GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Re­ceiv­ing a Life­time Achieve­ment Award from the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) was both hum­bling and un­ex­pect­ed for busi­ness­man Nicholas Lok Jack, who de­scribed the recog­ni­tion as a tes­ta­ment to decades of work ded­i­cat­ed to busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and na­tion­al growth.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing the award pre­sen­ta­tion, which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency last Thurs­day, Lok Jack, chair­man of As­so­ci­at­ed Brands In­dus­tries, said the ho­n­our car­ried spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance be­cause it came from his peers in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

“I think it’s a very pres­ti­gious award. To be award­ed a Life­time Achieve­ment Award ab­solute­ly blows my mind,” he said, adding, “It’s a tes­ta­ment to what you work for all the time, and it’s good to be recog­nised from the out­side. I don’t think we do it for the recog­ni­tion. We do it for what we do, we do it for our coun­try, and it’s good that an or­gan­i­sa­tion like TTMA would recog­nise me. It’s very hum­bling as well,” he said.

Be­yond re­flect­ing on the award, Lok Jack al­so ad­dressed for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, one of the most press­ing is­sues fac­ing lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and ex­porters.

He said his com­pa­ny’s strong ex­port per­for­mance has en­abled it to gen­er­ate its own for­eign ex­change, which is then re­cir­cu­lat­ed in­to its op­er­a­tions and in­vest­ments.

“Be­cause of the vast amount of ex­ports and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness we do, we earn our own for­eign ex­change, which we’re able to re­cir­cu­late in­to the econ­o­my,” he ex­plained, adding that this al­lows the com­pa­ny to buy its own raw ma­te­ri­als and in­crease the ve­loc­i­ty of the busi­ness.

Lok Jack not­ed that the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to rein­vest both at home and abroad, chan­nelling re­sources in­to fac­to­ries, dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works, em­ploy­ees and sup­port ser­vices across T&T.

He point­ed to a man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty es­tab­lished in Colom­bia dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic as an ex­am­ple of the com­pa­ny’s long-term growth strat­e­gy. Ac­cord­ing to Lok Jack, the op­er­a­tion has per­formed strong­ly and it high­light­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able in larg­er re­gion­al mar­kets.

“Through COVID, we built a fac­to­ry in Colom­bia, and it’s do­ing re­al­ly well. “It’s a dif­fer­ent scale when you go in­to a coun­try like Colom­bia with 50 mil­lion peo­ple,” he said.

Look­ing ahead, he said fur­ther ex­pan­sion in­to Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca re­mains un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.

Lok Jack al­so ac­knowl­edged the grow­ing un­cer­tain­ty fac­ing in­ter­na­tion­al trade, in­clud­ing ris­ing freight costs, chang­ing ship­ping routes and evolv­ing trade poli­cies. In re­sponse, he said busi­ness­es must re­main ag­ile and adapt­able.

“We have to live in the en­vi­ron­ment and work in it,” he said, adding, “We have to be fleet of foot, quick and able to change our strate­gies quick­ly.”

He al­so called for re­newed ef­forts to pur­sue free trade agree­ments and en­cour­aged lo­cal com­pa­nies to move be­yond ex­port­ing in­to over­seas in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, ar­gu­ing that in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion could help busi­ness­es achieve ex­po­nen­tial growth while strength­en­ing their re­silience in an in­creas­ing­ly volatile glob­al econ­o­my.

In 2017, Lok Jack’s fa­ther, Arthur, was the re­cip­i­ent of the TTMA’s Life­time Achieve­ment Award.