Af­ter two years in op­er­a­tion, pan man­u­fac­tur­er Mu­si­cal In­stru­men­tals of Trinidad and To­ba­go Com­pa­ny (MITTCO) says it has seen 60 per cent growth, with most of that com­ing from the ex­port mar­ket.

This was con­firmed by Akua Lei­th, MITTCO’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor.

Speak­ing to Busi­ness Guardian, from the com­pa­ny’s head­quar­ters lo­cat­ed at e TecK Di­a­mond Vale Busi­ness Park, In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, Diego Mar­tin, Lei­th said the 60 per cent growth does not mean that MITTCO is prof­itable, but the tra­jec­to­ry is head­ing in that di­rec­tion.

“I think in the next three years, we will be­come prof­itable. In 2024 we saw some growth in sales, but we al­so had is­sues with chroming, is­sues with drums. All these things we were able to see from an op­er­a­tional per­spec­tive and how these things could be bet­ter han­dled go­ing in­to 2025,” Lei­th ex­plained.

On the ex­port side, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor said the US is its biggest mar­ket and the goal for 2025 is to pen­e­trate in­to oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

“The Chi­nese mar­ket is huge, and we have seen some type of grow­ing in­ter­est, es­pe­cial­ly fol­low­ing the sev­enth Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Im­port Ex­po, which was held in No­vem­ber. Aman­da Bar­nett rep­re­sent­ed MITTCO, where she made some vi­tal con­nec­tions with the col­leges, to sup­ply MITTCO steel­pan for their en­sem­bles.

Lei­th said the com­pa­ny col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try with a booth be­ing shared at the ex­po to help mar­ket the MITTCO brand. Aman­da Bar­nett went out­side of the Chi­na Ex­po and spoke to uni­ver­si­ties and one of them would be com­ing to have a fac­to­ry tour, to have fur­ther con­ver­sa­tions.

“Be­yond that, we talked to some agents who are will­ing to start pro­mot­ing the in­stru­men­tal per­for­mances in Chi­na. We got some good trac­tion from that. And hope­ful­ly, with­in the next few months, we’ll start to see that turn in­to ac­tu­al sales,” Lei­th added.

He said Japan has a trade sum­mit hap­pen­ing this year and the com­pa­ny is go­ing to use that op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­ter that mar­ket.

Lei­th not­ed that 40 per cent of sales come from North Amer­i­ca and on­ly 20 per cent comes from T&T.

“More trac­tion in terms of mon­e­tary gains is com­ing from St. Vin­cent, Grena­da, Guyana, Ja­maica, St. Kitts and St. Lu­cia.”

The MITTCO di­rec­tor be­lieves there needs to be greater aware­ness of the com­pa­ny and its prod­ucts for trac­tion to grow in T&T, he said, adding that while many steel bands have pur­chased the steel pans, the com­pa­ny’s prod­uct is not in schools and that is where the fo­cus should be.

“We are ready to have con­ver­sa­tions. I be­lieve, based on our in­vi­ta­tions to come and view the fac­to­ry space. MITTCO had the Prime Min­is­ter here, we spent a lot of time with him dur­ing the trip. We had the Pres­i­dent here. She spent a lot of time with us as well. We had the min­is­ters and even am­bas­sadors com­ing and show­ing their whole in­ter­ests of how stu­dents can ben­e­fit their com­mu­ni­ties and their min­istries,” Lei­th de­tailed.

As it per­tains to pan man­u­fac­tur­ing,the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor said 80 pans are man­u­fac­tured a month, but he not­ed that there are 300 pans now at the fac­to­ry to be sold.

Al­so, for ex­port Lei­th said ap­prox­i­amte­ly 40 steel pans are ex­port­ed a month.

In terms of pric­ing of steel pans for ex­ports, he said it costs US$1,700 per pan com­pared to for­eign steel pan man­u­fac­tur­ers who sell the na­tion­al in­stru­ment be­tween US$3,00 and US$5,000.

Lei­th point­ed out that while MITTCO’s pric­ing is more com­pet­i­tive, there are a few more fac­tors to look at.  

“At the end of the day, we know an au­then­tic steel pan comes from T&T, but it’s the game of sup­ply and de­mand. If we can’t sup­ply, of course, some­body else will be able to fill that vac­u­um.  I think the for­eign mar­ket would want steel pans from T&T to be good,” he men­tioned.

Asked about the cost of a MITTCO steel­pan on the lo­cal mar­ket, Lei­th said a pow­der-coat­ed pan is $8,000, but it comes with pan sticks, a care kit, and an ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­gramme that the pur­chasers can ac­cess.

A chrome pan he said is $11,600 with the same pack­age, just a dif­fer­ent fin­ish.

He high­light­ed that MITTCO has an ex­ten­sive re­la­tion­ship with the De­fence Force Steel Or­ches­tra and Panora­ma steel bands are al­so com­ing on board.

Lei­th said a lot of bands are now com­ing in and plac­ing their or­ders and the pan man­u­fac­tur­er came up with a pro­gramme to as­sist the bands.

“What we un­der­stand is, for sure, bands may not read­i­ly have the cash to pur­chase pans. MITTCO did our re­search, and of­fered a few bands to try a sys­tem of cred­it. This is where the bands can get the steel pans up­front, and then at the end of the sea­son, once the prize mon­ey is paid, they can then pay for the in­stru­ments then.  So, we al­low them to go to the com­pe­ti­tion with the best prod­uct, and then at the end of the com­pe­ti­tion, once suc­cess­ful, they pay for the in­stru­ments,” Lei­th said.

On the much talked about for­eign ex­change crunch, the di­rec­tor said MITTCO needs forex for the raw ma­te­ri­als such as the drums and chrome for the pans.

“The es­tab­lish­ment chromes its pans in Iowa, lo­cat­ed in the Unit­ed States and we do need for­eign ex­change for that, but as a man­u­fac­tur­er and an ex­porter, we gen­er­ate forex as well. So, we see MITTCO as a vi­able op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring for­eign ex­change to T&T, through its ex­port. The ques­tion is how we do get the sup­port of dif­fer­ent min­istries and dif­fer­ent in­cen­tives to get our prod­uct out in­to the for­eign mar­ket, to gen­er­ate more in­to the coun­try” he said.

Asked about the need to chrome pans in Iowa, Lei­th said the chroming fac­to­ry in El So­cor­ro was de­stroyed by fire in 2021. He said the chroming fac­to­ry is due to re­open some time this year.

The com­pa­ny opened its doors in Au­gust 2022, with fund­ing from the Hadad broth­ers, the founders of the Had­co group of com­pa­nies.

ISO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion

Last Au­gust, MITTCO earned In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Stan­dard­i­s­a­tion (ISO) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS).

This achieve­ment rep­re­sents the first time the TTBS has award­ed ISO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment.

TTBS ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Jose Tre­jo high­light­ed the bu­reau’s crit­i­cal role in set­ting stan­dards for goods and ser­vices, not­ing that the steel­pan, a sym­bol of na­tion­al pride, held a unique and sig­nif­i­cant place in this his­toric recog­ni­tion.

Tre­jo al­so clar­i­fied that the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion was not ex­clu­sive to MITTCO but was open to all steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ers in T&T, un­der­scor­ing the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing high stan­dards in pro­duc­ing the coun­try’s icon­ic in­stru­ment.

“The prod­uct cer­ti­fi­ca­tion scheme is not ex­clu­sive to MITTCO. It is open to any com­pa­ny or man­u­fac­tur­er that meets the re­quire­ments and is ready to ap­ply. It’s not a closed cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process,” Tre­jo said.

He em­pha­sised the steel­pan’s glob­al recog­ni­tion as orig­i­nat­ing from T&T, draw­ing par­al­lels with Ja­maica’s Blue Moun­tain Cof­fee.