The Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum (CIF), which is sched­uled to be held here next month, pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­vestors to ex­plore the ex­tra­or­di­nary op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Caribbean re­gion.

This from Ralph Birk­hoff, a se­nior of­fi­cial of a US-based spe­cialised ad­vi­so­ry firm that fo­cus­es on high qual­i­ty, as­set-based en­er­gy in­vest­ments in the Unit­ed States and the Caribbean.

Birk­hoff, of Alqui­mi Re­new­ables LLC, said that the re­gion is ripe for in­vest­ment in sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly cli­mate-re­silient pro­tect­ed agri­cul­ture and in­te­grat­ed re­new­able en­er­gy sys­tems.

The CIF will be held in Port-of-Spain from No­vem­ber 8-11. It is be­ing or­gan­ised by the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T gov­ern­ment, the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), the Eu­ro­pean Union, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank, and the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agen­cies .

The or­gan­is­ers said the fo­rum will pro­vide po­ten­tial in­vestors with in­for­ma­tion and di­rect ac­cess to lead­ers through­out the re­gion who are cre­at­ing the in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions the re­gion needs and that savvy in­vestors can ben­e­fit from fi­nan­cial­ly.

“Af­ter hav­ing lived in the re­gion for over a decade, and be­ing from Cana­da, I re­alised that many of these fresh pro­duce cat­e­gories have to be im­port­ed as there is not the agri­cul­tur­al in­fra­struc­ture here to ser­vice the lo­cal de­mand with the types of fresh, healthy, de­li­cious pro­duce we’re ac­cus­tomed to in more de­vel­oped mar­kets,” Birk­hoff said.

He said his com­pa­ny is col­lab­o­rat­ing with lo­cal, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment in­ter­ests in the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion and ex­pan­sion of Green­house Farm Projects un­der the two brands. Is­land Grow­ers Caribbean and BerryCove Or­gan­ic Farms, T&T’s first com­mer­cial­ly scaled cli­mate-smart hy­dro­pon­ic green­house farm.

Alqui­mi and their in­vestor part­ners are adding to food se­cu­ri­ty in T&T, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and Bar­ba­dos, with plans to ex­pand in 2023 to Guyana, St Lu­cia, Ja­maica, and the Ba­hamas.

He said Alqui­mi, like many en­tre­pre­neur­ial com­pa­nies build­ing so­lu­tions for the Caribbean, notes that the tough­est part of the de­vel­op­ment process of this new green­house tech­nol­o­gy, was get­ting in­vestors to un­der­stand that this is un­chart­ed ter­ri­to­ry in this re­gion.

“For in­stance we were the first ap­pli­cant ever to re­ceive per­mis­sion to im­port live berry plant stock from Eu­rope in­to Trinidad”.

“Be­ing trans­par­ent with in­vestors is im­por­tant. Every­thing we’re do­ing is quite new to the re­gion. We’re in­tro­duc­ing new tech­nolo­gies and en­gi­neer­ing so­lu­tions at every turn be­cause of the re­gion’s unique weath­er and cli­mate con­di­tions.

“While these same tech­nolo­gies can be ex­pand­ed to ar­eas that are less prone to threat­en­ing trop­i­cal storms, they still need to be en­gi­neered for the most ex­treme lo­cal en­vi­ron­ments. We nev­er know when a Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm is go­ing to take aim at our fa­cil­i­ties – on­ly that some­day they will,” Birk­hoff added.

Birk­hoff, who will be among the speak­ers at the CIF, said the rev­enue ex­pec­ta­tions from ex­pand­ed agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion for this re­gion are im­pres­sive.

“Pro­vid­ing this re­gion with ad­di­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty and help­ing to de­vel­op re­new­able en­er­gy so­lu­tions the re­gion needs for the next cen­tu­ry, are not on­ly key to the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment, but are out­stand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­vestors to re­al­ize a sol­id re­turn while mak­ing a last­ing dif­fer­ence for the peo­ple,” he added. -- CMC