[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1487355812025{padding-top: 20px !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text]Modern Paving is a mid-sized construction firm based out of the picturesque city of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Established as a small paving contractor in the ‘70s, the company has grown consistently over the years to where it is today: a full-service heavy civil contractor.
Modern Paving is a mid-sized construction firm based out of the picturesque city of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Established as a small paving contractor in the ‘70s, the company has grown consistently over the years to where it is today: a full-service heavy civil contractor.
In that time, ownership has changed a couple of times, but the company has maintained its drive and reputation for quality work. It is currently one of the more prominent players on “The Rock” (Newfoundland’s nickname), providing services ranging from road building and paving, to marine and bridge construction, to mass earthwork and more.
According to Brad Piercey, one of the company owners (along with Rick Stead, Max Bennett and Perry Barrett), despite the breadth of their services, asphalt is still one of the centerpieces of their operation.
“Work on the island has been reasonably steady, even through the times when the rest of the world’s economies seemed to be going crazy,” he says. “We have a decent amount of oil and gas interest here — as well as spinoffs from those industries — which has kept development pretty strong and kept us busy.”
“From an asphalt perspective, we are mainly a municipal contractor, meaning we specialize in driveways, parking lots, municipal roads and subdivisions. But we also supply asphalt to a number of small area paving contractors involved with similar work. Add up all of those small to medium sized jobs — projects needing anywhere from 100 tons to 1,000 tons of asphalt — and it’s easy to see how important a steady supply of asphalt is to us.”
Until recently, Modern Paving was relying upon a 4,000-pound batch plant that, according to Piercey, had reached the end of its useful life. That, and a steady uptick in business volume meant that a higher capacity, continuous mix plant would be a welcome addition.
“We knew that the new plant would give us the ability to better serve our clients. At times with our batch plant, customers would have to wait considerable amounts of time before getting loaded up. This, we felt, could eliminate that altogether,” said Piercey. “After reviewing the bids and meeting with company representatives, we selected Asphalt Drum Mixers, and placed an order for an EX170 plant.”
To provide the additional production they need, the plant at Modern Paving’s Mount Pearl location (also the site of its aggregate crushing spread) features a pair of 100-ton silos and four cold feed bins to accommodate 1/8-minus sand, 1/4-inch minus, and 1/4- to 1/2-inch stone. Piercey says the construction process was relatively fast and surprisingly painless.
“We actually partially dismantled our old batch plant before the new ADM plant was fully erected,” he says. “We had that much confidence in ADM’s capabilities — and we were right. In roughly five weeks, thanks to a nice level of cooperation between our two companies, we went from pouring foundations to making asphalt. We were told by others in the business that the process would take a lot longer than that, but ADM kept things moving along nicely. We were really pleased.”
In addition to the features mentioned above, the EX170 offers a single drum counterflow design, which not only keeps cost per ton down, but it also provides some of the longest aggregate drying and mixing times in the industry. That same focus on counterflow design utilizes separate drying and mixing zones to maximize heat transfer and fuel efficiency. Doing so also virtually eliminates unsafe hydrocarbon emissions, a common problem with many drum mixing plants. To further minimize the plant’s environmental impact, the residual gases are reintroduced back to the drum’s combustion zone.
Though they are not currently producing any reclaimed asphalt product (RAP), Modern Paving’s configuration will allow them to do so at any point.
“We are running strictly a base and a surface mix at this time,” says Piercey. “But, from the standpoint of both the equipment and the software used to control it, the new plant is RAP ready, so we might be doing it at some point in the near future. There are already a lot of producers generating RAP in Ontario as well as several places in the Canadian Maritimes. At this point, it’s not mandated, but asphalt plants can use up to 20 percent RAP in their base mix. So if things work out right and there’s a demand for it, we might be inclined to follow their lead. It’s nice to know we’re ready for that.”
While Newfoundland’s geologic make-up earned it its nickname The Rock, that same composition ensures that asphalt producers like Modern Paving have a seemingly limitless supply of aggregate material for their asphalt product. The same can’t be said, however, for any of the petroleum-based products which must still be shipped in, adding to the overall cost of doing business in Newfoundland.
“Other than that, we don’t have any real challenges being situated where we are,” says Piercey. “In fact, being a bit remote actually plays well to the design of the new plant. So many other asphalt plants available today are extremely complex in design, and that just invites trouble down the road. The EX170 can be operated by a single person and maintained by our own people here onsite. Since we went online in late May, it has given us consistent, reliable product all day, every day — that’s exactly what we were looking for.”
Piercey says that, even though they don’t have a full year’s use of the new plant under their belts yet, he is convinced that it has the potential to open new doors for them.
“Our focus is still on the local municipalities and private developments, but the new plant does provide us with the ability to bid highway projects and other larger jobs, should we choose to do so. We will grow if the market grows.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]