Uni­ver­sal Africa Lines Trinidad man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Yuri Jar­dine sees Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana and Suri­name emerg­ing as a ma­jor south­ern Caribbean ship­ping cor­ri­dor, with ex­pand­ing oil and gas ac­tiv­i­ty cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for spe­cialised car­go trans­porta­tion and re­gion­al trade.

Speak­ing dur­ing a sit-down in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Jar­dine said the com­pa­ny was po­si­tion­ing Trinidad as a strate­gic ship­ping hub to con­nect man­u­fac­tur­ers, ex­porters and en­er­gy com­pa­nies across the three mar­kets, us­ing a ded­i­cat­ed ves­sel to link the coun­tries with in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping routes.

At the cen­tre of its strat­e­gy is the MV UAL Trans­porter, a land­ing craft ves­sel op­er­at­ing a fixed nine-day shut­tle be­tween Point Lisas in Trinidad, George­town in Guyana and Para­mari­bo in Suri­name.

Its shal­low-draft de­sign al­lows it to reach riv­er ports and lo­ca­tions where larg­er ves­sels face re­stric­tions, while its ca­pac­i­ty to trans­port con­tain­ers, heavy equip­ment and roll-on/roll-off (Ro­Ro) car­go gives it flex­i­bil­i­ty to serve dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries.

How­ev­er, Jar­dine not­ed that the com­pa­ny’s ex­pan­sion am­bi­tions are be­ing test­ed by some of the same con­straints af­fect­ing busi­ness­es across T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly lim­it­ed ac­cess to for­eign ex­change and con­ges­tion at the coun­try’s ports.

For­eign cur­ren­cy short­ages are af­fect­ing ship­ment vol­umes be­cause im­porters and ex­porters need US dol­lars to set­tle ship­ping and lo­gis­tics costs. Some cus­tomers, de­spite gen­er­at­ing lo­cal busi­ness, strug­gle to ac­cess the hard cur­ren­cy need­ed to move their goods.

Jar­dine and UAL Al­liance project man­ag­er Mar­ti­jn Hordijk dis­cussed these chal­lenges.

Hordijk ex­plained that the com­pa­ny has been work­ing with its part­ners to help cus­tomers over­come the for­eign ex­change bot­tle­neck by fa­cil­i­tat­ing ac­cess to US dol­lars.

“What we have pro­vid­ed late­ly is that, in a con­sor­tium with our part­ners, we can get the hard cur­ren­cy, US dol­lars, to our clients and help them get the bills paid,” he said.

The arrange­ment is in­tend­ed to re­duce dis­rup­tions to car­go move­ments and sup­port cus­tomers who might oth­er­wise strug­gle to set­tle their ship­ping bills.

Port con­ges­tion is an­oth­er con­cern. Jar­dine high­light­ed that de­lays at port fa­cil­i­ties can af­fect how quick­ly cus­tomers re­ceive their con­tain­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly when car­go vol­umes are high.

He said the com­pa­ny meets with the two ports al­most week­ly to dis­cuss chal­lenges and work to­wards so­lu­tions.

Jar­dine al­so point­ed to the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­port mar­kets to raw ma­te­r­i­al short­ages and changes in en­er­gy prices.

“If it af­fects our cus­tomers, it will af­fect the line,” he said.

De­spite these chal­lenges, the com­pa­ny sees con­sid­er­able po­ten­tial in the south­ern Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly as en­er­gy in­vest­ment ac­cel­er­ates across the three mar­kets.

The Trinidad op­er­a­tion is the re­sult of a joint ven­ture be­tween Jar­dine and the own­er of the UAL Al­liance, whose orig­i­nal ship­ping busi­ness was es­tab­lished to ser­vice the west coast of Africa more than five decades ago. The joint ven­ture was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2025.

The de­ci­sion to es­tab­lish a pres­ence in Trinidad, Guyana and Suri­name, Jar­dine out­lined, came from recog­nis­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the emerg­ing en­er­gy mar­kets in the Caribbean and de­vel­op­ments that had tak­en place in Africa.

“The con­fi­dence was in the de­vel­op­ing mar­kets be­tween Trinidad, Guyana and Suri­name, in terms of the oil and gas booms ex­pect­ed in all three re­gions,” Jar­dine ex­plained.

He said the vi­sion was not sim­ply to in­tro­duce an­oth­er ship­ping ser­vice, but to bring in the ap­pro­pri­ate ves­sel for the ge­o­graph­i­cal and com­mer­cial re­quire­ments of the re­gion.

“The MV UAL Trans­porter can car­ry ap­prox­i­mate­ly 384 twen­ty-foot equiv­a­lent con­tain­ers, with a re­port­ed car­go ca­pac­i­ty of more than 7,100 tonnes. Its shal­low draft al­lows it to nav­i­gate riv­er ports in Guyana and Suri­name, pro­vid­ing ac­cess to lo­ca­tions that can be dif­fi­cult for larg­er con­ven­tion­al ves­sels.”

Man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­vide the foun­da­tion

Al­though oil and gas is cen­tral to UAL’s re­gion­al am­bi­tions, Jar­dine iden­ti­fied T&T’s man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­port in­dus­tries as the com­pa­ny’s strongest ex­ist­ing source of busi­ness, point­ing to the con­tri­bu­tion of lo­cal pro­duc­ers and ex­porters in sus­tain­ing the ser­vice.

The move­ment of lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts in­to Guyana and Suri­name has be­come an im­por­tant part of the op­er­a­tion, cre­at­ing a ship­ping con­nec­tion for busi­ness­es seek­ing to ac­cess mar­kets across the south­ern Caribbean.

“The ex­port mar­ket of T&T is our largest cus­tomer to Guyana and Suri­name at the mo­ment, and I think it will prob­a­bly re­main so,” he said.

That re­la­tion­ship is sig­nif­i­cant, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor not­ed, as T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers seek to ex­pand their re­gion­al foot­print, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mar­kets where grow­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty is cre­at­ing de­mand for con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, in­dus­tri­al sup­plies, con­sumer goods and oth­er man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts.

UAL’s ser­vice is de­signed to ac­com­mo­date both full con­tain­er loads and less-than-con­tain­er loads, along­side break­bulk ship­ments and spe­cialised project car­go.

The com­pa­ny is al­so look­ing be­yond the move­ment of goods with­in the Caribbean. Through the UAL Al­liance’s es­tab­lished net­work, the Trinidad op­er­a­tion is con­nect­ed to Eu­rope, the US Gulf, South Amer­i­ca and West Africa.

Jar­dine point­ed to the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to fa­cil­i­tate di­rect car­go move­ments be­tween Trinidad and Africa as an im­por­tant dis­tinc­tion in the mar­ket.

“We are the on­ly ship­ping line that comes through this area that han­dles break­bulk and has a di­rect call from here straight to Africa,” he said.

He cit­ed a re­cent ship­ment from Trinidad to Africa for an oil and gas cus­tomer, along­side the com­pa­ny’s in­volve­ment in trans­port­ing equip­ment and ma­te­ri­als for lo­cal en­er­gy projects.

Al­ready ser­vic­ing en­er­gy projects

Jar­dine dis­closed that the com­pa­ny had al­ready trans­port­ed a ma­jor com­pres­sor for Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration’s op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing equip­ment for its shore-base re­quire­ments. It has al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ed ship­ments of pipes for off­shore projects.

The com­pa­ny has more than 50 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the oil and gas ship­ping in­dus­try, with glob­al con­tracts in­volv­ing ma­jor en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

Jar­dine said es­tab­lish­ing a lo­cal pres­ence would strength­en those ex­ist­ing re­la­tion­ships and give cus­tomers ac­cess to ship­ping and lo­gis­tics sup­port clos­er to their op­er­a­tions.

He ex­plained that projects in­volv­ing Drag­on gas, as well as de­vel­op­ments as­so­ci­at­ed with the wider east­ern Venezue­lan off­shore basin, rep­re­sent po­ten­tial ar­eas of ac­tiv­i­ty for lo­gis­tics providers ca­pa­ble of han­dling com­plex car­go move­ments.

How­ev­er, Jar­dine fo­cused on UAL’s ex­ist­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties and the wider en­er­gy-sec­tor re­la­tion­ships al­ready es­tab­lished through its in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions.

Build­ing a nine-day re­gion­al ser­vice

Hordijk, the UAL Al­liance project man­ag­er, who has been as­sist­ing with the de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean shut­tle and the Trinidad op­er­a­tion, de­scribed the first year as an in­ten­sive ex­er­cise in­volv­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of com­mer­cial, tech­ni­cal and op­er­a­tional arrange­ments.

Work­ing with the lo­cal Trinidad team and agents in Guyana and Suri­name, the com­pa­ny de­vel­oped a nine-day ser­vice ro­ta­tion link­ing the three coun­tries.

Hordijk iden­ti­fied se­cur­ing long-term arrange­ments with ter­mi­nals, steve­dores and oth­er par­ties re­quired to keep the ves­sel op­er­at­ing as one of the most de­mand­ing as­pects.

The process al­so in­volved es­tab­lish­ing the sales and op­er­a­tional sys­tems need­ed to co­or­di­nate car­go move­ments across three dif­fer­ent mar­kets.

“It has been hard work, but with the team here lo­cal­ly in Trinidad and the agents in Guyana and Suri­name, we did a won­der­ful job in cre­at­ing a nine-day loop ser­vice and over­com­ing the hur­dles in­volved in set­ting up a new ship­ping line with­in the Caribbean,” he said.

The fixed ro­ta­tion is in­tend­ed to give cus­tomers greater pre­dictabil­i­ty when plan­ning ex­ports and im­ports, par­tic­u­lar­ly man­u­fac­tur­ers and busi­ness­es that de­pend on reg­u­lar car­go move­ments.

Hordijk said the com­pa­ny’s longer-term com­mit­ment was in­formed by its ex­pe­ri­ence in Africa, where UAL has op­er­at­ed since 1973.

The al­liance has con­tin­ued to de­vel­op its in­ter­na­tion­al pres­ence, in­clud­ing ex­pan­sion in­to East Africa, while iden­ti­fy­ing Brazil and the south­ern Caribbean as mar­kets with con­sid­er­able po­ten­tial.

“We have been in West Africa for more than 50 years. We nev­er backed out; we are evolv­ing in­to East Africa, and Brazil is one of the biggest up­com­ing coun­tries. Here in the Caribbean, we see Guyana, Suri­name and Trinidad as ma­jor play­ers for many years to come,” he said.

He added that the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al ex­pan­sion would not nec­es­sar­i­ly be con­fined to coun­tries ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an im­me­di­ate oil and gas boom.

Venezuela, giv­en its en­er­gy re­sources and in­ter­na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance, is among the neigh­bour­ing mar­kets that could present op­por­tu­ni­ties as con­di­tions evolve.

A longer-term Caribbean com­mit­ment

For Trinidad, the es­tab­lish­ment of the op­er­a­tion pro­vides an­oth­er con­nec­tion be­tween lo­cal ex­porters and re­gion­al mar­kets, while of­fer­ing en­er­gy com­pa­nies an ad­di­tion­al op­tion for mov­ing spe­cialised car­go.

The com­pa­ny’s one-year mile­stone was marked on Oc­to­ber 30 at its Trinidad of­fice at the D.S.M. Ware­house Com­plex, Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, Cou­va.

But the an­niver­sary rep­re­sents an ear­ly stage in a much larg­er com­mer­cial un­der­tak­ing.

Jar­dine’s fo­cus is on strength­en­ing the com­pa­ny’s cus­tomer base, par­tic­u­lar­ly among man­u­fac­tur­ers and en­er­gy-sec­tor busi­ness­es, while Hordijk is look­ing to­wards ex­tend­ing the al­liance’s foot­print in­to ad­di­tion­al mar­kets.