Trinidad Bulk Traders Limited

Company history

 Trinidad Bulk Traders Limited (TBTL) was incorporated in Trinidad and Tobago as a subsidiary of Angostura Holdings Limited on 6th August, 2003, later to become a wholly owned subsidiary of CL Financial. The Plant was launched in August 2005, two years after CL Financial chairman, Lawrence Duprey and his team, Mssrs. Patrick Patel and Curtis Mohammed, conceived the initiative. TBTL is the first fuel grade ethanol production facility in Trinidad.

We work under special operating arrangements with Petrotrin, where under contract; Petrotrin has provided TBTL with site, storage tanks and utilities requirements inclusive of water, natural gas and port facilities. Our presence complements the existing operations at Petrotrin, Point Fortin and brings important revenues to their cost centre at that location via the reinstatement of otherwise idle facilities. The ethanol plant was constructed on one hectare of land on the boundary of Petrotrin’s and Trinmar’s operations. During plant construction, we spent in excess of 300,000 safe man-hours erecting and installing the unit, and preparing the tankage and piping infrastructure at Petrotrin; a fact of which we are proud. The plant came online in August 2005, with a first shipment of four million US gallons of ethanol. The plant’s Phase 1 had an initial annual production capacity of 50 million US gallons with Phase 2 contributing an additional 50 million US gallons which came online in July 2007.

TBTL Current Activities:
We ship ethanol into the US under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) which permits the entry of duty-free ethanol imports from the Caribbean up to a maximum cap of seven percent (7%) of US ethanol consumption. We have also been working with some of our clients in order to gain entry to other markets internationally that offer duty-free access for this commodity in order to diversify our customer base and reduce dependence on CBI.
We source industrial grade, sugarcane produced alcohol from Brazil which is then dehydrated to be blended with gasoline for use in motor vehicles. Our ethanol is being produced and sold at better than 99.5% quality.
One of our strategic intents would be to catalyse the backward integration of fuel ethanol into Caribbean and Central American sugar cane.
Here at TBTL, we see ourselves as the local pioneer in the ethanol industry which we believe will remain at the forefront of the international energy market.

About ethanol:
Ethanol falls under the category of renewable energy. All you need is sun, rain and proper expertise and management and there will be the guarantee of sugarcane adequate for Ethanol production. Ethanol is a high-octane fuel and demand for it is growing worldwide. It does not have the same harmful effects on the environment as traditional fossil fuels and can potentially slow unwanted climate change. It is one of those additives to a fuel that improves the combustion characteristics of motor engines and reduces harmful emissions at the tail pipe. Additionally, and most importantly, it is a renewable energy resource. Ethanol does not deplete. In certain regions of the world, where the economics are favourable, ethanol is also being used and developed as an alternative to sugar and in many ways it is an economy stabilizer and perfectly suited for economies that have had a sugar industry history.