Dynamic solutions

By Shawn Cumberbatch

shawncumberbatch@nationnews.com

George Connolly’s career path has taken him from Barbados to Australia and back.

He has learnt from some of the best in corporate Caribbean, including Paul “PB” Scott, a well-known and successful Jamaican businessman with Barbadian roots.

This is the foundation on which Connolly is highly motivated to position one of Barbados’ best-known brands, Solar Dynamics, in the forefront of the country’s quest to become a sustainable economy.

“Solar Dynamics has been leading the delivery of sustainable solutions to households and to the businesses for the last 50 years. I want to maintain that effort and I want to expand the range of items that households have as sustainable solutions,” the chief executive officer (CEO) said in an interview at the solar water heater pioneer’s Grazettes, St Michael plant.

“For the current dynamic of climate change and everything that is associated with that, we have a fundamental duty, I think, to play our part, despite our small size, to use the advocacy that we have. Especially when our Prime Minister has become a global voice for climate justice.”

The name Solar Dynamics has long been synonymous with entrepreneur James Husbands. Connolly was “looking for a business that I felt could make a difference and had legs where it was sustainable and had significant potential for growth”.

The acquisition of Solar Dynamics was, therefore, no accident.

“I had a long chat with James at a conference we both attended and I told him if ever he was ready to sell Solar Dynamics to contact me. He called me out of the blue one day and said, ‘Remember that conversation we had, well, this is the call, I’m ready’. We started a conversation about how to make it happen and I think about a month later, we actually got it done,” Connolly shared.

“I feel if there is one company in this country that has legacy, has ingenuity, developed a unique piece of technology that perpetuates and has potential for significant growth outside the country in terms of the export side, it is Solar Dynamics.”

Led by Connolly, the company has an entirely new management team and the CEO said “our approach to business is very, very traditional”.

He explained: “We stick to all the rules, but we are very aggressive in terms of the export side because that’s where we see the energy. We are adding new, sometimes you need new ideas, a new look, new energy, etc, as we make companies vibrant.

“That’s why a lot of the major firms change their CEOs every five to ten years, because you need new energy, you need new experiences and you need to make sure you maintain a phenomenally high level of customer

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service, because once people start to talk about poor service, then that fire spreads quickly.”

The Solar Dynamics boss spoke as members of his team prepared five containers with products for the export market. He is confident the company can grow its sales overseas, noting that “the demand for the product is very strong”.

“We are adding other things to supplement it but the solar hot water business is still by far the core business. So what we have got to do is look at all of the different markets, see which ones carry the most weight, and then focus our attention on the ones that we can manage effectively, building the brand and obviously being able to make a profit,” he said.

“The export side of the business is very strong and I think that’s where the future is, and being able to scale the plant up that we can export more.”

Interest

Having an operation in St Lucia means that the manufacturer can easily export within the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. It also has a strong presence in the Dutch Caribbean. The Trinidad market that is also “showing a lot of interest now”.

The mission to make Solar Dynamics a household name in more places is not without challenges, but Connolly prefers to see them as opportunities. Diversification into other areas, including cooling systems like solar air conditioning (AC) and energy-generating metal panels for building exteriors, are two examples.

“If you look at energy use, you would see that heating the water or cooling your home, including with AC, when you put the two of those together, that’s about 60 per cent of your energy cost. Those are the areas that we think we need to tackle,” he suggested.

Cooling

“Cooling is something that we’re getting into now, and we are going to be very good in that space, but in a niche area. We’re trying to get effective, as low cost as possible solutions for cooling, because our country is getting hotter every day and I feel for people who don’t have an air conditioned space to retreat to sometimes.”

Connolly singled out another major opportunity. That is, increasing the number of properties in Barbados, and ultimately the region, that have solar water heaters.

He explained that while Solar Dynamics was one of two “manufacturers of scale for solar hot water systems in the Caribbean”, and the one which exported the most, “the penetration rate in Barbados is only at 35 per cent”.

“We have two manufacturers of scale and about five other little manufacturers who are just above being cottage industry and we have got a penetration rate of 35 per cent. Something is fundamentally wrong when the rates are so low,” he lamented.

“When you drive around Barbados, you see a lot of homes with solar water heating systems on them and you think almost everyone has one, but they don’t. There is no good reason that 65 per cent of our energy use to heat water should be so high when we have mastered solar water heating technology.”

His solution is to “keep having discussions, keep educating people, keep talking to Government officials so that they put financial packages in place to make it easier for individuals to get solar systems”.

“It is better for the environment, it’s better for your country if you do this,” Connolly advised.

The CEO also believes much more can be done to improve the ease of doing business within the Caribbean.

“It’s crazy. Imagine this – St Lucia is, I think, a hundred miles north of us. In order to get goods to St Lucia, I have got to send them to Miami. If I want to get a box there it is not a problem but if I want to get a container of items from Barbados to St Lucia, I have to send that container to Florida first. The different regulatory regimes we have are a problem,” he said.

Connolly says the good news is that he and Solar Dynamics are undaunted by these challenges and is keen to help the region, starting at home in Barbados, become more sustainable. This includes helping the country transition to renewable energy.

“We actually plan to be a major advocate and do everything that we can to help us transition. We want to be able to support, educate, and let people get over the fears that they have,” he said.