T&T be­came the home of the first ever Con­stru­ra­ma Hard­ware Store to be opened in an Eng­lish speak­ing coun­try fol­low­ing the un­veil­ing of Con­stru­ra­ma On The Line Gen­er­al Hard­ware on Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 10.

Con­stru­ra­ma is a brand­ed net­work of in­de­pen­dent­ly owned build­ing ma­te­ri­als re­tail stores un­der the um­brel­la of CE­MEX , the group which owns Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed.

The Con­stru­ra­ma will pro­vide sup­port to lo­cal­ly owned busi­ness­es by al­low­ing use of its im­age and brand name.

CE­MEX TCL’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Guiller­mo Ro­jo de Diego said this de­vel­op­ment would serve as a boost to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­struc­tion in­dus­try and econ­o­my. He called for more lo­cal hard­ware to take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be part of the VIP Club and glob­al net­work pro­vid­ed by Con­stru­ra­ma.

Ash­ton Ram­per­sad, the own­er of On The Line Gen­er­al Hard­ware, said he was pleased to be the first hard­ware store in an Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­try to part of the Con­stru­ra­ma net­work. He said, “I de­cid­ed to join Con­stru­ra­ma as I be­lieve it is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for my busi­ness to part­ner with CE­MEX, a glob­al leader in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try who can tru­ly sup­port us and help us to im­prove and grow. Be­ing part of Con­stru­ra­ma, we would now be able to be­come more dig­i­tized, cus­tomer-ori­ent­ed, and sus­tain­able, re­duce our ex­pens­es, in­crease our prof­its and ex­pe­ri­ence a range of ben­e­fits.”

Over 2,700 hard­ware stores are a part of the Con­stru­ra­ma net­work with stores in Mex­i­co, Colom­bia, and oth­er Cen­tral, and South Amer­i­can coun­tries.

Ce­mex said it ex­pects that more than 100 lo­cal hard­ware stores will be part of the Con­stru­ra­ma net­work soon.