e TecK is increasing its efforts to modernise the company’s real estate assets, through the provision of quality industrial park facilities for use by both local and international investors in the emerging non-energy sector.
As e Teck reengineers the image from an Estate to a Park, the proposed objective is to attract appropriate investors, with their accompanying international partners.
e TecK currently owns and manages seventeen (17) Industrial Parks and plans to construct eight (8) new light industrial Parks to satisfy a growing demand for industrial space by non-energy businesses to set up shop or expand their current operations. The acreage of each parcel of land at these parks will be a uniformed 1/2 acre plot, which is sufficient for any current and future expansion required by tenants, with internal roads configured to allow for maximum efficiency in the areas of speed to market, safety, security and convenience.
Today, all these parks are up to 100 percent occupation capacity and with the increasing interest to invest in light manufacturing, there is an expressed demand for additional manufacturing space. Global quality control standards dictate the upgrade of e TecK’s O’Meara, Frederick Settlement, Plaisance and Diamond Vale Industrial Parks in the areas of aesthetics, traffic management, lighting, signage and security in order to provide a competitive edge.
It is expected that these planned upgrades will be designed to combine the benefits of industrialisation and nature, with as much as 20% of each site dedicated to landscaping and green spaces. This Park redesign, which will incorporate green spaces, wider roads, larger setbacks and landscaped features will commence in the first quarter of 2009 and continue throughout the fourth quarter of 2010.
High on the agenda for the globalisation of the facilities, is the implementation of a security master plan for all the Parks (both new and old), starting with O’Meara, Frederick Settlement, Plaisance and Diamond Vale. With a tenant base of over 500 and populated with industries which vary in their types of operations and operating hours, the existing Parks do require a creative yet sustainable means of ensuring the same level of optimum security to all tenants.
The proposed security system is expandable and upgradeable and will facilitate an efficient management of operations whilst creating an image of free flowing spaces without the traditional hard standing walls and security fences at the tenants’ boundaries.
As a complement to these security measures at our existing Parks, e TecK is working closely with the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC), in its National Street Lighting Project to have the companies’ existing Parks furnished with street lights. To date street lights have already been implemented at the O’Meara, Harmony Hall, Diamond Vale, Plaisance, Chase Village, and Biljah Industrial Parks.
Inherent in each new Park is the self-contained community model, offering a one-stop shop for most day-to-day business activities, as well as the advantages of an underground electricity supply, natural gas for light to medium use, telecom capabilities, internal roads, water and sewage, parking facilities and maintenance, all within a secure environment.
Trinidad and Tobago has successfully achieved a high level of competitiveness in the oil and gas industry, but trails behind world exporters in food production and manufacturing. This renewed emphasis on these Industrial Parks, will provide a value-added component which will leverage the non-energy sector to obtain a competitive advantage within the country’s macro economy fulfilling e TecK’s mandate for downstream diversity.
More information on the new Parks can be found at http://eteck.co.tt.
