For South Florida companies,
business of rebuilding Haiti begins
Go to Original (Miami Herald) >
By JIM WYSS
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Wearing dark glasses and a baseball hat, Adam Finnieston hovered outside a field hospital in the Haitian capital with a prosthetic leg tucked beneath his arm. As groups of doctors rushed by, he handed out business cards and chatted with visitors about how the technology developed by his Miami company could help Haiti's amputees.
A few yards away, a representative of a Hialeah firm that makes high-tech, prefabricated shelters was handing out informational DVDs to reporters as she waited for a chance to talk to Haitian First Lady Elisabeth Préval.
As post-earthquake Haiti makes the transition from recovery to rebuilding, South Florida companies are heading to the frontline to offer their services. Some have been involved with Haiti for decades. Others are making their first foray into the country, drawn by the nation's massive needs and the allure of international contracts.
The Jan. 12 earthquake leveled much of the capital, killing more than 200,000 people and leaving an estimated 1 million homeless. The financial toll on Haiti was also massive.
The Inter-American Development Bank estimates the 7.0-magnitude earthquake resulted in between $7.2 billion and $14 billion in damage, making it the most expensive natural disaster on record.
Roads, schools, ports, government buildings and offices need to be rebuilt. And the international community is offering to bankroll the recovery. To date, almost $2 billion has been pledged to this Caribbean nation.
"People know there are billions of dollars that are going to flow to Haiti, and they are coming down here to catch some of it,'' said Georges Sassine, the president of the Manufacturers Association of Haiti, a powerful private-sector group. "Everybody wants to get a contract."
With the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United Nations and the Haitian government all playing different roles, many in the private sector say it's unclear who is calling the shots, and who's controlling the purse strings.
Later this month in New York City, the United Nations will be holding a meeting of donor nations, relief agencies and Haitian government officials, led by Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. It should provide some clarity.
But many South Florida companies are already jockeying for position, as the poorest nation in the hemisphere becomes a business opportunity impossible to ignore.
Recently back from his trip to Haiti, Finnieston, a third-generation prosthetic expert, picks up a portable scanner the size of a barbell in his Miami office and waves it over his fist. Within seconds a detailed, 3-D image of his hand appears on the computer monitor.
With a mouse click, the image can be sent to the company's factory in Hialeah, where computer-controlled milling machines carve out a detailed replica from dense foam.
The company, Arthur Finnieston Prosthetics and Orthotics, uses the technology to create models of amputees' damaged limbs and fashion custom-fit prosthetics. Usually, their clients are athletes, scuba-divers and active individuals, who travel from all over the world and pay top dollar for the specialized service.
But the technology might also be a perfect fit for Haiti, where the earthquake left an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 people with crushed and missing limbs.
Traditional prosthetic techniques require a skilled practitioner to travel to the field and create plaster casts of residual limbs. The casting process alone can take 10 to 20 minutes and is as much art as science, Finnieston said.
But scanning the wound, using the company's Bio-sculptor technology, takes just a few seconds and can be done by anyone -- regardless of their experience.
That would allow the company to put Haitians to work, armed with the scanners and laptops, visiting amputees in the field, while the company churns out the artificial limbs at its factory in Hialeah.
"This reduces the skilled labor problem quite a bit because the skilled part can be done remotely,'' Finnieston said. ``This can be a way to take care of a large number of people very economically. We have the capacity to turn out 50 [prostheses] a day if we had to."
The company went to Haiti at the invitation of doctors Robert Gailey and Barth Green of Project Medishare, which is running the University of Miami field hospital in Port-au-Prince.
While Project Medishare will have the capacity to make traditional prosthetics, it will also be testing the Biosculptor system, which should be able to produce a below-knee prosthesis for $200 to $400, Finnieston said. The costs will be covered by donations and other fundraising efforts.
With 27 employees and clients across the globe, the Haiti project could keep the company busy. But Finnieston said this is not a money-making venture, rather an opportunity to make his company's technology the leader in a competitive field.
"Anything we do will be passed through at cost; this is not a business opportunity by any means," he said.
"But the indirect benefit could be a global model that can be applied to any developing country in the world."
In many ways, Haiti will be a testing ground for all sorts of new technology.
Miami Beach-based Innovida makes light-weight, sturdy shelters out of composite materials usually found in boats and airplane fuselages.
Four years old, the company is already building homes in the Middle East, Africa and China, as it awaits regulatory approval to offer its products in the United States, said Innovida founder Claudio Osorio.
Osorio, the one-time chief executive of South Florida tech giant CHS Electronics, which folded in 2000, said Innovida already had plans to build a factory in Haiti that could churn out enough composite panels -- the building blocks of Innovida homes -- to construct 10,000 homes per year.
Then came the disaster of Jan 12.
QUICK SHELTER
With hundreds of thousands of Haitians still sleeping in the streets and the rainy season fast approaching, Innovida designed an emergency module that can be built within a matter of hours and sleeps eight people.
The company is donating 1,000 of the huts, which cost between $3,000 and $4,000 each.
"If anything, the earthquake has accelerated our plans for a factory in Haiti," said Osorio, at the Hialeah factory where the company runs a small research and development plant. In response to the earthquake, the Overseas Private Investment Corp. announced it is lending Innovida $10 million to build the facility.
The composite panels are not only fireproof, hurricane resistant and capable of withstanding earthquakes but also light enough to be put together by a few people without the need for heavy machinery. While the emergency shelters are the most pressing need, the company hopes to play a role in rebuilding schools, government offices and homes on the island, Osorio said.
"The demand is so huge that we are just one part of the solution," he said. "But this is a very efficient way for the government or NGOs [non-governmental organizations] to get buildings done very quickly."
While Innovida has emerged as one of the most visible contenders to provide shelter in Haiti, it's certainly not the only one.
There are at least four other South Florida companies that are offering either raw materials or ready-made shelters to solve the Haitian housing crisis.
Gulf South Forest Products of Fort Lauderdale has been working in Haiti for more than 34 years and is one of Haiti's top suppliers of wood and lumber. In 2009, the company exported 14,000 metric tons of material to Haiti out of its port facilities in Mobile, Ala., said John Yohanan, company president.
GROUNDWORK LAID
Their experience on the ground and the connections they've made in Haiti have proven to be valuable in the aftermath of the earthquake. Just days after the disaster, the company was unloading cargo in Port-au-Prince, even as the harbor remained virtually shut for all but humanitarian assistance.
In recent weeks, the company has been approached by its distributors in Haiti about supplying tin roofing, fast-drying concrete, flexible screening and other materials to create traditional homes, Yohanan said.
The company is also providing the building materials to Foundation Maxima, which is already building wooden emergency shelters.
Gulf South has annual sales of between $32 million and $45 million and expects to see growing demand from its private sector contacts, even as it positions itself to be a supplier to the government and relief agencies.
"Haiti has been our third or fourth largest market, but we expect that to change as we see large government contracts" related to the relief effort, Yohanan said. "We don't know what is going to come to fruition, but we do believe there is going to be a tremendous amount of material going into the marketplace."
Another company that hopes to be a player in that marketplace is Fort Lauderdale-based Bergeron Emergency Services, a subsidiary of Bergeron Land Development.
The company has the capability to do rubble removal, road construction and provide emergency shelters, said company owner J.R. Bergeron.
He recently returned from a trip to Haiti where he formed a partnership with SAJ, a rice and cement importer that has its own port on the outskirts of the capital. With Port-au-Prince's main harbor still damaged, the company's ability to bring in supplies without interfering with ongoing humanitarian efforts at the harbor will be a valuable asset, Bergeron said.
A STEP AHEAD
"By procuring my own port, it puts me in a different league than these other companies that would be running around trying to get work out there," he said.
Still, with stiff competition, there are no guarantees. The company expects to spend about $500,000 in laying the groundwork to win a contract. As part of that effort, Bergeron plans to open an office in Port-au-Prince by month's end.
"The competition will be insane," Bergeron said. "But I don't know that my competitors will dive in there and put their boots on. I will fight to get what I want, and I won't stop."
He's up against some formidable challengers.
The emergency-response division of Fort Lauderdale-based SEACOR has been in Haiti since January, when it rebuilt the WIN Group's Terminal Varreaux, a key port that receives and stores 70 percent of Haiti's fuel oil. The company would not disclose the value of that contract.
Pompano Beach-based AshBritt also has been vying for work. Company founder Randall Perkins has visited Haiti repeatedly, lined up a powerful local partner and promised President Réne Préval to create jobs for Haitians.
With so much interest in Haiti, and so much at stake, some believe the nation needs to pick its would-be business partners carefully.
"Haiti has become the new El Dorado in terms of people seeking opportunities to make a quick buck,'' said Jean-Robert Lafortune, the president of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, a Miami nonprofit that is encouraging companies to create permanent jobs and other long-term opportunities in Haiti.
"We are not against anybody trying to make a quick buck, but we are interested in what other benefits they are bringing."
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