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E&T Industries-Pasta makes the Company |
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Saturday, 01 July 2006 |
Quality, Quality, Quality Quality, price and service, these are the weapons Mr. Ernest Neckles intends to use to ensure the survival of his business in what is a very testing period for manufacturing in Grenada. Quality, price and service, these are the weapons Mr. Ernest Neckles intends to use to ensure the survival of his business in what is a very testing period for manufacturing in Grenada.
Neckles, owner and Manager of E&T Industries, manufacturers of pasta products, said the local market is flooded with items such as he produces, you can get them anywhere but the qualities he described are ones you cannot get everyday and that is where he has an advantage.
Established in 1984, E&T industries started out producing elbow macaroni then moved on to other related goods like twists, shells and jumbo, not much has changed since.
Neckles explained, “price is what we have uppermost and the fact that we produce fresh products on a regular basis”. He said his quality is on par with the others on the market and the fact that he produces locally means the products reach the consumer fresher than the competition’s.
The manufacturer sees little opportunity for his sector in the CARICOM Single market and Economy (CSME) scenario saying there is ample reason for despair since there is no way that little businesses like his can compete against similar businesses from the More Developed Countries (MDC’s).
Neckles said “we just can’t compete. They have the advantages of raw materials on spot, lower cost in terms of electricity etc. and they have a much bigger market.”
He thinks the coming into being of CSME will leave little opportunity for expansion of his business because the market will be flooded with goods from mainly Trinidad whom, according to him it is impossible to compete against since they have everything in their favor. Although Neckles’ plant has the capacity to produce 1,500 lbs of pasta per day, at present he is manufacturing just 1,000 lbs per day because of the presence of so many other brands on the market.
However, he said as people get used to the National Reconstruction Levy they are getting a little more comfortable with their spending and therefore sales have shown a gradual increase and if this increase maintains it will be necessary to raise production back up to 1,200 or 1,500 lbs per day. This would be a much more economically viable and comfortable state of affairs.
In Neckles’ opinion, the manufacturing sector of Grenada’s economy is negatively affected by a number of factors; the fact that we are small and don’t have economies of scale, the high cost of utilities and his feeling that workers are not as efficient and competitive as they are in other places.
2005 was a good year for E&T Industries since as a result of the hurricane there were very little imports and the other local manufacturers were out of business. The manager thinks if his company can get back to a financial situation like that it will be good for his establishment.
However, with all the developments taking place in the new and changing business landscape Neckles has no intention of investing large sums of money in an industry that is so strongly challenged from outside.
From a local point of view, Neckles thinks his share of the market is assured if he continues doing what he is doing. He said a lot of people who went to other suppliers are gradually coming back to E&T because the company has been there all the time and always producing. He tries to serve everybody all the time so gradually people come back.
The long time manufacturer at the moment doesn’t consider the prospect of diverting into other fields of endeavor but prefers to stick with what he knows. He will do what he is doing and if it fails then he may just have to close down.
Neckles does not see the pasta market in Grenada growing since everything is coming from outside. He said the way things are, ideally Grenada shouldn’t even be manufacturing but should be buying and marketing products that other people send to us.
The manager said that at the time he started to manufacture which was in the 1980’s, it was encouraged. Persons were given concessions restriction on importsalthough this one was never fully implementedand all sorts of incentives to encourage them to go into manufacturing.
This is not possible now though in the new regional single market arrangement. Neckles said the CSME is opening up the Caribbean to products from the MDC’s and the OECS has nothing to export back to them therefore it is a one way street.
What can government do to help manufacturers in this critical period? “They should identify manufacturing entities that might be able to survive and concentrate on helping them but to try to help manufacturing generally would only be a temporary measure because eventually the same thing would happen again.”
Neckles thinks big companies like the Grenada Breweries and Caribbean Agro Industries might be able to survive because they have the technology and the know how but for small people he doesn’t see much future. 
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