Business View Caribbean | Volume 9, Issue 3

27 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 9, ISSUE 3 OMEGA MANUFACTUR ING L IMI TED even though they were shut down. As Agostini acknowledges, “Because good people are hard to find.” In terms of facilities, they have two warehouses and a head office. One warehouse is totally dedicated to manufacturing the PolyROCK cement board, with the machinery and the drying rooms located there. All the equipment and the raw materials are stored in that building. The other building is for manufacturing steel and doing fabricating work; roll forming and assembling. A couple of other small products are done on that side as well, such as aluminum light frames for ceilings. Omega also recently started producing joint compounds to go with PolyROCK cement board for jointing and finishing, as well as tape for the joints. “It’s very rewarding for our team to do the research and come up with those solutions,” says Agostini. “Along with PolyROCK cement board and the steel framed housing, we have some really low cost systems that we’re working on, because the price of housing here in Trinidad and Tobago is out of reach for a majority of the population. So we’re trying to work on the low cost systems so that people have a place to live – an alternative to using blocks and something a little bit more affordable. So it is rewarding in that sense.” He adds, “The average person could come to us, tell us what they want, and we could design a steel framed house for them. We also work with developers, Habitat for Humanity, and have done some projects for the government.” Over the next three to five years, Omega Manufacturing has many goals they’d like to achieve, including an expanded product line, and to enter in to a few more Caribbean markets. “We want to become more of a well- known name in the Industry and have product brands that people will automatically associate with us,” says Agostini. “We’d like to be more established, to grow in-house, and to develop our other products that are not directly related to PolyROCK cement board. Hopefully, we could