BY ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

AN entrepreneur is looking to bring locally made cold mix asphalt to the Family Islands, which he says are under-serviced.

Born from challenges obtaining asphalt while working on a project in Eleuthera for the Water and Sewerage Corporation, Virley McKinney, project manager of Asphalt Maintenance Paving & Testing Co Ltd, sought to fill a need for easier access to asphalt on the outer islands of The Bahamas. He said while other asphalt plants produce the product on a larger scale, his McKinney Black product produces also for “ the 'do it yourselfers,' the gardeners, [and] people just working on their own, and they just need a little bit of tar without having to go through all the red tape of the asphalt plants".

“The product is essentially a cold mix asphalt that we manufacture locally and we package and distribute to the Family Islands to assist with road repairs and maintenance,” Mr McKinney added. “Ultimately, the goal is not only to ship out to the Family Islands, but we also have small home repairs that go on. Maybe you just added a new light, maybe you just added a new gate, and had to trench a small little section of your asphalt to install a pipe. You may want just  a little bit of asphalt, just to, put back in there and make that good. So a lot of the local hardware stores, the Wongs, the CBS, the JBRs, they also sell imported cool mix asphalt from other companies too. There's two companies that they import their material, they're US brands. 

“Apart from servicing the Family Islands, it's also servicing the local community too, and the hardware stores. So we want to put some of our goods on the shelves too.”

Mr McKinney said while Bahamas Hot Mix (BHM) is a good option, producing both hot mix and cold mix, they produce on a major scale and use dated techniques including “cut back oils like diesel and bituminous material” which “isn't really good in terms of the environment”. He added that Bahamas Striping Group of Companies does not manufacture cold mix and instead purchases in bulk from a company in Baltimore. Mr McKinney argued the cold mix in Baltimore is used as a temporary solution because cold temperatures freezes the product before it arrives at its destination and the area is permanently reinstated once temperatures allow.

“But in the Family Islands we ain't so lucky because if the government comes in and paves those roads today, it'll be probably a lifetime or a couple of decades before they come back in and repave it again,” Mr McKinney added. “So our cold mix as compared to Baltimore's cold mix is more of like a permanent solution. We don't want that temporary because we could pave year round in The Bahamas. We want something, once we put it down, or Water and Sewerage go in and make an excavation for a new connect, once you put that road back, that's good, once and for all. And so that's the basis of my product. 

“So compared to BHM and Bahamas Striping, I would let the judges do the judging but I suppose we have a better product, because our product is tailored towards a permanent solution as opposed to the temporary Baltimore solution. And then, as compared to [Bahamas] Hot Mix, we use environmentally friendly liquids and fluids. All I use is like biofuels. The only thing I'm using oil wise, or contaminant wise, is asphalt cement, which you can't really avoid. Everything else is environmentally friendly, or bio fuel, or eco friendly.”

Mr McKinney said he uses rocks manufactured by Bahama Rock in his product.

“Our product, we use rock that's manufactured in Freeport,” he said. “So our rock in this product is local as well, which means we almost have an unlimited supply, technically. They dredging Freeport. It's a Bahamian-owned company. It's a Bahamian product. It serves all the islands, you know, the remote islands that's usually forgotten about, and we use it. The only thing we import are the bio fuels and the bitumen, or the asphalt cement. And so far I've already sold over 20 pallets to the Water and Sewerage Corporation.

“This will transform the industry in The Bahamas because we can reduce the importation of these goods. Like I say, we utilise rocks manufactured by Bahama Rock. So we patronising the local community, utilising materials that's environmentally friendly and that's locally made and manufactured, and we'll be able to reach all the islands. So even if the island don't have a hot mix asphalt plant, their roads can still be maintained, whether we package the material and ship it out or we mobilise with our equipment and materials to produce and install on the ground.”

A civil engineer by trade, Mr McKinney has worked on several projects including, the Freeport airport runway resurfacing, the Nassau Cruise Port, The Carnival Cruise Port and the container port. While working on a project in Eleuthera, Mr McKinney would load his hot box trucks with hot mix asphalt and utilise the ferry “and barge like five hours”. 

He said they would take two trucks at a time and empty them over the weekend and repeat the process. The process resulted in him purchasing an asphalt plant where he could mobilise the asphalt plant to Eleuthera and produce his own hot mix asphalt using local rock “or I get a reduced cold mix asphalt at my location, be it in Nassau or Freeport, package it, ship it out, and then pallet it.

Mr McKinney said he now has “the real McCoy” after many trial and error attempts at creating the mix. He said during the job in Eleuthera, he began to “to pitch the word to” Water and Sewerage. He mentioned that at the time, there was a need for the product. 

“Everybody was hogging up their material, and so private contractors weren't able to get material, but holes were still forming every day,” Mr McKinney added. “So it was like, 'We need some. Let's try you out.' I produced maybe like 20 pallets. I manufactured it. I shipped it out, packaged it. And the report came back pretty okay.”