Business View Caribbean | Volume 9, Issue 3

25 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 9, ISSUE 3 either side with a hollow/insulated core. Thus far, Omega has undertaken many projects to date, ranging from low-middle income homes, office buildings, town house developments, and commercial institutional buildings. As part of the development process, they have also formulated a Hi-performance Cement Board “PolyROCK” which features increased flexural strength, along with excellent moisture resistance. PolyROCK contains no asbestos or biodegradable materials – thus making the panel long lasting, strong, and impact resistant. Mark Agostini, Managing Director of Omega Manufacturing, shares, “We are a family-run business at Omega. At one point, we were doing construction as well as manufacturing, but for various reasons we decided to go with manufacturing only, as it was beneficial to us already having the operation set up.” He explains that over the years they have experimented using different systems and imported various types of board products. As a result, they eventually settled on using a steel- framed and cement board system, and set up a plant in Trinidad, to start manufacturing and selling. At the company’s in-house lab, testing is done every single day. Especially during COVID lockdowns, they were doing heavy research and development about various ways to innovate and become more competitive on the market. Omega tried a variety of different additives when developing PolyROCK, as they needed to create a product based on a majority of materials available in Trinidad – which may be different than what manufacturers in the U.S. have, versus manufacturers in Central America or China. Agostini explains, “They all vary a little bit and we’re trying to compete with those factories. COVID definitely hampered our progress, but we are on a steady path to achieve what we set out to do. The majority of our raw materials for the PolyROCK cement board manufacturing process are locally sourced, but we do have to OMEGA MANUFACTUR ING L IMI TED