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Sault Ste. Marie contractor-paver opens aggregate operation

Some Northern Ontario communities have gold and nickel; Sault Ste. Marie has aggregate, and plenty of it.
Palmer 1
Terry Rainone of Palmer Construction is getting into the aggregate business with a new quarry development in Sault Ste. Marie’s north end.

 

Some Northern Ontario communities have gold and nickel; Sault Ste. Marie has aggregate, and plenty of it.

Terry Rainone, president of Palmer Construction Group, is carving into one of the high granite and sand ridges north of the Sault as part of a new spinoff aggregate company for the construction and roadbuilding industry.

Palmer Aggregates represents a $2.1-million investment in crushing and screening equipment, and a weigh scale with $785,000 in assistance from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund earlier this year.

The company is carving into a sand bank on one of the high ridges north of the city where it borders the hard, granite rock of the Canadian Shield.

With seven new jobs created adding to their 80-person workforce, Rainone said the operation has the potential to get bigger in the next few years.

Palmer is a multi-faceted company engaged in general and design-build construction, pre-engineered buildings and paving.

They bought a hot mix asphalt production plant in 2003 and, up until to last year, always contracted out its crushing and screening to independent operators.

Since Palmer is a relatively small producer, the problem they faced was securing those operators with small orders when they needed it.

So Rainone decided to keep it in-house to ensure their supply in creating an aggregate company.

“There’s a good quality of aggregate in Sault Ste. Marie, but we felt it was to our benefit to keep Palmer (viable) as a company to ensure we have our long-term supply,” said Rainone.

He acquired 732 acres of land on Third Line in the city’s northwest side, of which 160 acres is licensed as a gravel pit.

Rainone owned a share of the property for 25 years but the property sat idle and he managed to acquire it piece by piece over the last year.

About 10 acres have been under production since last spring. They process aggregate ranging in size between half an inch and two inches for asphalt and concrete stone, sand and gravel for road base.

As well as supplying their own project needs, they are supplying for two local ready-mix companies, Lafarge and Caswell Concrete.

“Right now we’re just taking out sand, gravel and natural stone,” said Rainone. “We haven’t done any blasting or taken quarry rock out of there yet. Our long-term goal is to license it for rock quarry production.”

If the City of Sault Ste. Marie and Essar ever open up the steelmaker’s deep water export dock to outside freight, Rainone would like to load self-unloaders with quarry stone to ship to the U.S. market.

“That’s quite a ways off. Our current plans are just to serve the local market,” said Rainone. "We always seem to get our share of one or two road projects,” including the Third Line extension, a major new artery connecting People’s Road and Great Northern Road across the city’s north end.

“We’re still a small company with about 99 per cent of our work in the Sault and like to be independent with our own sewer and concrete, building and asphalt plant crews.”

The company is involved in major building expansions on the campuses of Sault College and Algoma University.

Palmer has also ventured into commercial and residential real estate. They just finished off a solar module manufacturing plant for Heliene Canada on property they lease to the Spanish company. Palmer has a new seniors' housing development underway in the west end.

They are also dong the site prep work for the start of construction on a new municipal waste-to-energy plant for the Elementa Group.