An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

A mul­ti-hun­dred-mil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ment by Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion to build a new high-tech lo­gis­tics hub at Or­ange Grove will dou­ble the com­pa­ny’s dis­tri­b­u­tion ca­pac­i­ty in T&T, ac­cord­ing to CEO James McLetchie.

The 230,000-square-foot ware­house, of­fi­cial­ly opened yes­ter­day, rep­re­sents one of the largest lo­gis­tics in­vest­ments by the pri­vate sec­tor in re­cent years and in­tro­duces ro­bot­ics and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence in­to large-scale ware­hous­ing in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

McLetchie ex­plained that the fa­cil­i­ty re­quired a cou­ple of hun­dred mil­lion TT dol­lars in in­vest­ment and forms part of a wider push to mod­ernise dis­tri­b­u­tion and strength­en the group’s re­gion­al lo­gis­tics net­work.

“It’s a large in­vest­ment, but it rep­re­sents our com­mit­ment to Trinidad and the re­gion,” McLetchie said.

The Or­ange Grove com­plex spans more than five acres and fea­tures an Au­to­mat­ed Stor­age and Re­trieval Sys­tem (ASRS), which com­bines high-den­si­ty pal­let rack­ing, au­to­mat­ed cranes and con­vey­or sys­tems to ex­pe­dite or­der ful­fil­ment and en­hance in­ven­to­ry man­age­ment.

The tech­nol­o­gy al­lows goods to move through the ware­house faster while sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creas­ing stor­age ca­pac­i­ty. Au­toma­tion al­so re­duces man­u­al han­dling, im­proves prod­uct in­tegri­ty and strength­ens safe­ty for em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers col­lect­ing de­liv­er­ies.

McLetchie in­di­cat­ed that the fa­cil­i­ty is de­signed to dou­ble the com­pa­ny’s cur­rent dis­tri­b­u­tion ca­pac­i­ty while main­tain­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and avoid­ing a ma­jor in­crease in op­er­at­ing costs.

The ware­house al­so in­tro­duces ro­bot­ics and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence sys­tems that re­quire spe­cialised train­ing for lo­cal staff. Work­ers have been re­trained and repo­si­tioned in­to more ad­vanced roles tied to au­toma­tion and lo­gis­tics man­age­ment as the com­pa­ny pre­pares for fur­ther ex­pan­sion.

Be­yond the Or­ange Grove in­vest­ment, the com­pa­ny is al­so prepar­ing to break ground on an­oth­er lo­gis­tics fa­cil­i­ty in Guyana with­in the next few months as part of its re­gion­al growth strat­e­gy.

McLetchie in­di­cat­ed that while the new ware­house rep­re­sents a ma­jor step in or­gan­ic growth, the group con­tin­ues to ac­tive­ly ex­am­ine ac­qui­si­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties across the Caribbean and be­yond.

“We in­tend to grow the group or­gan­i­cal­ly, but we will con­tin­ue to look for ac­qui­si­tions in the re­gion and out­side the re­gion, and we are ex­treme­ly dis­ci­plined about the kind of busi­ness­es we will buy and the price we will pay,” McLetchie said.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials at­tend­ing the launch used the oc­ca­sion to high­light the wider in­vest­ment cli­mate and the eco­nom­ic cost of slow ap­provals and reg­u­la­to­ry de­lays.
Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs, and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh warned that the coun­try has al­ready lost bil­lions in po­ten­tial projects be­cause of bu­reau­crat­ic ob­sta­cles.

“It is es­ti­mat­ed that be­tween 2021 and 2025 this coun­try would have lost over $20 bil­lion in in­vest­ments be­cause of slow process­es and bu­reau­crat­ic in­er­tia,” Swarats­ingh said.

The min­is­ter out­lined gov­ern­ment plans to digi­tise ap­proval sys­tems and im­prove co­or­di­na­tion among state agen­cies as part of a broad­er push to make the coun­try a more com­pet­i­tive des­ti­na­tion for in­vest­ment.

He al­so re­flect­ed on his own con­nec­tion to the com­pa­ny, not­ing that he once worked there when the su­per­mar­ket chain op­er­at­ed un­der the Hi-Lo brand.

Draw­ing on that ex­pe­ri­ence, Swarats­ingh paid trib­ute to ear­li­er in­no­va­tors in the or­gan­i­sa­tion who helped shape the com­pa­ny’s growth long be­fore the era of ro­bot­ics and au­toma­tion.

The Or­ange Grove fa­cil­i­ty marks the first in­stal­la­tion of an au­to­mat­ed stor­age and re­trieval sys­tem at this scale in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean and po­si­tions Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion to han­dle larg­er vol­umes of goods while strength­en­ing re­gion­al sup­ply chains.

For the com­pa­ny, the new lo­gis­tics hub sig­nals a shift to­ward tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven dis­tri­b­u­tion as it pre­pares to ex­pand op­er­a­tions and deep­en its foot­print across Caribbean mar­kets.