Two regional companies, SMAKS the West Indian Tea Company and David Weekes and Associates are the first winners of the Caribbean Export Development Agency’s Break Point.
The regional business competition, which utilizes the Caribbean Forum-European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (CARIFORUM-EU EPA) to drive entrepreneurship, was launched at the recently concluded seventh UK-Caribbean Forum in St George’s, Grenada.
Break Point will prove to be a practical mechanism for getting CARIFORUM companies and enterprises into the EU market under the EPA framework. It attempts to achieve this by giving the companies and enterprises opportunities for business-to-business relationship building and for jointly exploring investment and distribution partnership opportunities.
“For Caribbean Export this ushers in a new era of export capacity-building and enhancements, and is geared towards achieving our objective of building brands across the region that have the DNA to be globally competitive,” commented David Gomez, senior advisor of market intelligence at Caribbean Export.
“Break Point represents a paradigm shift for the Agency in terms of how we assist companies in getting their goods and services to market. More importantly, this initiative fits perfectly with the three pillars of the Agency including trade and export development, innovation and competitiveness”, Gomez added.
“The experience was extremely exciting and inspiring in terms of bringing like-minded individuals together with a common goal of wanting to strive for excellence”, said Kiran Akal, creative director of SMAKS. “The team coaches were excellent and the competitors benefited from the guidance of the Caribbean Export team throughout the process.”
“Break Point relieves a significant operational burden for young companies”, commented the second winner, David Weekes, chief executive officer of David Weekes & Associates. “Overall this is a fantastic opportunity for regional firms to become adequately prepared for the global marketplace.”
Break Point is supported by the European Union’s (EU) 10th Economic Development Fund (EDF) Regional Private Sector Development Programme, and the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI). The initiative also received 500,000 GBP from the Department for International Development (DFID) as a part of their mandate to assist in the development of Break Point and facilitate the ability of regional companies to benefit from London 2012.
The priority areas for Break Point are agro-processing, alternative energy, sports, and technology products. During the launch, six regional businesses: Bio-Tech R&D Institute Ltd. (Jamaica), David Weekes and Associates (Barbados), Merkimport CXA (Dominican Republic), NutMed. (Grenada), SMAKS, The West Indian Tea Company (Trinidad and Tobago) and Xocolat (Dominican Republic) pitched their ideas to a panel of successful business persons and venture capitalists drawn from the Caribbean and the UK.
