Consistent quality is the recipe for ECGC – DeRiggs

Chief Operating Officer at Eastern Caribbean Group of Companies (ECGC) Elvis DeRiggs is a good example of how hard work and aptitude pay off professionally.

DeRiggs’s focus on quality also shows what attention to quality assurance can do for a company.

“To start, ECGC always maintains a consistency in terms of excellence, with a focus on quality, so that sort of thing would have made us successful,” DeRiggs told SEARCHLIGHT in a recent interview.

DeRiggs is one of a handful of workers who have been with the ECGC for over 37 years, July 18, 2017 having seen him reach that milestone.

And as the ECGC, which began as the East Caribbean Flour Mills, on September 1, 1977, celebrates 40 years in business, DeRiggs said the company has not only been beneficial to the country but to him as an individual.

“I came in as a trainee miller. I did the training, then moved up; now I am the chief operating officer, so it has been beneficial from a career standpoint and financially too, because as you move up you earn more,” declared DeRiggs.

He said after he completed his stint as a trainee miller, he moved to shift miller and helped replace the foreigners that were helping out in the early stages of the business.

From shift miller, he moved to production manager, again replacing a foreigner and later moved from being the production manager at the flour mill to the production manager overall, dealing with flour, rice and feed.

“I went up to chief operating officer and for the last three years, I also go to Guyana as the general manager for CARICOM Rice Mill,” revealed DeRiggs, who opined that “strong operations” is his forte.

“We focus on quality; that is the recipe. Quality comes with a price, but quality is important, and I think that along with flexibility, we can get an order and turn it around in a couple of days; that more than anything else would have kept us solid over the years.”

DeRiggs, who noted that ECGC’s staff is very committed, emphasized that the serious strength of ECGC comes from the fact that people like the quality and the reliability.

“No doubt, we have the best product and we are known for quality. In Guyana, we are an ISO certified company…,” explained DeRiggs.

DeRiggs, who began working under former general manager Ken Boyea, said the competition in the milling business is strong, but the ECGC’s focus on quality has worked for them and the fact that they place emphasis on training also plays a big part in their success.

As the chief operating officer, DeRiggs is responsible for the purchasing of grains, which is the biggest expenditure in the business. He buys wheat, corn, soya and rice and sees the decision to purchase rice from Guyana as a big game changer for the company.

“We purchase[d] rice from the USA, Brazil, Uruguay; the change to Guyana helped us be more self-sufficient,” explained DeRiggs, who also said the ECGC invested in areas that have been beneficial.

He said the ECGC has about 150 employees, including part time staff.