Af­ter craft­ing a match-win­ning maid­en Test cen­tu­ry against Bangladesh on Sat­ur­day, West In­dies crick­eter Justin Greaves spoke about the im­por­tance of pos­i­tive in­tent. More im­por­tant­ly, he stressed that be­ing pos­i­tive wasn’t al­ways about get­ting max­i­mum re­turns all the time, but rather putting things in place to con­tin­ue to build the in­nings.

He said, “Pos­i­tive doesn’t mean hit­ting bound­aries all the time. Pos­i­tive for me means leav­ing the ball well, look­ing to get the sin­gles and ob­vi­ous­ly if there’s a bad ball, hav­ing the in­tent to put it away,” Greaves said.

At the open­ing of Nu Wave Au­to­mo­tive’s 28,000-square fa­cil­i­ty in El So­cor­ro South, Nu Wave man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Michael Sealey, dropped his own crick­et ref­er­ence while dis­cussing the chal­lenges his busi­ness faced with re­gard to for­eign ex­change.

“I am sure we are well aware of the forex chal­lenges that busi­ness­es face. And while this has been a clear and present dan­ger for busi­ness­es like our­selves, we have no in­ten­tion to sit in the pavil­ion and ob­serve,” said Sealey, dur­ing his speech at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty.

“We are not com­plain­ing. So we un­der­stand Trinidad has lim­it­ed forex. We’re not mak­ing as much as we used to in the past. So, we now have to be cre­ative and look out­side of Trinidad to solve that prob­lem, and that’s what we’re do­ing to be able to con­tin­ue to have pre­mi­um prod­ucts,” Sealey told the Busi­ness Guardian when asked about the com­pa­ny’s in­vest­ment strat­e­gy amid the for­eign ex­change chal­lenges.

“We keep search­ing. We go to every trade show con­tin­u­ous­ly, every year to find part­ners with qual­i­ty prod­ucts that we could now re­ly on to be able to keep our stan­dard where it’s sup­posed to be,” he said.

In­deed, Sealey show­cased two oth­er as­pects of good bats­man­ship which can be trans­lat­ed to good busi­ness: the im­por­tance of build­ing part­ner­ships and al­so the abil­i­ty to pick the gaps. The com­pa­ny has built re­la­tion­ships at these trade show events which have pro­vid­ed the ful­crum for its ex­pan­sion in both the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

Af­ter at­tend­ing a trade mis­sion in 2023, Nu Wave be­came the lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor of Pe­ru­vian bat­tery line En­er­jet, Sealey ex­plained that this part­ner­ship not on­ly gave him a lane to ex­pand the com­pa­ny’s reach in the lo­cal mar­ket, but now through that part­ner­ship, the com­pa­ny is look­ing be­yond the Caribbean.

It has plans in place to set up a bat­tery as­sem­bly plant in Ghana. That op­por­tu­ni­ty al­so came about af­ter at­tend­ing the trade mis­sion to Ghana, led by Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon in March of this year.

“The ini­tial pur­pose of that trade mis­sion was to dis­trib­ute our bat­ter­ies in­to Ghana. But af­ter hav­ing a meet­ing with the deputy trade min­is­ter, he high­light­ed the fact that every­body im­ports, there’s no man­u­fac­tur­ing or as­sem­bly in the coun­try. So we de­cid­ed, okay, that may be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be the first. So we con­sult­ed with our part­ners, and they were ex­cit­ed about it be­cause they sup­ply us with every­thing. So now we’re go­ing to start as­sem­bly in Ghana very soon,” said Sealey.

He an­nounced dur­ing the open­ing that the Ghana plant is set to be opened in 2025.

This point was sup­port­ed by Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, who ar­rived af­ter the rib­bon cut­ting to tour the fa­cil­i­ty.

“Nu Wave joined us on the trade mis­sion to Ghana ear­li­er this year, and they were con­sid­ered one of the small busi­ness­es I know. But now I think they’ve head­ed in­to the medi­um cat­e­go­ry, for sure,” said Gopee-Scoon.

“There’s this now, this new busi­ness on the hori­zon, the as­sem­bly of bat­ter­ies. Ghana is a huge mar­ket, and so even if you get half per cent of the pop­u­la­tion be­hind you, there’s busi­ness.”

Sealey ex­plained his ex­pan­sion plans did not stop there as he al­so an­nounced the in­ten­tion to de­vel­op a Nu Wave au­to­mo­tive fran­chise across the Caribbean.

“We are al­so in talks to in­tro­duce our fran­chise mod­el, first­ly to St Lu­cia and then to St Vin­cent in the first in­stance,” said Sealey, who ex­plained that this was part of the com­pa­ny’s ef­fort to cir­cum­vent the cur­rent for­eign ex­change chal­lenges while al­so find­ing new ways to fund new in­vest­ments.

“We are now ex­pand­ing in­to the Caribbean, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, Bar­ba­dos Grena­da. They don’t have as much for­eign ex­change is­sues as we do. So, we are es­tab­lish­ing busi­ness­es there so that will help us be able to con­tin­ue do­ing what we’re do­ing, be­cause we de­pend on for­eign ex­change. Every­thing we do, we have to im­port. So that our strat­e­gy now is to get in­to the Caribbean and sort out that for­eign ex­change is­sue,” said Sealey.

De­spite hav­ing eyes on the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket, Sealey ex­plained that the new El So­cor­ro fa­cil­i­ty was be­ing set up to ad­dress a cur­rent short­com­ing in the lo­cal in­dus­try.

He ex­plained that while both the im­por­ta­tion and sale of hy­brid and elec­tric ve­hi­cles had been on the rise, the num­ber of cer­ti­fied spe­cial­ists for the re­pair and main­te­nance of those ve­hi­cles was fair­ly low.

“If I’m to be hon­est, the rea­son that so much hy­brids are be­ing sold is be­cause there are no du­ties on hy­brid ve­hi­cles, so it’s a cheap­er op­tion. And more com­pa­nies now, be­cause of the re­stric­tions with emis­sions and man­ag­ing emis­sions, are in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in hy­brid and elec­tric. I think the prob­lem we see here is that the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to deal with those ve­hi­cles is lack­ing,” said Sealey.

“That is where we are now go­ing to be, that shin­ing force in hav­ing that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, not just for our­selves, but be­ing able to cer­ti­fy oth­er tech­ni­cians so that they could re­al­ly work on peo­ple’s ve­hi­cle in the right way,” he said.

“Our mis­sion is to change the par­a­digm in the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try,” he said, adding that the in­dus­try has changed.

“It is now pure­ly tech­ni­cal. You now have to un­der­stand com­put­ers, and be able to do di­ag­nos­tics. What we have re­alised is the ve­hi­cles ac­tu­al­ly tell you what is wrong with them and what we have re­alised is there are no in­sti­tu­tions in Trinidad that train per­sons and cer­ti­fy them at the high lev­el.”

Sealey said Nu Wave aims to get cer­ti­fied by the UK-based In­sti­tute of the Mo­tor In­dus­try by the first quar­ter of 2025, al­low­ing the fa­cil­i­ty to be not just a ser­vice cen­tre but al­so a train­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

The new Nu Wave Au­to­mo­tive fa­cil­i­ty will of­fer com­pre­hen­sive au­to­mo­tive ser­vices in­clud­ing tyres, align­ment, sus­pen­sion, au­to air-con­di­tion­ing ser­vic­ing and re­pairs, elec­tri­cal, clean­ing, de­tail­ing, and fleet man­age­ment.

The fa­cil­i­ty is al­so set to pro­vide AI-dri­ven so­lu­tions such as fleet main­te­nance tools and in­no­v­a­tive di­ag­nos­tic tech­nol­o­gy, while al­so act­ing as a ware­house and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre for En­er­jet Bat­ter­ies.

It is Nu Wave’s third lo­ca­tion, af­ter open­ing branch­es at Stone Street, Port-of-Spain and in Pe­tit Bourg along the East­ern Main road.