Apr 2009 Financial News

Arawak Cement Company proposes tyre burning

Apr 16, 2009

THE owners of the Arawak Cement Company Limited are lobbying Government to introduce legislation governing the importation and disposal of tyres, which it wants to use to reduce its energy bill while protecting the environment.

Additionally, Arawak’s parent company Trinidad Cement Limited (TCL) wants the plant at Checker Hall, St. Lucy to get direct port of call status since having all vessels processed through the Bridgetown Port was affecting its competitiveness.

These were two of the key proposals presented to Prime Minister David Thompson and a government delegation during a tour of the Arawak company.
TCL group CEO Dr. Rollin Bertrand, used the opportunity to highlight whatever issues they had, so that they could get assistance from the government for some of the programmes.

High on the agenda was having laws dealing with the way tyres were brought into the country and disposed of, because Arawak wanted to burn all used tyres in the country in its kiln to produce energy.

“One of the most important ones is the whole question of waste burning. Tyre burning is something that the Arawak Cement Company can do to really help the whole question of disposal of tyres. It’s done all over the world and we wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel so to speak. So this is an important area,” Bertrand said.

“What is required is a legislative environment in which when tyres are imported, there is a process by which they must be disposed of. At the moment people import tyres and when they are finished using them they just dump them, but in other countries, there is a process. You are not allowed to dump tyres, you have to take it to a particular place where it is sorted, transported and then eventually brought for proper disposal,” he explained.

The official said the company would do all it could to ensure any waste burning methods it brought to Barbados were not harmful, pointing out such efforts took place in places like the United States safely.

“The whole tyre burning that is done in United States is under a Clean Air Act and is all EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) certified. So we would not bring a technology into Barbados that would not be environmentally friendly and that is the approach that we will take with the whole question of tyre burning,” he said.

Bertrand also said that while Arawak officials had not quantified any savings likely from the burning of tyres, the fact that the plant’s kiln capacity was “way in excess of the number (of tyres) Barbados generates annually” meant the full savings possible were unlikely.

“So the asset (the kiln) would be under-utilised...but you can utilise up to 25 per cent of your fuel in tyre burning, but the number of tyres that Barbados generates is not enough to equal 25 per cent of Arawak’s fuel requirements.”

In terms of the direct port of call desire, Bertrand said this “is an important area because all of the cement vessels in fact have to go through Bridgetown and this sometimes affects our competitiveness. So those are really two of the critical issues”.

He noted too that in spite of the business downturn in the domestic market, Arawak’s export business was keeping it going, and the company had no intention to lay-off staff. The CEO also said that overall the organisation was succeeding in trying to be as competitive as it could be, something made possible by the several advantages Barbados had over other TCL companies in the region.

“Arawak has certain advantages in terms of its manufacturing technologies, the fact that we have a low cost fuel, and the fact that we have a modern and efficient plant. Of course there are areas in which we have higher costs than other operations and of course it’s a smaller plant relative to the ones in Trinidad and Jamaica. But we continue to believe that we can manufacture cement competitively and we are continuing our investment...to upgrade the plant and make it more efficient,” he said. (SC)


Source:
Barbados Advocate
Thursday April 16, 2009

http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/newsitem.asp?more=local&NewsID=3049