The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

New Providence’s landfill manager is making “good progress” with its operations, its chief executive telling Tribune Business the company was investing $7 million in the project and will likely increase its workforce to more than 100 by next summer.

Gerhard Beukes told Tribune Business that Renew Bahamas currently employs 65 persons, a count that is expected to increase by more than 50 per cent to 113 by next summer.

“We are making good progress, I think,” he told Tribune Business. “Since we took over operations we have established very good operating procedures in terms of redirecting traffic while we construct the weigh bridges.

“We have displaced the scavengers that were on the site at that time, and we have got the interim materials recycling facility going. That is not the ultimate facility That’s maybe about 5-10 per cent of the capacity that the big facility will have.”

He added: “The big facility is being constructed in Canada, and that is being shipped down in December. Construction will take place in January or February so the big facility will be in operation by February.

“Next year around this time we should be in a stabilisation phase after we put in the first two lines of our recycling facility. We should be at a phase where we have employed approximately 113 people.

“We have spent all the capital expenditure in terms of the initial two lines, what we want to put in and, hopefully, if the waste capacity is there we will expand and looking at lines three and four,” said Mr Beukes.

“It’s about a $7 million project and it depends on the various things you can and can’t do, depending on how much waste there actually is. We always thought that the ball park spend on this project is about $7 million

Renew Bahamas, which was announced in June as the new manager for the Tonique Williams-Darling Highway site, is currently developing a materials recycling facility. It is also responsible for remediating the landfill and studying its waste inflows.