We buy juices, sausages, paints and a variety of other items in them – cans and tins.
You may not have been aware, but a lot of the tins these products come in are manufactured in Barbados.
BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY had the opportunity to tour Crown Packaging (Barbados) Limited recently, the place where some of these tins are made.
My tour guide was maintenance supervisor Vilbert “Wendell” Goodridge. He said the plant was “self-sufficient” in many areas, noting that they also made a number of the parts for the machines they used.
Located at the Six Roads Industrial Park in St Philip, Crown Packaging currently employs 42 staff including part-time workers. They also offer job attachments for students at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic.
With the production plant located on approximately 36 000 square feet of land and the storage area on approximately 16 000 square feet, Crown Packaging (Barbados) Limited currently ships products to over six countries in the region. They also make tins for a number of local companies.
Crown Barbados is owned by Crown Holdings Inc. which has 155 plants in 42 countries.
As we carefully walked through the noisy room where a number of heavy machines cut and shape the metal – an aluminium-steel alloy – into various can sizes, Wendell spoke knowledgeably about the product.
The process starts by importing rolls and hundreds of sheets of steel alloy that are carefully loaded onto the various machines. Rectangular pieces of the metal are intricately cut and shaped into the tubular objects that form the familiar round body of cans while other pieces are cut to form the tops that complete those cans.
Wendell said it was not as easy a task as it sounded. In fact, he said it was very important that all workers paid close attention to detail and safety.
“Samples of the ends from each batch are sent to the quality control laboratory for checks to ensure we are making a quality product. There are at least two checks per day,” said the worker with over 20 years’ experience in the business.
After careful checks, the products are transported or shipped to various companies where they are filled and the tops are attached.
Managing director David Camacho said that Crown Packaging was involved in a recycling programme. Camacho said after shipping the hundreds of packages of cans to plants in Jamaica and Trinidad, all the packaging was returned for reuse in Barbados.
“All the materials that come with the metals, we send them back to the suppliers for them to reuse it . . . . The scrap steel from our operation goes into the baling machine, the scrap from the aluminium as well, and we compact it all and we ship it out to be recycled in the US,” he said.
Camacho had some advice for his colleagues in the manufacturing sector, saying that a number of them were complaining about how difficult it was to introduce new health and safety regulations in their facility.
“Basically what I am saying to them is, yes, it is an uphill task and there are going to be trying times but the disciplines and the procedures that you put in place in respect to Environment Health and Safety policy spills over into other aspects of the operations,” he said.
Crown Packaging (Barbados) Limited was recently awarded the Environmental Health And Safety World Class Performance Certification, making them one of three Crown plants worldwide to be recognized that way.
