Dionne Rose, Business Reporter

Caribbean Cement Company's Rockfort plant in Kingston. - File

Caribbean Cement is keeping its options open of using coastal barges to transport products between its plant at Rockfort, Kingston and eastern Jamaica.

But where originally the firm had said it intended to use this form of transportation primarily to haul raw material from quarries in St Thomas, it now says it will most likely use barges to draw finished products. In fact, the company will begin experimenting with dual use system by this weekend.

"...We will be barging cement down to Morant Bay," said Carib Cement's general manager, Anthony Haynes.

"It is really an experimental run to see how it works because we need to have a back up arrangement. The ford could fail with the next heavy rains," he said.

The ford to which Haynes referred is hurriedly built across the Hope River, at Harbour View in east Kingston, to compensate for a bridge that was washed away by the raging river three weeks ago when Tropical Storm Gustav swept by Jamaica.

The loss of the bridge cut off an important route between Kingston, on the island's south coast and eastern Jamaica, where some of the important ingredients in the manufacture of Portland cement, like gypsum and shale, are mined.

Although a ford was hurriedly built across the river to accom-modate heavy transportation, the absence of a sturdy bridge for a time, cut off Carib Cement from the source of its raw materials forcing Haynes to contemplate the use of coastal barges.

But with the ford in place the cement company has resumed trucking the products to its east Kingston plant.

Not financially feasible

According to Haynes barging products is not new or unique for Carib Cement. Indeed, he reminded that in 2002 the company barged cement from Kingston to Montego Bay, the island's second city on the north-west coast.

This, however, was abandoned because it was not financially feasible, Haynes said.

The economic dynamics, he said, has changed since, and would now be considerably cheaper to use barges to transport products to St Thomas and other areas in the east.

Haynes could not immediately provide figures to support his case, but said: "It will be commercially feasible. One, is that the sales price has changed considerably.

"It cost lot more now to truck overland, but I think that from what we are seeing we can get an economic rate."

Haynes said he was currently in discussions with other partners from St. Thomas to have goods coming from that parish transported to Kingston via barge.

dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com