The Brass, Aluminum and Cast Iron Foundry (BACIF) celebrates its 51st year of service to Guyana’s manufacturing sector with numerous absorbing stories to tell about its critical role in keeping the wheels of industry turning through difficult years and, in the process, making a largely unsung but vital contribution to Guyana’s economy.
Changing economic circumstances and the decline in the fortunes of what was perhaps the company’s most valued customer has served to change its own circumstances. Still, BACIF remains the best equipped foundry in Guyana, still capable of smelting, and casting key industrial machine parts, waiting for new opportunities to place its skills at the disposal of local and regional business enterprises.
For more than 30 years BACIF had found its best customers in the bauxite and sugar industries, a circumstance which the company’s General Manager Peter Pompey says resulted in “highs and lows occurring in consonance with the economic environment”. In parochial parlance, whenever the sugar and bauxite industries sneezed BACIF caught a cold.
The good years began to turn bad in the early 1990s when demand for components for steam boilers, locomotives, pumps, power generators, kilns, conveyors, draglines and other heavy equipment contracted sharply. The circumstances compelled the company to re-tool its foundry and workshops and to seek external markets in Barbados, Jamaica and Suriname. The move paid off, so much so that by 2008 BACIF had made a sufficiently significant impression to have been recognized by the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) for its work in “effectively penetrating the Caribbean market, for production and supply of industrial pumps, mill bearings and other spare parts.” Prior to the GMSA award BACIF had been recognized in 2006 for its “pioneering efforts in manufacturing complete vacuum pumps”.
Pompey says that while the momentum appears to be taking Guyana in the direction of becoming a service-driven economy, “we in the manufacturing industry believe strongly that this sector ought to be nurtured if we are to reduce importation expenditure and expand the market”. He believes that in previous years “Guyana had done pretty well servicing its own development in critical engineering areas and there is every good reason to take us back to this position of moderate self-sufficiency.”
In this context he recalls the 1986 award to BACIF of the President’s Private Sector award for its contribution to saving the country vital foreign exchange by manufacturing components for machinery that would otherwise had to have been imported. He believes that increasing costs renders self-reliance even more important today in an age of uncertain global economic circumstances.
Remaining competitive
BACIF has been best known for smelting bronze, aluminium and cast iron metals, shaping and machining the castings to produce components (as large as one-tonne vacuum and molasses pumps) to exact specifications. Over time, the company has built a fully equipped machine shop with milling, line boring and larger lathes able to machine complex gears and other components.
While he concedes that the company’s journey has been strewn with challenges Pompey says BACIF has retained its “insistence on high quality, on-time delivery, competitive pricing and good after-sales service.”
Since 1974, when the company’s founder, the late Claude Geddes joined two other businesses, a furniture manufacturing establishment run by Pierre Sampson and Wood Products exporter Walter Davis’s (WALVIS) to create a mini industrial estate in West Ruimveldt, BACIF has been playing ‘big brother’ in its host community, donating to infrastructural development and financially supporting the two schools in the immediate vicinity – the West Ruimveldt Primary and David Rose Secondary schools.
Outstanding National Grade Six Assessment students receive BACIF bursaries every year. Needy children are provided supplies, all in the name of Claude Geddes. He began this tradition in the 1980s and the current management has retained it and has thrown in annual Christmas parties for children and the elderly. Each year, youths from the area are invited to join the company’s 30-month apprenticeship skills training programme or its six-month trainee programme.
In the 1970s BACIF was designated Master Trainer by the Board of Industrial Training (BIT). In effect, BACIF was authorized to conduct its own apprenticeship programmes and train youths in the industrial arts and basic remedial education. The company looks to the community for talent which it seeks to mould, creating skilled artisans and craftsmen. Other apprentices come from as far away as the East Coast and West Coast Demerara. That 40 per cent of its employees have served the company for more than 16 years, is a tribute to a convivial working environment.
Where it all began
BACIF owes its origins to Claude Geddes, a man who many believe remains one of Guyana’s outstanding businessmen and who, for most of his adult years, placed his trade at the disposal of his country. Pompey says Geddes acquired his skills in metal casting during a stint at the Department of Transport in the 1950s. With the support of three colleagues he established a small artisan-type establishment in 1959 in Thomas Street, Kitty. From its humble beginnings manufacturing coal pots, frying pans, caharis, roti pans, outdoor cooking pots, horse shoes, and brake shoes for automated vehicles and equipment, BACIF established linkages with the bauxite industry, the Georgetown Water & Sewerage Commissioners (now GWI) and the Transport & Harbours Department. Later, the sugar industry saw the need for the company’s services. Requests for new and replacement components for factories and field equipment continually challenged the expertise of Geddes and his partners. Huge components such as trunion bearings, pumps, impellers, and parts for 20-tonne draglines remain some of BACIF’s noteworthy engineering feats.
Increased demand for BACIF’s services gave rise to the need for expansion beyond the limited premises of Thomas Street, Kitty. The partners purchased Lots 9 to 11 West Ruimveldt and constructed a more modern foundry. Three more lots were subsequently added to enable the creation of areas specially equipped to undertake design and pattern, machine welding and fabrication. More facilities meant an expanded product range and new markets.
The global oil ‘shock’ of the 1970s and the decision by government to significantly reduce imports into the country was to have a significant impact on BACIF’s operations. At the same time, as the country looked inward for solutions it found a willing partner in BACIF.
In the absence of foreign exchange with which to acquire imported goods the company became the main supplier of engineering castings and spares for much of Guyana’s industrial sector. Indeed, BACIF earned a reputation as the company that led the way in the quest to realize import substitution, and, along with the then Guyana National Engineering Corporation, ensured that the wheels of industry continued to turn despite the crisis confronting the country.
Having once relied on imported spares in times of plenty, it was during this period that the sugar industry and, subsequently, the hapless Guyana Electricity Corporation turned to BACIF.
For his service to Guyana, Claude Geddes secured national recognition. That apart, his concern for the interests of the people of the community where he established his enterprise led to his entry into the nation’s parliament. It was a fitting reward for a life spent in the service of his country.
