Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa has caused wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion across the Caribbean, with Ja­maica, Haiti and Cu­ba par­tic­u­lar­ly af­fect­ed.

How­ev­er, its im­pact is still be­ing felt as sup­ply chain op­er­a­tors have con­firmed that Christ­mas goods set to be de­liv­ered to T&T were di­vert­ed and de­layed by the storm.

This was just one of the con­cerns raised as the Sup­ply Chain Hub host­ed an end-of-year work­shop & net­work­ing mix­er last Sat­ur­day to fur­ther push ed­u­ca­tion for the in­dus­try.

The event was the group’s fol­low-up to its suc­cess­ful host­ing of the Sup­ply Chain and Lo­gis­tics Ex­po in Au­gust 2025.

The work­shop, held at the events room at Piz­za Hut Price Plaza, served not as a plat­form for lessons to be learnt, but a chance for sup­ply chain pro­fes­sion­als to re­flect on chal­lenges faced and over­come over the course of this year.

Port de­lays, for­eign ex­change short­ages, tar­iff im­po­si­tions and bu­reau­crat­ic red tape were some of the com­mon com­plaints raised by those present.

“Some of the chal­lenges we had, I would say, in 2025 were the de­lays on the ports. Plipde­co be­ing in one of them when they didn’t have the scan­ner, the pi­lot scan­ners on there, and we had to shift op­er­a­tions from Plipde­co (port on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate).

“Of course, we had some chal­lenges at Med­way as well. We shift­ed our op­er­a­tions to ABL (Avi­a­tion Busi­ness Ltd) Bond, and that has been work­ing out re­al­ly, re­al­ly well. Just piv­ot­ing in terms of an­oth­er chal­lenge, I would say, the trans-ship­ment hubs as well,” said Darin Piti­lal of Crow­ley Lo­gis­tics, who not­ed that sev­er­al ma­jor ports where op­er­a­tors have been trans­port­ing goods were im­pact­ed.

He said, “Pana­ma had some chal­lenges. Ja­maica had some chal­lenges. And even re­cent­ly, com­ing in for the Christ­mas as well, Ja­maica, with the hur­ri­cane that passed through, some of the ships had to di­vert down in­to Mex­i­co. This will have a big im­pact in Trinidad, be­cause every­body is wait­ing for their Christ­mas goods.”

Piti­lal ex­plained that fol­low­ing the hur­ri­cane goods con­tin­ued to be di­vert­ed to oth­er ports, but there were still de­lays ex­pect­ed.

Piti­lal said, “How­ev­er, they have now di­vert­ed some ves­sels as well in­to Cauce­do (port in Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic) to make it eas­i­er to have car­go here, I would not nec­es­sar­i­ly say on time, but it’s go­ing to reach prob­a­bly two, three weeks late, four weeks late.”

Still, he said, this was dif­fi­cult to ex­plain to cus­tomers, as they of­ten had lit­tle idea that there are many vari­ables with re­gard to the sup­ply chain.

“They don’t un­der­stand how sup­ply chain works. The pub­lic. How­ev­er, we have to ex­plain these things to our cus­tomers and for them to un­der­stand and to pre­dict. How they do all the putting stuff on the shelves and that kind of stuff for their cus­tomers, right? Be­cause the im­pact it has is a dol­lar val­ue. It just def­i­nite­ly has a dol­lar val­ue at the end of it all,” said Pita­lal, who how­ev­er ac­knowl­edged that im­proved tech­nol­o­gy and process­es im­ple­ment­ed by the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms had helped.

Jim Le­ung Chee, a sup­ply chain ex­ec­u­tive, who host­ed the seg­ment “Ca­reer Ad­vance­ment in Sup­ply Chain” at the work­shop, agreed that the pub­lic large­ly did not un­der­stand the process be­hind get­ting goods to T&T.

“I think that the gen­er­al pub­lic doesn’t re­al­ly al­ways ap­pre­ci­ate the en­tire sup­ply chain. So a lot of our prod­ucts in the past, would usu­al­ly have come from the US, some­times from Eu­rope. But the ul­ti­mate ori­gin of these prod­ucts may not have orig­i­nat­ed in the US. But we were just not aware,” Le­ung Chee said.

“Even the way we pur­chase. For ex­am­ple, when I first got in­to the field, most com­pa­nies bought items de­liv­ered to sites so the sup­pli­ers would con­trol all of the lo­gis­tics and get it to you. Now, with sup­ply chain pro­fes­sion­als be­com­ing more so­phis­ti­cat­ed, they’re able to do the lo­gis­tics them­selves. They’re able to make choic­es, and those choic­es can re­sult in much low­er costs for the con­sumer.”

He said this aware­ness has seen peo­ple with­in the sup­ply chain sec­tor piv­ot­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the chal­lenges raised by for­eign ex­change short­ages in the coun­try.

“I would say that is def­i­nite­ly a chal­lenge. Some of the things I’ve seen with some of the com­pa­nies that have the re­sources to do so is that a lot of com­pa­nies are look­ing at ex­pand­ing op­er­a­tions abroad in or­der to earn for­eign ex­change. In do­ing so they could im­prove the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion, not just for them­selves, but for the coun­try. I would say sourc­ing ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment at low­er prices as­sists be­cause you could low­er the load of the for­eign ex­change re­quired,” said Lee Che­ung.

He ex­plained that this made the work­shop and the Sup­ply Chain Ex­po all the more im­por­tant be­cause an is­land coun­try like T&T does need to know how to max­imise sup­ply chain routes to aid eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

“I think sup­ply chain is be­com­ing more im­por­tant for not just the coun­try, but glob­al­ly. Be­cause, as you can see, not on­ly are we in a glob­al econ­o­my, but we in Trinidad have to al­so look out­side of Trinidad for ex­pan­sion, for busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties. I would say that un­der­stand­ing sup­ply chain, and lo­gis­tics is core for us as we live on an is­land. It’s not like if you’re in a more de­vel­oped coun­try, like a con­ti­nent like the USA, you’d find out a lot of their com­pa­nies could ex­ist sole­ly with­in the US,” he said.

“I think it’s very im­por­tant for these kinds of com­mu­ni­ties and events to come up so that the sup­ply chain pro­fes­sion­al grows. Like I said, as an is­land na­tion, with wa­ter all around us, we have to par­tic­i­pate in glob­al trade in or­der to grow and to com­pete and to pro­vide bet­ter liv­ing for na­tion­als of this coun­try in all ar­eas.”

The event fea­tured of­fi­cials from the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T; GRUPO TLA Lo­gis­tics (Pana­ma-based); Na­tion­al Flour Mills; Crow­ley Lo­gis­tics; Pur­chas­ing & Ma­te­ri­als Man­age­ment So­lu­tions; In­cus Ser­vices; PLA­TO Con­sul­tan­cy; Af­ford­able So­lu­tions and the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, as well as ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion stu­dents in­ter­est­ed in sup­ply chain strate­gies.

It al­so saw the Sup­ply Chain Hub of­fi­cial­ly adopt men­tal health as a cause go­ing for­ward, with Vic­to­ria Siew­nar­ine-Gee­lals­ingh, pres­i­dent, T&T As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chol­o­gists (TTAP), de­liv­er­ing re­marks at the start of the event’s mix­er.