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Sunday, June 22, 2025

Minister lauds SM Jaleel’s century of business

by

251 days ago
20241014
Chairman of SM Jaleel, Dr Aleem Mohammed and his wife Anna with Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon atthe company’s 100th Anniversary and Long Service awards ceremony at Achievors Banquet Hall in San Fernando.

Chairman of SM Jaleel, Dr Aleem Mohammed and his wife Anna with Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon atthe company’s 100th Anniversary and Long Service awards ceremony at Achievors Banquet Hall in San Fernando.

Sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon has heaped praise on lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er SM Jaleel for con­tribut­ing to T&T’s ex­ports over the 100 years of its ex­is­tence.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the com­pa­ny’s 100th an­niver­sary and Long Ser­vice Awards at Achie­vors Ban­quet Hall, in San Fer­nan­do, Gopee-Scoon high­light­ed the im­pres­sive growth in the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor over the past decade, par­tic­u­lar­ly in food and bev­er­age ex­ports.

She said be­tween 2015 and 2023, food and bev­er­age ex­ports rose from $2.1 bil­lion to $3.2 bil­lion, with non-al­co­holic bev­er­age ex­ports in­creas­ing by $188 mil­lion dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

“SM Jaleel emerged as a ma­jor play­er, ac­count­ing for 12 per cent of the coun­try’s food and bev­er­age ex­ports in 2023,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon not­ed that SM Jaleel ex­ports to over 65 coun­tries, with Caribbean mar­kets be­ing the largest.

“The top five des­ti­na­tions for SM Jaleel prod­ucts are Ja­maica, Guyana, Suri­name, Bar­ba­dos, and St Lu­cia, which to­geth­er rep­re­sent over 80 per cent of to­tal ex­ports from 2019 to 2024,” she added.

The min­is­ter at­trib­uted the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess to its com­mit­ment to con­stant im­prove­ment and in­no­va­tion.

She said SM Jaleel was the first in the Caribbean to man­u­fac­ture hot fill PET bot­tles and the first glob­al­ly to mar­ket fruit juices in two-piece alu­mini­um cans us­ing ni­tro­gen.

Af­firm­ing the gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing busi­ness­es of all sizes, Gopee-Scoon said the gov­ern­ment has fa­cil­i­tat­ed trade mis­sions and es­tab­lished com­mer­cial of­fices to as­sist com­pa­nies in nav­i­gat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

“The new Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zones (SEZ) regime aims to at­tract in­vest­ments across T&T, with SM Jaleel’s in­vest­ment at the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate be­ing a no­table ex­am­ple,” she said.

The min­is­ter rec­og­nized the ef­forts of all em­ploy­ees who con­tributed to SM Jaleel’s suc­cess over the past 100 years.

She high­light­ed the im­por­tance of the long ser­vice awards which ho­n­our the ded­i­ca­tion of staff who have helped build the brand. She al­so not­ed the launch of SM Jaleel’s new in­tern­ship pro­gramme which aims to re­tain young tal­ent and in­spire fu­ture lead­ers.

As she con­grat­u­lat­ed SM Jaleel on its 100 years of busi­ness, call­ing it a source of na­tion­al pride, Gopee-Scoon em­pha­sized the rar­i­ty of com­pa­nies that last a cen­tu­ry, cit­ing sta­tis­tics from the US Bu­reau of Labour Sta­tis­tics.

She ac­knowl­edged that SM Jaleel stands along­side oth­er cor­po­ra­tions cel­e­brat­ing their cen­te­nar­ies, in­clud­ing Dole, Du­ra­cell, Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er, Si­mon & Schus­ter, and Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios.

She al­so com­mend­ed the lead­er­ship of Dr Aleem Mo­hammed, Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer An­na Mo­hammed, and the ex­ec­u­tive team for their in­flu­ence on the na­tion’s man­u­fac­tur­ing land­scape.


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