John Myers Jr, Senior Staff Reporter
Chris Bicknell, group CEO and financial manager of Tank-Weld Group chats with Doreen Frankson, president of JMA during the Tank-Weld Group investment at Port Rio Bueno press conference at the Courtleigh Hotel on Thursday, September 28, 2006.
Today, we continue to spotlight those who have been nominated to receive the 2008 Gleaner Honour Award next week at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel, New Kingston. In the business category, the nominee is Tank-Weld Group.
The construction business is a tough one and the Tank-Weld Group knows this only too well. For it has been able to navigate its way over the ups and downs that have become a characteristic of the industry over the many years, making a name for itself in the process. In fact, they have been around for more than 25 years and still growing.
The name Tank-Weld has been synonymous with Jamaica's construction industry, helping to mold and shape the framework of some of the most complex projects executed on this rock, helping to carve out the notion of strength and durability that we have come to know about the structures in Jamaica.
Through prudent business planning and savvy investment decisions, this construction company has evolved over the years into one of Jamaica's formidable conglomerates, with several subsidiaries catering to specific niches in the construction industry - steel distribution, steel fabrication, civil engineering and contracting, heavy duty haulage and equipment rental.
But Tank-Weld's legacy did not come easy, nor did it come just by managing risk at the construction site. It involved a great deal of risk management on the balance sheets. After all, a healthy bottom line is important to the survival of any company that has been around for more than a quarter century.
A healthy appetite for risk
Now, the wholly owned Jamaican conglomerate controlled by the Bicknell family is venturing into a whole new realm, one where no other Jamaican company has gone before - that of port construction and operation. Tank-Weld has demonstrated innovation, commitment and a healthy appetite for risk when it decided to use its own funds to develop Port Rio Bueno in Trelawny. That is why the company is the nominee for the prestigious Gleaner Honour Award in the business category for 2008.
Initially conceptualised as a $1.2 billion project mainly to streamline the company's steel and bulk cement import and distribution, Port Rio Bueno is now a $2.4-billion facility and counting as it will now be much bigger than originally anticipated, becoming one of the single largest investments to be undertaken by a Jamaican company.
The facility was formerly used by the Hendrickson and Hopwood families and before them by Musson Jamaica for the importation of grains for animal feed. The massive port project, although conceptualised five years ago, actually started in 2006 and is still under way. The port, however, was opened for business recently and has so far received 10 ships.
The construction of Port Rio Bueno on 30 acres of land located in the sleepy rural town from which it inherited its name on the border of St Ann and Trelawny, is being built entirely by Tank-Weld expertise, which is in itself no ordinary achievement for a local entity.
Economic buzz
"We are honoured to be selected for the award," Chris Bicknell, Tank-Weld's CEO said in a telephone interview from London where he is meeting with financiers of the port project. Bicknell is not in the least perturbed by the additional capital requirement, which the company will have to source externally because the expansion of the port would allow the company to take advantage of additional business opportunities and provide revenues that will go towards broadening the bottom line.
Additional amenities will include an LPG filling plant, facilities to handle aggregate exports and additional warehousing space. The port is presently capable of handling containerised activity, but there is not enough storage space to stack them, hence the expansion of the warehouse.
When completed, the multibillion-dollar port will not only help to boost Tank-Weld's bottom line, but it will also stimulate a level of economic buzz never before experienced in this otherwise dormant north coast community. For although Rio Bueno is positioned along Jamaica's main tourism corridor, much of the economic spin-offs have escaped the small seaside village and its inhabitants, due largely to the recent construction of the North Coast Highway that bypasses it.
Receptive to development
But that is set to change as already the construction of the port has found employment for a number of residents and has provided fuel for businesses in the small town. According to Bicknell, the community has been very receptive to the development, arguing that the port would bring new interest in the area, reduce the strain on the road network from the transportation of heavy building materials from Kingston to northern and western parishes and significantly lessen the cost of building materials in that section of the island.
As for Tank-Weld, the CEO said the construction of the port was a strategy to reduce importation costs, improve efficiency and to broaden its product range - a move it expects will bring tremendous benefits for construction in northern and western parishes. In addition to steel, the company will also be importing and distributing cement and lumber and export aggregates such as limestone.
Chris Bicknell (right), group CEO and financial manager of Tank-Weld Group, chats with John Greaves (centre), director, and John Ralston, managing director, during a press conference at the Courtleigh Hotel on Thursday, September 28, 2006. - photos by Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer
In this September 2006 Gleaner photo, Chris Bicknell (left), CEO and financial manager of Tank Weld Group, in discussion with his brother, Bruce Bicknell, managing director of Tank Weld Group, at the Courtleigh Hotel, during the press conference to announce the company's Port Rio Bueno project. - File
