Williams Industries Inc.
Chairman’s Report to the Shareholders
For the year ended December 31 st 2008
Sustainable (Barbados) Recycling Centre Ltd. (SBRC)
Williams Industries owns 75% of the equity of Sustainable (Barbados) Recycling Centre Ltd. (SBRC). This company worked well through 2008 to construct a solid waste recycling centre at Vaucluse in St. Thomas, Barbados at a cost of over $45 million dollars. This centre will receive and process up to 1,000 tonnes of solid waste per day from which it will extract as much recyclable material as possible. This company is expected to start receiving waste in the second quarter of 2009 and ramp up to full production by the end of 2009.
We expect that after 14 years of effort this project will enable us to realize our ambition to convert solid waste to electricity in Barbados but our draft contract with Government does not include a waste to energy section. This BOOT project is exactly the type of investment that we want to enable us to diversify into more utility type business. This project generated a considerable amount of business for our core companies in 2008 is expected to be completed and to start earning operating revenue by the end of the second quarter of 2009.
Expansion of our Buildings
The Structural Systems plate storage building was extended by 2,112 sq ft in 2008 at a cost of $145,533 to store sheet metal coils for roll forming roof cladding and siding. .
Williams Industries Inc. administration staff completed their relocation from Warrens to the far more spacious offices at Cane Garden in 2008. This move has improved the efficiency with which the administration staff interact with the
management and staff of the production companies. Because of the looming recession and the acquisition of Hothersal Trading by Northern Lumber Company the expansion of the H&B Hardware at Warrens was put on hold for the time being. Plans have been approved for a warehouse complex to rent adjacent to Coles Engineering and Williams Metals at Lowland and so have plans for a large warehouse expansion on the land acquired with Hothersal Trading. With the recession expected to worsen in 2009 we have decided not to proceed with the construction of either of these buildings until possibly 2010.
Miscellaneous New Business
The Pierhead Project consisting of a marina along the shore of Carlisle Bay made little progress in 2008. Our investment in this project remained at $311,106 at the end of 2008.
Williams Industries Inc. continued its search for new foreign exchange earning “green” business in 2008. We invested $21,934.03 in an effort to get permission to build an ethanol dehydration plant that would produce 1,400,000 litres of anhydrous ethanol per day from hydrous ethanol imported from Cosan in Brazil. The anhydrous ethanol would be exported to the USA duty free under the CBI. Our application was turned down by the Town Planning department on the grounds that the site where we wanted to build the plant was unsuitable for this development. In spite of this we will continue to look for opportunities to develop export business.
