By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

RENEW Bahamas, the landfill operator, said that it was putting together a “very extensive” remediation and reconstruction proposal to submit to the government.

Gerhard Beukes, Renew Bahamas’ president and CEO, told Tribune Business that the company to-date had remediated and reconstructed 11 acres of the New Providence landfill.

“We have taken it upon ourselves to come up with a very extensive proposal in terms of what should be and can be done in the landfill in terms of doing a proper remediation and reconstruction of the entire site,” Mr Beukes said. “We have actually done about 11 acres of landfill remediation and reconstruction ourselves and that has sort of gone unnoticed because we saw it as part of our initial infrastructure investment. We didn’t ask the government for more money for doing this, we just thought we would do it to show our commitment to the project.”

He added: “Right now we are working on an extensive plan. We are doing all sorts of tests at the moment. We might need some follow up tests depending on what we find but we are putting together a very extensive proposal to the government on the landfill remediation and reconstruction project. You have to bear in mind that there is balance between what is financially feasible from a government point of view and what you want from an environmental point of view.”

Mr Beukes said that the company was processing an estimated 70 tonnes of waste an hour through its materials recycling facility, which launched in May. Mr Beukes said that roughly $7 million has been invested into that facility. “We are doing about 60 to 70 tonnes of waste an hour at the moment in terms of the waste that we process. It dropped off a bit in August. We run shifts at the moment with separate teams and we produce about 100 tonnes of recyclable products every day. We are still setting up some of our chains for some of the more specialist products that we produce but we suspect that we will hit our true production run rates in about two- to three-months time. We have decided to be very specific with the products that we ship to customers so that could potentially maximise your margins,” said Mr Beukes.

“We’re not breaking even at the moment. We are still trying to establish what exactly what the run rates are before we can have any conclusion on whether we are in a position to break even or not. We will know more in a few months time. August is difficult because you have less waste coming in to the site. Obviously if we go on the run rates we have now it’s not great but that’s only one month out of the year where we normally see a little bit of a drop off. It also depends greatly on the composition of the waste coming in.”

Mr Buekes said that roughly 150 jobs had been created at the landfill, with 125 people being employed directly by Renew Bahamas.