As­so­ci­at­ed Brands In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed (ABIL) has been able to com­plete an en­tire fac­to­ry in Colom­bia more or less re­mote­ly, ABIL Deputy Chair­man/Group CEO Nicholas Lok Jack has re­vealed.

Speak­ing to the Busi­ness Guardian mag­a­zine, Lok Jack said ABIL just com­plet­ed its Green­field man­u­fac­tur­ing fac­to­ry for break­fast ce­re­als in Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia.

“This was a de­ci­sion tak­en in 2019 and con­tin­ued dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and we com­plet­ed in No­vem­ber last year and have been pro­duc­ing break­fast ce­re­als in Colom­bia for the Colom­bian mar­ket since March.”

“We have not had a chance to com­mem­o­rate the fac­to­ry as yet due to the closed bor­ders, but we are hop­ing to get down there very soon. In the mean­time, we have been able to con­struct, build, in­stall, com­mis­sion the fac­to­ry re­mote­ly, “ he said.

Lok Jack hopes to trav­el to Colom­bia be­fore the end of this year to com­mis­sion the project of­fi­cial­ly.

The es­tab­lish­ment of the fac­to­ry in Colom­bia came as a re­sult of ABIL ac­tive­ly look­ing at oth­er mar­kets in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“We’ve been there for a while. We have been ex­port­ing there for a while. We feel com­fort­able with the coun­try as a des­ti­na­tion and we think that it is a good mar­ket for the fu­ture so we will op­er­ate down there and see how things turn out and see what oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties come around,” he added.

Lok Jack said new mar­kets of­ten come in waves, “So Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, North and South Amer­i­ca are al­ways go­ing to be a fo­cus for us giv­en our ge­og­ra­phy and our re­la­tion­ships.”

An­oth­er mar­ket that ABIL will be en­ter­ing soon is Cyprus.

Catch choco­late will be sold and dis­trib­uted in Cyprus from Sep­tem­ber.

“The con­tain­er is still on the wa­ter and should be ar­riv­ing next month, and we will be do­ing a heavy launch in Sep­tem­ber of the brand. We will be do­ing our mar­ket­ing, we have been do­ing our com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­vest­ment in­to the mar­ket and hop­ing that it pays off in the long term but we have done our home­work as far as pos­si­ble,” Lok Jack said.

Lok Jack re­vealed that ABIL is ex­cit­ed about en­ter­ing this new mar­ket.

Cyprus , he said, is an at­trac­tive mar­ket for ABIL to con­tin­ue its pen­e­tra­tion in­to Eu­ro­pean and Mid­dle East­ern re­gions.

Cyprus is ABIL’s third Eu­ro­pean mar­ket for Catch, join­ing Ire­land and Mal­ta.

The Deputy Chair­man/Group CEO stat­ed ABIL is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in talks with play­ers in the Mid­dle East about en­ter­ing mar­kets there, such as Jor­dan and Kuwait.

“We are hop­ing that Cyprus will al­low a cer­tain ex­po­sure to the brand that al­lows us to start en­ter­ing oth­er mar­kets. As we get more and more ex­posed, we get more and more leads and more and more peo­ple ask­ing about our prod­ucts. So, we fol­low every lead up dili­gent­ly to see how se­ri­ous they are and how we can get to the point of do­ing busi­ness,” he said.

And ABIL is not stop­ping there, not­ed Lok Jack, “We have more in­ter­est­ing things com­ing but we can’t talk about it as yet, but you will see more things on our in­ter­na­tion­al front. In­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion as a phi­los­o­phy and a Strat­e­gy for Busi­ness has been in­stilled in­to our Group’s cul­ture by our founder and Chair­man, Arthur Lok Jack since prac­ti­cal­ly our in­cep­tion in 1974. His vi­sion for this un­der­pins al­most every­thing that we do on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.”

Lok Jack stat­ed ABIL has not adopt­ed a one-size-fits-all ap­proach when en­ter­ing a new mar­ket.

“I think the main im­pe­tus is we are flex­i­ble, and we are will­ing to deal with what­ev­er the mar­ket needs to deal with in a tai­lor-made way,” Lok Jack said.

He be­lieves com­ing from the Caribbean re­gion and un­der­stand­ing that there are cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences in each coun­try, has helped in that re­gard.

But what ad­vice would Lok Jack give to oth­er com­pa­nies hop­ing to al­so be­gin ex­port­ing?

Well, he un­der­scored the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing your busi­ness.

“I think un­der­stand­ing your busi­ness fun­da­men­tal­ly, in­side and out, and un­der­stand­ing what you can af­ford. What your bal­ance sheet strength is. And un­der­stand­ing what is your clear strat­e­gy for where you are go­ing,” he said.

“Some­times there are po­si­tions where you want to go some­where but you can’t af­ford it right now and you have to find a way to do it or put it on the back burn­er. So, un­der­stand­ing what you can af­ford and what your bal­ance sheet can take is a very crit­i­cal part in my view,” Lok Jack said.

He not­ed if you can’t keep the core to­geth­er, you should not be ex­pand­ing, “Ex­pan­sion is very cost­ly. Yes, we are go­ing to Cyprus, and we are spend­ing a lot of mon­ey there. Is it prof­itable in the first year? Prob­a­bly not, but we take the long view. But first you have to take the short-term view to make sure that we are sta­ble enough to be able to go on these ex­pan­sion jour­neys. That will be my most crit­i­cal ad­vice. It is to un­der­stand where you are. And if you are strong and if you are sol­id in your base then you should be look­ing to ex­pand.”

He added that no mar­ket is in­signif­i­cant, and any mar­ket that you en­ter should be treat­ed with im­por­tance.

While ABIL has been able to make some head­way dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Lok Jack dis­closed the last year and a half has not been easy.

He re­vealed the com­pa­ny has had to over­come the pan­dem­ic and deaths re­lat­ed to it, and while there was a huge ad­just­ment pe­ri­od, the staff and man­age­ment at ABIL have gone above and be­yond ex­pec­ta­tions which he stat­ed bode well for its fu­ture de­vel­op­men­tal projects.

“It was amaz­ing to see how the ex­ec­u­tive and man­age­ment team and staff have stepped up dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and piv­ot­ed to keep the or­gan­i­sa­tion mov­ing for­ward. Cred­it re­al­ly has to be be­stowed up­on them,” Lok Jack said.

ABIL has al­so had to be flex­i­ble to en­sure com­pli­ance with the laws of the lands in all the coun­tries they op­er­ate, “The dif­fi­cult part has been ad­just­ing to every sin­gle en­vi­ron­ment we op­er­ate in. We are ac­tu­al­ly op­er­at­ing our own busi­ness­es in Guyana, T&T, Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ja­maica, Pana­ma and each one of those ter­ri­to­ries has treat­ed with the COVID in a dif­fer­ent way,” he said.

Lok Jack laud­ed this coun­try’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, say­ing it has been “re­al­ly out­stand­ing.”

He in­di­cat­ed this is not just a re­cent oc­cur­rence but some­thing he has no­ticed over the past decade.

“It nev­er ceased to amaze me when I went out and met with man­u­fac­tur­ing play­ers to see what they are do­ing. If it is any­thing, we are a bit mod­est, and I think there are rea­sons for that. T&T prod­ucts have a long his­to­ry of be­ing very high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts and I think they can stand up al­most any­where in the world,” Lok Jack re­marked.

“I am im­pressed with all lo­cal prod­ucts on the mar­ket and so I think it is just to start go­ing over­seas, un­der­stand­ing our nich­es, un­der­stand­ing how we mar­ket, what we do, and how do we get over­seas, I think that is the crit­i­cal part to it,” he said.

The younger Lok Jack pre­dict­ed that the sec­tor would con­tin­ue to make in­roads once there is prop­er guid­ance.

“I think the sec­tor has a bright fu­ture. I have been see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of en­tre­pre­neur­ship, at a mi­cro and small lev­el, which I feel re­al­ly has the abil­i­ty to get go­ing some­where. We just have to fig­ure out how we nur­ture and men­tor these en­tre­pre­neurs along the way.”