As T&T con­tin­ues its thrust to­wards di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and away from its re­liance on oil and gas, the Evolv­ing Tec­knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (eTecK) con­tin­ues to play a key role in these ef­forts, in­vest­ing mil­lions in in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.

This spe­cial pur­pose State agency un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, plans to ex­pand its in­dus­tri­al parks port­fo­lio by ac­quir­ing more land banks and de­vel­op­ing new parks name­ly: the Fac­to­ry Road, Dow Vil­lage, and Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment Ex­ten­sion.

These are the new in­dus­tri­al parks in train and will be tar­get­ing in­vestors in light man­u­fac­tur­ing and as­sem­bly, lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion and ICT In­dus­tries.

Re­gard­ing the cost of in­fra­struc­ture, eTeck in an emailed re­sponse to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian said for the 69-acre Fac­to­ry Road In­dus­tri­al Park as it re­lates to phase one, these works have been com­plet­ed.

“That is the com­ple­tion of the nat­ur­al gas in­fra­struc­ture to the park at the cap­i­tal cost of TT$10 mil­lion. Phas­es two and three have on­go­ing de­sign mod­i­fi­ca­tions to meet the reg­u­la­to­ry guide­lines and ap­provals drainage di­vi­sion and traf­fic man­age­ment branch of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, as a re­sult, the es­ti­mat­ed cost of these works is still to be fi­nalised.

“In this re­gard, an es­ti­mat­ed cost of the fi­nal project can­not be pro­vid­ed at this time. eTecK will be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to pro­vide an over­all bud­get when the de­signs are mod­i­fied and ap­proved,” the com­pa­ny said.

It added that the park is ear­marked to be com­plet­ed by the sec­ond quar­ter of the next fis­cal year.

Re­gard­ing the cost of in­fra­struc­ture for the Dow Vil­lage In­dus­tri­al Es­tate com­pris­ing 147 acres, eTecK said it is cur­rent­ly in the ten­der­ing stages for the pro­cure­ment of the en­gi­neer­ing de­sign con­sul­tant to com­mis­sion the de­tailed en­gi­neer­ing de­signs and ob­tain pre­con­struc­tion ap­provals there­fore, the com­pa­ny can­not pro­vide pub­licly an es­ti­mat­ed cost for con­sul­tan­cy.

In ad­di­tion, a project/con­struc­tion bud­get can­not be pro­vid­ed un­til at least pre­lim­i­nary de­signs are ad­vanced, it added.

“ETecK will be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to pro­vide the over­all project cost as soon as it is prac­ti­cal to the pub­lic. It should be not­ed that the com­pa­ny has to fol­low the new pro­cure­ment guide­lines to en­sure a high lev­el of trans­paren­cy,” the com­pa­ny said.

How­ev­er, it iden­ti­fied that the park is ear­marked to be com­plet­ed with­in the next two years.

As it re­lates to Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment Ex­ten­sion which will en­tail 159.643 hectares, eTecK said while land has been iden­ti­fied plans are still be­ing fi­nalised.

The tar­get sec­tors for eTecK parks are name­ly agro-pro­cess­ing; high-val­ue and light man­u­fac­tur­ing, lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion, busi­ness process out­sourc­ing/ICT.

A new tar­get sec­tor for the parks in the fu­ture may in­clude re­new­able en­er­gy.

On eTecK’s con­tin­ued di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion im­pe­tus, its pres­i­dent Steve De Las said, “eTecK’s light in­dus­tri­al parks are hubs of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty that not on­ly sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of busi­ness­es in the non-oil and gas sec­tor but bring in for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in­to the coun­try, act as a cat­a­lyst for in­no­v­a­tive in­dus­tries, gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment and en­tre­pre­neur­ial op­por­tu­ni­ties and sup­port the eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment of its fence­line com­mu­ni­ties.”

As it con­tin­ues to ex­pand, eTecK not­ed that some chal­lenges in­clude com­pet­ing in­ter­est for suit­able un­de­vel­oped State lands and the statu­to­ry ap­proval process­es.

ETecK owns and man­ages 16 lega­cy parks from its pre­de­ces­sors and would have added six new parks since its in­cep­tion, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of parks to­day to 22.

As to the per­for­mance of its lega­cy parks, the com­pa­ny said these con­tin­ue to do well as all are near full oc­cu­pan­cy.

Al­so, there are five for­eign com­pa­nies at eTecK’s parks-Dong­guan Sum­mit (TT) Lug­gage Com­pa­ny Ltd at Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate; iQor at Tamana In­Tech Park; Shaare Busi­ness Me­dia at Tamana In­Tech Park; Price Smart In­ter­na­tion­al at Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and Bay­ern Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd at Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, two lo­cal com­pa­nies pro­vide for­eign fund­ing name­ly: First Caribbean Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd at Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and MSK Seafood Lim­it­ed at Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

At present, In­vesTT is re­spon­si­ble for in­vestor sourc­ing for e TecK’s new parks name­ly Moru­ga Agro-Pro­cess­ing and Light In­dus­tri­al Park, Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and Tamana In­Tech Park.

In the most re­cent time, AS Bry­dens can be iden­ti­fied as the ten­ant with the largest in­vest­ment at eTecK’s Fac­to­ry Road In­dus­tri­al Park which is cur­rent­ly be­ing de­vel­oped. The na­ture of this in­vest­ment is the man­u­fac­tur­ing of food items.

In Jan­u­ary this year, AS Bry­dens turned the sod for the group’s re­gion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre.

“An in­vest­ment ex­ceed­ing US$29 mil­lion un­der­scores our com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion, with sub­stan­tial ben­e­fits flow­ing to lo­cal con­trac­tors and the cre­ation of just over 500 jobs,” deputy chair­man, Michael Cony­ers had said.

While gen­er­at­ing much-need­ed rev­enue is key, eTeck is al­so fo­cused on sus­tain­abil­i­ty such as hav­ing re­new­able en­er­gy, like so­lar, fit­ted in the struc­tur­al plans.

ETecK has im­ple­ment­ed LED and so­lar light­ing for street lights at the re­cent­ly launched Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

The com­pa­ny al­so en­cour­ages ten­ants to con­sid­er re­new­able en­er­gy when de­vel­op­ing their re­spec­tive fa­cil­i­ties.