An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

An Ar­gen­tine lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny, Ax­ion­log, is bet­ting that what many busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go throw away can be­come a valu­able ex­port.

The com­pa­ny has in­tro­duced a used cook­ing oil col­lec­tion ser­vice that will gath­er waste oil from restau­rants, fast-food chains and food man­u­fac­tur­ers be­fore ex­port­ing it to the Eu­ro­pean Union, where it will be con­vert­ed in­to sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fu­el.

The ini­tia­tive marks the com­pa­ny’s ex­pan­sion be­yond its ex­ist­ing lo­gis­tics op­er­a­tions and in­to its en­vi­ron­men­tal ser­vices di­vi­sion, which al­ready op­er­ates across sev­er­al coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as.

For Trinidad sales man­ag­er, Mark Gomes, the project pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­tro­duce a busi­ness mod­el that has al­ready been proven else­where, while cre­at­ing a new av­enue for in­vest­ment and growth in the lo­cal mar­ket.

Gomes stressed it is about build­ing an en­tire­ly new ex­port in­dus­try while cre­at­ing jobs, sup­port­ing lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change from a prod­uct that cur­rent­ly has lit­tle eco­nom­ic val­ue.

The in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny has op­er­at­ed since 1994, pro­vid­ing pro­cure­ment and lo­gis­tics ser­vices to some of the world’s largest restau­rant chains, in­clud­ing Mc­Don­ald’s, Piz­za Hut and Wendy’s. Ax­ion­log’s first en­vi­ron­men­tal cus­tomer in T&T is the fran­chise Church’s Chick­en and Gomes be­lieves this presents the com­pa­ny with a much big­ger op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“When I looked in­to it fur­ther, it was re­veal­ing that they take used cook­ing oil through­out the Amer­i­c­as and ac­tu­al­ly ship it to the Eu­ro­pean Union. What re­al­ly caught my at­ten­tion was that the used cook­ing oil is ac­tu­al­ly used in avi­a­tion jet fu­el,” he in­di­cat­ed.

“The Ax­ion­log used cook­ing oil (UCO) col­lec­tion mod­el of con­vert­ing this dam­ag­ing waste prod­uct to avi­a­tion fu­el to pow­er planes is re­al­ly a great sto­ry. The first jet plane took flight in 1939 less than 100 years ago. The pos­i­tive im­pact that avi­a­tion trav­el has had on hu­man­i­ty is im­mea­sur­able. Com­mer­cial avi­a­tion trav­el has moved re­sources from wealth­i­er, more pros­per­ous na­tions and im­pact­ed pos­i­tive­ly the lives and the fu­ture of per­sons liv­ing in less for­tu­nate coun­tries,” he said.

Build­ing a new in­dus­try

Gomes said es­tab­lish­ing the op­er­a­tion in T&T in­volved far more than repli­cat­ing a busi­ness mod­el that had al­ready proven suc­cess­ful else­where in the Amer­i­c­as. He spent months con­vinc­ing Ax­ion­log’s head­quar­ters in Ar­genti­na that Trinidad could sup­port a com­mer­cial­ly vi­able used cook­ing oil col­lec­tion net­work. As part of that process, Gomes met with Trade Min­is­ter Ka­ma Ma­haraj last Au­gust to present the pro­pos­al.

“The Min­is­ter and the tech­nocrats in the room were very in­ter­est­ed in the project and gave me the thumbs up to move for­ward,” he re­called.

Gomes ex­plained that the next step was de­sign­ing an op­er­a­tion tai­lored to lo­cal con­di­tions. Rather than im­port­ing equip­ment, the com­pa­ny part­nered with a Trinidad man­u­fac­tur­er to pro­duce spe­cial­ly de­signed wheel­ie bins ca­pa­ble of safe­ly stor­ing used cook­ing oil be­fore col­lec­tion.

“We want­ed a mod­el that was se­cure for the stores and prac­ti­cal for staff,” he said, not­ing that the de­sign al­so re­duces the amount of time restau­rant back doors re­main open dur­ing col­lec­tions, im­prov­ing se­cu­ri­ty.

The project al­so re­quired spe­cialised 1,000-litre in­ter­me­di­ate bulk con­tain­ers to trans­port the oil be­fore it is ex­port­ed to the Eu­ro­pean Union.

Gomes said those prepa­ra­tions ul­ti­mate­ly con­vinced Ax­ion­log’s board that Trinidad was ready for the in­vest­ment, lead­ing to ap­proval of ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$120,000 to es­tab­lish the lo­cal op­er­a­tion.

He em­pha­sised that the ini­tial in­vest­ment is on­ly the start­ing point.
“It is not a one-off in­vest­ment. As we grow, we will need more wheel­ie bins, more col­lec­tion con­tain­ers and more equip­ment. Every new cus­tomer means more in­vest­ment,” Gomes said.

The Trinidad op­er­a­tion cur­rent­ly em­ploys five peo­ple, but Gomes ex­pects the work­force to ex­pand as more cus­tomers come on stream. He said ad­di­tion­al truck dri­vers, load­ers, lo­gis­tics per­son­nel and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff will be re­quired as the busi­ness scales up.

Turn­ing waste in­to ex­ports

Gomes said the eco­nom­ics of the project ex­tend well be­yond col­lect­ing and dis­pos­ing of used cook­ing oil.

He point­ed to the Eu­ro­pean Union’s in­creas­ing­ly am­bi­tious man­dates re­quir­ing air­lines to blend sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fu­el with con­ven­tion­al jet fu­el, cre­at­ing grow­ing de­mand for cer­ti­fied feed­stocks such as used cook­ing oil.

He ex­plained that this is where T&T fits in­to the glob­al sup­ply chain. Every litre col­lect­ed through Ax­ion­log’s pro­gramme be­comes part of an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly au­dit­ed sys­tem gov­erned by the In­ter­na­tion­al Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Car­bon Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dard.

“The source of the oil, every move­ment through­out the process and the ship­ment it­self are ful­ly au­dit­ed,” he said, not­ing that with­out the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the prod­uct can­not be ex­port­ed to the Eu­ro­pean Union.

The com­pa­ny has al­ready se­cured enough cus­tomers to col­lect about 10,000 litres of used cook­ing oil each month. Its im­me­di­ate ob­jec­tive, Gomes said, is to dou­ble that fig­ure to 20,000 litres a month with­in six months.

He ex­plained that one ship­ping con­tain­er holds ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,000 litres, the min­i­mum vol­ume need­ed for the op­er­a­tion to be­come com­mer­cial­ly sus­tain­able.

“My goal is to reach 20,000 litres with­in six months. My per­son­al am­bi­tion is 40,000 litres a month,” Gomes said.

He added that col­lec­tion bins have al­ready be­gun rolling out at Church’s Chick­en restau­rants fol­low­ing ear­ly sup­port from Shel­don Ram­roop, the chain’s sup­ply chain man­ag­er.

Gomes dis­closed that dis­cus­sions are al­so un­der way with Wendy’s, Domi­no’s Piz­za and KFC in T&T, while the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues iden­ti­fy­ing ad­di­tion­al sources of used cook­ing oil be­yond tra­di­tion­al restau­rant chains.

One un­ex­pect­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty, he said, emerged dur­ing a vis­it to a food man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty, where a con­ver­sa­tion about dough­nut pro­duc­tion iden­ti­fied an­oth­er po­ten­tial source of used cook­ing oil that had not been con­sid­ered in the com­pa­ny’s orig­i­nal col­lec­tion mod­el.

“Some­times in­no­va­tion hap­pens when you least ex­pect it,” Gomes re­marked.

Be­yond re­cy­cling

He be­lieves one of the biggest hur­dles will be chang­ing how busi­ness­es view used cook­ing oil. Rather than see­ing it as a waste prod­uct to be dis­card­ed, he views it as a valu­able re­source with ex­port po­ten­tial.

He not­ed that im­prop­er dis­pos­al can clog plumb­ing sys­tems, con­t­a­m­i­nate wa­ter­ways and cre­ate un­pleas­ant con­di­tions around com­mer­cial prop­er­ties. A struc­tured col­lec­tion sys­tem, he main­tained, not on­ly re­duces those en­vi­ron­men­tal risks but al­so cre­ates com­mer­cial val­ue from a prod­uct that is of­ten thrown away.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing busi­ness­es will re­ceive TT$1 per litre of used cook­ing oil col­lect­ed. Gomes de­scribed the pay­ment as a to­ken ges­ture but said it pro­vides an added in­cen­tive for busi­ness­es to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gramme.

Look­ing ahead, he re­vealed that Guyana is al­ready be­ing as­sessed as the next mar­ket for ex­pan­sion. Ax­ion­log al­ready op­er­ates in sev­er­al Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing Cu­raçao, giv­ing the com­pa­ny con­fi­dence that the mod­el can be repli­cat­ed else­where in the re­gion.

The ex­pan­sion will be fi­nanced in­ter­nal­ly. Gomes ex­plained that Ax­ion­log is not pur­su­ing grant fund­ing or de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing, with its par­ent com­pa­ny com­mit­ting to fund growth as op­er­a­tional tar­gets are achieved.

Se­cur­ing ap­proval for the Trinidad op­er­a­tion re­quired months of plan­ning. Gomes re­called that every as­pect of the pro­pos­al was sub­ject­ed to de­tailed fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional scruti­ny be­fore the in­vest­ment was ap­proved.

That dis­ci­plined ap­proach, he con­tend­ed, po­si­tions the busi­ness for long-term growth rather than a short-term ven­ture.

The ini­tia­tive al­so comes as Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues search­ing for new in­dus­tries ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change and broad­en­ing the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic base.

While used cook­ing oil is un­like­ly to ri­val the en­er­gy sec­tor, Gomes be­lieves it can cre­ate a new val­ue chain span­ning waste col­lec­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, lo­gis­tics and ex­ports.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, he said, the project’s suc­cess will de­pend on restau­rants, food man­u­fac­tur­ers and com­mer­cial kitchens em­brac­ing a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to waste dis­pos­al.

“It is time for Trinidad to be part of the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in con­tribut­ing pos­i­tive­ly to this ini­tia­tive,” Gomes added.