit­ters, and more re­cent­ly for its award-win­ning rums, but the com­pa­ny is al­so blaz­ing a trail in the sphere of sus­tain­abil­i­ty with its var­i­ous ini­tia­tives.

It is for this rea­son the Laven­tille spir­its pro­duc­er re­ceived the Green Agen­da Award, as the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce held its Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness Awards at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) on Thurs­day.

An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd was recog­nised for its con­tri­bu­tion and com­mit­ment to­wards a green­er fu­ture in busi­ness and de­liv­er­ing a new blue­print for busi­ness in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Mean­while, the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) copped the In­no­va­tion Award which recog­nised ground-break­ing use of tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing so­cial me­dia, vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty, blockchain and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to en­hance pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and of­fer tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments for cus­tomers, clients and busi­ness­es.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian short­ly af­ter re­ceiv­ing the award, An­gos­tu­ra chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Ian Forbes said this achieve­ment has come as the com­pa­ny cel­e­brates its 200th year, adding that it is not just an ac­co­lade; it rep­re­sents An­gos­tu­ra’s com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able prac­tices and cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“At An­gos­tu­ra, en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not just a buzz­word; it is cen­tral to our op­er­a­tions. We have im­ple­ment­ed ini­tia­tives like re­duc­ing the weight of our glass pack­ag­ing and achiev­ing ISO 14001:2015 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 1999 that in­te­grates en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty in­to our process­es,” Forbes ex­plained.

He added that An­gos­tu­ra’s state-of-the-art wa­ter re­source re­cov­ery and anaer­o­bic di­gester fa­cil­i­ty al­so un­der­scored the com­pa­ny’s ded­i­ca­tion to re­spon­si­ble pro­duc­tion and en­vi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship.

This fa­cil­i­ty, Forbes said cost tens of mil­lions of dol­lars as he main­tained, “It’s ex­pen­sive to do the right thing.”

Re­duc­ing its car­bon foot­print is al­so im­por­tant to An­gos­tu­ra.

The com­pa­ny al­so in­tro­duced pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives such as tran­si­tion­ing to gas-elec­tric hy­brid and CNG-gas hy­brid ve­hi­cles in its cor­po­rate fleet to re­duce car­bon emis­sions.

“Elec­tric fork­lifts on­ly op­er­ate in­side our ware­hous­es. We on­ly use CNG-pow­ered fork­lifts out­side of our ware­hous­es,” Forbes said, not­ing that mil­lions have al­so been in­vest­ed in this ven­ture.

In ad­di­tion, the com­pa­ny has re­duced the weight of its glass pack­ag­ing and phased out plas­tic bags at Sol­era re­tail stores to min­imise en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

Fur­ther, Forbes said An­gos­tu­ra en­gages in re­spon­si­ble sourc­ing of ma­te­ri­als which some­times car­ries an in­creased cost.

“We have la­bels that are sourced from pa­per from forests grown and man­aged. When you reap and har­vest the lum­ber, you re­plant that. The Forestry Coun­cil is such a body in Eu­rope and we get a lot of our pa­per-la­belling ma­te­r­i­al from such forests.

“Our glass is re­cy­cled and we are very proud that we buy glass from Carib Glass Works. In ad­di­tion, we are al­so work­ing on projects to light weight our glass which is al­so re­spon­si­ble. Our caps are re­cy­clable as well,” he out­lined.

An­gos­tu­ra al­so has a green agen­da plan with mea­sures al­ready in the pipeline to be­come “green­er.”

Forbes did not want to dis­close those just yet, on­ly say­ing that the com­pa­ny is ex­pect­ed to make an an­nounce­ment soon.

As the theme “Vi­sion­ar­ies and Van­guards” res­onat­ed through the NA­PA, Cariri’s achieve­ment un­der­scored the piv­otal role of in­no­va­tion in fos­ter­ing eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion.

Cariri’s CEO Hans-Erich Schulz, who spoke to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, shared in­sights about its rub­ber crumb project which was the rea­son the com­pa­ny—a pri­ma­ry agency of the Gov­ern­ment with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de­vel­op­ing the coun­try’s tech­no­log­i­cal base—won its award.

Schulz said the project demon­strat­ed that old tyres can be re­pur­posed for road paving and the cre­ation of new rub­ber prod­ucts.

With lim­it­ed tyre dis­pos­al or re­cy­cling op­tions avail­able, a size­able num­ber of tyres are im­prop­er­ly dis­posed, main­ly dumped at the side of the road or in wa­ter cours­es. They then con­tribute to flood­ing via the block­age of the wa­ter cours­es and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of ver­min habi­ta­tion. Im­prop­er­ly dis­posed tyres can al­so con­tribute to vec­tor-borne dis­eases, when the tyres col­lect wa­ter and then be­come the per­fect breed­ing ground for the Aedes Ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to – the pre­ferred host for the dengue, chikun­gun­ya and zi­ka virus­es.

In this re­gard, Cariri es­tab­lished of a small-scale gran­u­la­tion fa­cil­i­ty.

The Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) fund­ed the project, which is a col­lab­o­ra­tion among the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Cariri, the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

Cariri is cur­rent­ly ex­per­i­ment­ing to as­sess the dura­bil­i­ty of the rub­ber mix­ture for road paving with its $1 mil­lion rub­ber crumb pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.

De­vel­op­men­tal work has al­so been un­der­tak­en by UWI’s Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing, which has re­sult­ed in the de­sign of as­phalt mix­es, in­cor­po­rat­ing rub­ber crumb for road-paving pur­pos­es.

This in­no­v­a­tive ini­tia­tive orig­i­nat­ed from dis­cus­sions be­tween Eka Rud­der-Fair­man, Cariri’s pe­tro­le­um and sus­tain­able en­er­gy ser­vices (PSES) pro­gramme leader, and the Basel Con­ven­tion Re­gion­al Cen­tre – Caribbean (BCRC-Caribbean).

Iden­ti­fy­ing the need for a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to reusing and dis­pos­ing of used rub­ber tires in the Caribbean, BCRC-Caribbean had en­vi­sioned the use of the rub­ber crumbs in civ­il en­gi­neer­ing ap­pli­ca­tions; with one main ap­pli­ca­tion be­ing the in­clu­sion of rub­ber crumbs in as­phalt mix­es.

The project goals are :

* Demon­stra­tion of the tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of

* In­cor­po­ra­tion of rub­ber crumb in­to as­phalt mix for road paving pur­pos­es.

* Pro­duc­tion of rub­ber crumb and down­stream rub­ber crumb-based prod­ucts for both lo­cal and ex­port mar­kets.

* Demon­stra­tion of the po­ten­tial con­tri­bu­tion of re­cy­cling to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment

* Es­tab­lish­ment of the pa­ra­me­ters for pro­duc­tion scale-up of rub­ber crumb.

Based on dis­cus­sions with the Tu­na­puna-Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC), Bharath Street, Tu­na­puna was iden­ti­fied to be used as a test paving strip.

Schulz said over the next year test­ing and mon­i­tor­ing will be done to see how well this holds up to weath­er and traf­fic, not­ing that the idea is to use hard da­ta.

Mar­ket re­search al­so is un­der­way on the pro­duc­tion of down­stream, val­ue-added rub­ber crumb-based prod­ucts which in­clude floor tiles and mats.

“We sim­ply have a pi­lot plan that gen­er­ates the rub­ber crumb and we are do­ing fur­ther tests on the paved test strip in Tu­na­puna and once we show the in­for­ma­tion based on our re­sults, we can say this is fea­si­ble and can be done na­tion­al­ly,” Schulz ex­plained, adding that a re­port is ex­pect­ed to be gen­er­at­ed and com­plet­ed by the first quar­ter of next year.

Schulz added that from an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive, tyre re­cy­cling rep­re­sents a po­ten­tial­ly vi­able busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty giv­en the range of prod­ucts which could be man­u­fac­tured from waste rub­ber.