As concerns about rising costs for consumers continue to grow, a team from Ramps Logistics is heading to the Breakbulk Americas conference in Houston next week to explore options to ease that burden.
Ramps Logistics CEO Shaun Rampersad and the company’s manager for innovation and solutions, Gerard Rique, will attend the conference, which Rampersad described as an important event for the entire logistics and shipping industry.
Ramps said they will shop innovation built in this country at the event, while also seeking ideas which would address supply chain challenges.
“Whenever you are involved in supply chain, and you think about Trinidad and Tobago as a small island country in the Caribbean, everything that we use and utilise, and even every input for our industry, we have fairly complex supply chains to get those things into and out of the country.
“Even consumers right now, for example, would see the price of consumer goods have gone up significantly because freight rates from China have almost doubled in the last six months,” said Rampersad.
“So logistics, supply chain, I think it affects every single human being. Sometimes it’s not in front of your face to say, “Aye! It is your logistics and supply chain that’s affecting it! But it affects everything and affects the price that we pay for everything on a grocery shelf or the price that we pay for something as a manufacturer,” he said.
Rampersad said this made it particularly important for the people of Trinidad and Tobago to be able to understand what’s going on in global supply chains, and also be a part of “the conversations around it.”
To be a part of the conversation, the Ramps team is set to present an updated version of its award-winning MAWI logistics platform.
“Trinidad has always been seen as a user and a consumer of technology. But what we’re trying to do now is to be the creators of technology and pioneers. So for us, being able to show technology on a global stage, not just here but in Houston at Breakbulk, one of the largest conferences,” said Rique, “We have made significant improvements on the technology, the MAWI technology, for sure. So we’re going to showcase a lot of what we’ve improved on that, and of course some new tools that we’ve developed as well, like our CC360 tools and things like that.”
Rampersad explained that global trade has been adversely impacted by various issues, including tariffs.
“More and more there are massive conversations around tariffs, both imports and exports into the United States, and of course, the United States is the biggest consumer market in the entire world.
“So the biggest thing that we’ve done is that Mawi was developed here in Trinidad and Tobago and tested here in Trinidad and Tobago. We are launching a new Mawi USA version, which will be made available to customs brokers and logistics companies in the United States, and to help them especially to manage these charges around tariffs that seem to be changing every week,” said Rampersad.
The Ramps CEO explained that while most had recognised that tariffs were an increase on taxes paid by the consumers, many were not aware of the wider impact of increased tariff impositions across the world.
He said, “The biggest challenge that we’ve had with tariffs for T&T is not necessarily the tariffs inbound into the country, but it’s the tariffs outbound. So you know, a lot of our most important products, like methanol and ammonia and so on, stuff that would have gone at a much lower rate or even duty-free into the United States. Those are now tariffed at somewhere around 10 per cent to 12 and a half per cent, depending on what the item is. So that’s how the tariffs have affected us in Trinidad and Tobago.”
However, the RAMPS CEO said the Government had done admirably to ensure this country had remained on the relatively low end of the US tariff increases but he pointed out that the tariff impositions in other regions had knock-on effects for local consumers.
“The other part of that is that tariffs slow down global trade. Generally speaking, less cargo moves between countries when they are tariffed. When less cargo moves between countries, you have less volume in the international supply chain, and logistics is a business built on volumes,” he said, adding “If we are moving 100,000 containers a year between two ports, and the average price to move a container was $5000, if that drops to 75,000 a year, the average price goes up to $8,000 a container, $9,000 a container, and that’s where consumers feel it.
“When there’s more global trade going on, T&T benefits from it because we kind of tap into those global trade lanes, and we end up having prices and freight prices at a competitive rate. When trade slows down, freight prices start going up, and consumers start to feel it.”
Rique said this is where the Ramps team was hoping to be influential, as if MAWI could help create clear trade lanes, prices could ultimately come down,
He said, “In terms of advocacy, so what we’re really trying to do, and we anticipate that there will be a lot of cargo owners and customs brokers there, and they’re facing the same challenges that Shaun highlighted, and the same challenges that we face here in T&T.
So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to show them what our technology can offer to them, and the same challenges that we face. How can we leverage the technology to help them improve the processes and get their customs entries done much faster and much more accurately as well.”
The Ramps team explained that traditional customs brokerage relied heavily on manual documentation and decades of individual experience; however, the AI-powered Mawi platform would automate this process, performing complex tariff classification tasks in seconds with high accuracy. This would ease and improve workflow and productivity.
Rampersad also said the conference could help T&T learn of technology and policies which could improve our own supply chain process.
“You can look at what somebody in Germany is doing, and you can be like, oh, that makes sense. But you know what? It’s probably not going to work for us in T&T. You know, one of the most incredible places that we are being able to look at for inspiration and work together is Nigeria,” he said.
“The Nigerian technology scene is world class. We don’t hear a lot about it because we always hear about everything from the US and Europe. But we are now seeing where Nigerian technology is actually able and is sometimes a better fit for where we live in Trinidad and Tobago and the way we operate as well.”
The Ramps team stressed that while it is seeking to showcase MAWI internationally, it is still aiming to improve productivity in T&T, especially as the country is entering one of its busiest import periods: the Christmas season.
