T&T entrepreneur setting up battery plant in Ghana

In the past few years, the Caribbean has been iden­ti­fied as the sixth re­gion of Africa with plans for greater con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween the re­gion and the con­ti­nent be­ing cham­pi­oned by nu­mer­ous groups on both sides of the At­lantic.

Michael Sealey, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Nu Wave Au­to­mo­tive and the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of CATEMA, has made a ma­jor step in es­tab­lish­ing the Caribbean’s pres­ence in Ghana.

In 2023, Sealey was part of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion trade mis­sion to Ghana. He was re­cent­ly fea­tured on CNN as he is on the cusp of open­ing a bat­tery plant in the West African coun­try.

“That was a big deal for us. I mean, it came as no sur­prise be­cause the size of the project, it would have cre­at­ed some at­ten­tion, but CNN, at that time, was do­ing a fea­ture on Caribbean busi­ness­es and the con­nec­tion to Africa, be­cause the name of the pro­gramme is Con­nect­ing Africa.

“CNN would have reached out to the agen­cies in Trinidad, like Glob­al T&T, and al­so the TTMA would have been in­stru­men­tal in the first trade mis­sion that we had to Ghana. They would have put them on to us, be­cause we were the on­ly com­pa­ny that was ad­vanced in do­ing any busi­ness in Ghana,” Sealey said of the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Sealey has had plans to open the plant as far back as 2025, but reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges as well as geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues have pushed back the date.

“I think, be­cause of what was hap­pen­ing be­tween Ukraine, Rus­sia, and now the is­sues across there with the (Iran) war, it would have caused some lim­i­ta­tions on some of our sup­pli­ers, so then we had to change the sup­ply that we were us­ing to pro­vide us with the equip­ment for the plant,” Sealy said.

“There’s al­so a lot of reg­u­la­to­ry things that have to hap­pen, be­cause bat­ter­ies, of course, are tox­ic, and you have the acid, and so on, so that takes some time to get the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work in place. So that would have de­layed us a bit, but we are full speed ahead. I mean, I am head­ing to Ghana this week, and I’ll be up there for a while to en­sure that we tie up every last loose end.”

Trade aid for Ghana

How­ev­er, while de­vel­op­ing the bat­tery plant, Sealey al­so no­ticed an­oth­er av­enue for busi­ness, not just for him­self but oth­er TT man­u­fac­tur­ers. This lead to the cre­ation of CATEMA, a com­pa­ny Sealey said was formed just for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of get­ting prod­ucts from Trinidad man­u­fac­tur­ers across to Ghana and oth­er coun­tries in West Africa.

“What we ob­served dur­ing our time in Ghana is that there were no Trinidad prod­ucts, none. I mean we have some fan­tas­tic prod­ucts in Trinidad, as you would know. We have very ex­pe­ri­enced man­u­fac­tur­ers, so we saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty there to try to as­sist some of the brands in Trinidad to get their prod­ucts across to Ghana,” said Sealey.

He said the com­pa­ny was formed to im­prove the lo­gis­tics and ex­pand the trade be­tween T&T and Ghana. As a re­sult, CATEMA has signed some MoUs with three ma­jor lo­cal com­pa­nies in this coun­try to en­cour­age the ex­port of lo­cal man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts to Ghana.

“We are ad­vanced stages in get­ting their prod­ucts across to Ghana,” Sealey said.

The com­pa­nies plan to ex­e­cute their first ship­ments to the African coun­try in the near fu­ture.

De­spite hav­ing made cross coun­try moves be­fore, as his part­ner­ship with Pe­ru­vian com­pa­ny En­er­jet and dis­tri­b­u­tion deals in oth­er Cari­com coun­tries can at­test, Sealey ad­mit­ted these re­cent steps were not on his ini­tial vi­sion board.

“I don’t want to say be­yond my wildest dreams, be­cause you know I al­ways try to think out­side the box, think big­ger than the con­fines of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean.

“So the op­por­tu­ni­ty was clear­ly there, but when you have a vi­sion and you could see that some­thing could man­i­fest it­self over time, you aim for it.

“Some­times you get op­por­tu­ni­ties open­ing up that you didn’t en­vi­sion at that time, but be­cause you are men­tal­ly pre­pared to ac­cept that, the op­por­tu­ni­ty puts you in a bet­ter place to re­al­ly cor­ral the busi­ness,” he said.

Sealey, who was thank­ful for the help giv­en to him by the TTMA for fa­cil­i­tat­ing the trade mis­sion to Ghana, as well as as­sis­tance from the hon­orary con­sul of Trinidad in Ghana, Hilton John Mitchell, and TTMA past pres­i­dent of Roger Roach, said he planned to pay it for­ward through CATEMA’s ef­forts. How­ev­er, he en­cour­aged oth­ers hop­ing to fol­low in his foot­steps to do their due dili­gence to make the con­nec­tion.

“It’s not just about us or me as the in­di­vid­ual, it’s about how do we help oth­ers to see the op­por­tu­ni­ties that we would have seen, be­cause Ghana, Africa, it’s a place that you can’t stay in Trinidad or in the Caribbean and do busi­ness there.

“You have to have a foot­print there. You have to be on the ground. You have to un­der­stand the cul­ture. I think that is one of the rea­sons why a lot of the brands here nev­er made it there, be­cause I guess they didn’t put that work to re­al­ly un­der­stand what needs to be done to get their prod­ucts in­to the mar­ket.”

Sealey has in­vest­ed US$25 mil­lion in­to the bat­tery plant in Ghana and is ex­pect­ing it to come on stream in the first quar­ter of 2027. How­ev­er. he hope­ful that this ex­pan­sion will not on­ly bring new busi­ness but fur­ther aid in his ef­forts to gen­er­ate need­ed for­eign ex­change for his lo­cal op­er­a­tions.

‘It’s tough be­cause the bank has their lim­i­ta­tions, so now you have to work with your sup­pli­ers. Some­times they have to wait a lit­tle longer than they would like to, and then, of course, be­cause we’re do­ing some busi­ness in St Lu­cia and Grena­da, that will help us kind of bridge what­ev­er gap that there is in or­der to make our pay­ments to our sup­pli­ers,” he said.

“That is be­cause the chal­lenges that we have here in Trinidad, in Ghana, those chal­lenges don’t ex­ist, right? So, once we set up there, I think that would, of course, flow in­to our Trinidad op­er­a­tions to make this busi­ness a lot more ef­fi­cient, where the need for forex is con­cerned.”

Sealey said while the lo­cal econ­o­my has faced some chal­lenges, his com­pa­ny has man­aged to main­tain a steady amount of busi­ness lo­cal­ly. How­ev­er, he is not shy of look­ing be­yond for new busi­ness.