THE ill-fated hard rock quarry in Mau, Namosi is back on track and set to restart production in the new year. Operator Island Quarries Ltd (IQL) board director Mark Halabe confirmed this in an exclusive interview with this newspaper.
“Our first new plant (industrial machinery) was delivered a couple of days ago. The next one is arriving soon, and we’ve got our drill arriving from New Zealand early next year,” he said.
“We’ve got the crusher arriving. We’ve got staff now on site, cleaning the site ready to go. We’ve done our sevusevu to the vanua and they’re actually shareholders in the business as well.
“We’ll make sure that they’re part of the of the success of their resource as well, commercially, not just for the land ownership, so it’s a good story to tell, and we’re very keen to get going.
“And we’re not worried about selling the product. The product people are lining up already saying, when can you supply us?
“So we should be able, by early next year, to get our first commercial sale of the rock going,” Mr Halabe said.
IQL was acquired by the South Pacific Stock Exchange-listed Kinetic Growth Fund (KGF) in 2020 after a landslide in 2016 killed three workers, including its managing director David Johnson.
Its then owner could not continue the business.
KGF, in which Mr Halabe also serves as board director, is optimistic of the quarry’s potentials.
“We were very sad [about] what happened all those years ago when we had a landslide and we had fatalities on the site.
“Unfortunately, the company that had the business at the time of the license, they had a stop work notice on it, and they didn’t come back to the business anymore.
“But we ended up owning the business.
“They were producing, but not as much as what the potential was.
“So we convinced ourselves that we should do it ourselves.
“We had the opportunity of just selling the business and getting some of our money back, but we did our homework and assessment, and we thought this was this would be a good business if we get it going.
“It took us two years from that decision to where we are today,” Mr Halabe said.
