New Quarry Proposed for Jamaica

Jamaica World, an industrial development start-up, has partnered with EPSA, a global contract mining company out of Spain, for the development of a limestone-processing operation near Rio Bueno, according to The Gleaner.

The start-up has applied to the National Environment & Planning Agency (NEPA) for a permit to mine an initial 50 hectares of land within Bengal, which is located between Rio Bueno, Trelawny, and Discovery Bay, St Ann, and is 4 km from the Trelawny parish border.

Plans are to extract high-quality limestone from an open-pit quarry in Rio Bueno and process it for sale as aggregate, pulverized limestone, quicklime, hydrated lime and lime slurry.

The Jamaica World operation would compete against Lydford Mining in St Ann and John’s Hall Aggregates, which operates two depots located in Falmouth and Montego Bay.

The market also includes Jamaica Aggregates, a joint venture created between Jamaica Pre-Mix and French industrial company Lafarge in 2008. Jamaica Aggregates operates a plant in Yallahs, St Thomas, and Agualta Vale, St Mary, to service the eastern and northern ends of the island.

Environmental interests working to protect the area said the site remains in virtually the same condition it did when Columbus dropped anchor off Jamaica in 1494. They argued that the forest, along with the rare and threatened species that inhabited it, would be irreversibly destroyed by quarrying.

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