(Trinidad Guardian) A decade and a half ago, Terry Ortt turned an extraordinarily long wait into a revolutionary business, which he hopes will continue to lead by example within the T&T manufacturing sector.
He is aiming to turn his company, Domus Windows & Doors into a generator of foreign exchange by 2025.
It would represent another evolution of the company, which is a Caribbean-based manufacturer of UPVC (unplasticised polyvinyl chloride) windows and doors that has invested over $70 million into T&T.
“Well, it started when I ordered some PVC windows and doors in Antigua, many, many years ago, and it took me six months to get the windows and two years to get the doors. And I thought, goodness, these are good products, but there’s got to be a better way of doing this,” said Ortt, of his decision to start Domus Windows & Doors Limited in 2007.
At that time, he was attempting to get the business going in Antigua, but circumstances took him elsewhere.
“We were going to start in Antigua. We ended up actually starting in St Kitts, because they had a building available. And so it’s been a steady progression since then. We started off with some very basic units. We now have seven different product lines. We have 1,000 different configurations, and we have the highest hurricane standards in the world. We’ve come quite a long way,” Ortt in an interview with the Business Guardian on Monday.
“So anyway, I started the business in 2007 and we moved the factory here to Trinidad, in Chaguanas, at the beginning of 2018,” said the Domus CEO, who was born in Canada.
Last month, Domus Windows & Doors Ltd took another major step. However in this case it wasn’t a move but rather an expansion as it launched operations in Jamaica. The company took a look at Jamaica’s construction and home improvement industry as a promising avenue that it had to explore.
In a press release ahead of the launch, the company noted, “Jamaica’s construction sector has experienced significant growth in recent years, particularly in urban areas such as Kingston, Montego Bay, and Ocho Rios, driven by both private and public investments. The introduction of Domus aligns with ongoing projects aimed at improving housing infrastructure, commercial development, and even tourism-related facilities. The company’s leadership sees Jamaica as the ideal market for its product offerings, with local architects, builders, and homeowners expressing increasing interest in high-quality, energy-efficient materials.”
In the interview, Ortt explained that the company had simply examined the potential of the Jamaican market and took a leap of faith, albeit a weighed one.
Asked how the opportunity to expand into the north Caribbean country presented itself, Ortt said, “There was no real opportunity. We actually just felt it was a very vibrant market, very robust in terms of construction, larger than Trinidad probably two to three times the size. And so we just jumped on a plane and we started doing exploration. It was not easy,” said Ortt, of the Jamaica launch.
So far, the gamble has appeared to take off.
“Well, we’ve been received very well by the clientele. They seem to speak well of our product lines, the professionalism that we show, and so on. So we’ve started getting orders rolling in almost from the get-go,” he said.
It fell in line with the company’s focus beyond T&T, as Ortt explained that while the company had enjoyed significant success in the domestic market, in the past year it has placed further emphasis on exports and expansion.
“In Saint Kitts, the domestic market was very small, so when we came to Trinidad, we focused on the domestic market for some number of years, but in the last three or four years, we’ve been focusing on exports a lot more. To the point now where our exports match our domestic market revenues, and we hope to change that quite dramatically, and in terms of probably be three times exports relative to one domestic,” said Ortt, adding that pushing the export market had become all the more crucial given the foreign exchange situation in T&T.
Ortt said a few years ago, the company had to rely on the Eximbank for foreign exchange, but as it has since improved its position significantly with regard to foreign exchange.
“A couple of years ago, we were quite reliant on the Eximbank for forex. And luckily, they were there at a very critical time for us, so we’ve now been able to grow to the point where we expect to be a net foreign exchange generator by probably the end of next year,” said Ortt.
He was hopeful that other members of the manufacturing sector would take steps to improve foreign exchange generation amid the declining returns of the energy sector. However, he admitted that his company had benefitted from its growing reputation across the islands for the provision of products that have been able to withstand the severe impact of adverse weather conditions as a result of climate change.
“We’ve had other manufacturers come along and they tell us that we’re probably the most sophisticated manufacturer in the entire Caribbean, regardless of what industry. I guess the point I would make is that we use technology a lot, and I think that the manufacturing sector is now moving in that direction. And that is a very positive thing for the whole sector,” said Ortt.
He lamented that lack of attention paid to climate change and its impact on the business sector in particular.
“We find that there’s very little interest in hurricane products generally. But there are a certain number of people, and certainly in a large market, we’ll get enough business in that area. So certain people search us out because of those standards. By and large, though, I think hurricane risk is largely ignored, I think, to the detriment of the Caribbean,’ he said.
Ortt said he had been trying to help in that regard.
“There’s a real lack of knowledge. So I’ve been doing a lot of education. On June 26 for instance, I had a training session for the Jamaican Architects Association, and as a professional engineer, a big part of my focus is to educate people on hurricane risk and also how to prevent it,” said Ortt.
While the Jamaican expansion has seen early positive indicators, Ortt said the company had not yet considered pushing expansion further just yet. He explained that for now the company’s focus would be the development of its business in Jamaica.