Opening a new asphalt plant is not a decision to take lightly. Not only is it a large capital investment in equipment, but companies need to invest in training, resources, permits, construction and more. Even under normal circumstances, all those things can be incredibly difficult to have on-hand or readily accessible. As everyone in our industry is well aware, the last few years have been anything but normal circumstances.
No one could have predicted what would happen in the world when Principio Asphalt started having conversations about buying and building a new asphalt plant in early 2020. The team quickly visited with the people at Astec in Chattanooga, TN, to finalize details, and while those were locked in-place, everything else in the world suddenly flipped on its head. Understandably, for lots of contractors, this might have made them second guess their choices or their plans, but that wasn't the case here.
In fact, for Principio Asphalt, their decision to purchase a new plant was one they knew they were ready for, no matter what. They trusted in their team, their experience, and their plan even as they faced several challenges along the way.
Principio Asphalt's new asphalt plant, 400-tph Double Barrel drum mixer plant from Astec, York Belvedere Sand & Gravel in North East, MD.Provided by Astec Industries
“Principio Asphalt is a new company backed by decades of experience,” Paul Lester, Executive Vice President at Diamond Materials, LLC said. “This new venture is backed by a joint venture between York Building Products, P. Flanigan & Sons, and Diamond Materials. Each of these companies has the knowledge and expertise in their fields to ensure this new plant would be successful.”
An Underserved Market
Once the three companies decided to form Principio Asphalt, their location for the plant was easy - the York Belvedere Sand & Gravel in North East, MD. The area is in the midst of huge growth with an interchange to I-95 that will allow the plant to provide service regionally to the Cecil County, MD, greater Newark, DE, and southeastern PA markets.
“We were sending a lot of our mix from the Wilmington Diamond Materials plant out to the Maryland market and knew it was an underserved area,” Lester said. “With the new plant, P. Flanigan and Diamond Materials as a laydown contractor would be a great customer for the plant and the partnership with York and P. Flanigan allowed for it to happen.”
The York Belvedere quarry provides a variety of hard rock products in many sizes, making them an ideal partner and location for asphalt production.
“The experience and materials at the York quarry gives us the ability to control the quality of the mixes we produce,” Lester said. “Being able to design the mixes and then deploy them for our customers was a huge advantage of this install and location instead of transporting mix into the area.”
A Plant to Meet Demand
When Principio Asphalt was in the market to purchase the new plant, they knew they were going to need a unit that could reach high capacities, while also being able to utilize a high amount of recycled materials.
“Right now we’re producing mixes with at least 15% of recycled asphalt material in it and most of our normal everyday mixes are up to 40% recycled material,” Lester said. “We're definitely seeing a demand for it in Delaware, and we think Maryland and Pennsylvania are coming right behind. Eventually in our industry, producers will need to supply environmental product declarations (EPDs) for their materials and so recycled mixes are the way to go.”
While demand for these types of mixes has grown, Lester reinforced that the key for customers is still quality, even if they're looking for a good deal at the same time. "They want a good product that's inexpensive. So, that's what you have to make," he said. "That's why we went with the double barrel mixer. We believe it's best at achieving a high recycle rate, getting the moisture out, and rejuvenating the asphalt."
The Double Barrel sequence also passes the material through a series of veiling flights that transfer the heat from the burner to the aggregate. The aggregate then exits the inner drum, dropping down into the outer drum shell, where paddles sequentially mix in RAP, liquid AC, and dust/filler in a flame-free environment. In this zone, the constituents are mixed for the remainder of the drum length before exiting to the drag.
Since Diamond Materials has experience with asphalt production, Lester and his team knew they also wanted to have a plant they were familiar with at the first Principio location.
Principio Asphalt's new asphalt plant, 400-tph Double Barrel drum mixer plant from Astec, York Belvedere Sand & Gravel in North East, MD.Provided by Astec Industries
The company chose the 400-tph Double Barrel drum mixer plant from Astec. This plant is capable of capacities up to 400-tph and can make mixes with up to 50% RAP. The sequential mixing that happens in this plant ensures ingredients are added to the hot mixture in an order that allows better temperature equalization and even distribution of all particles throughout the mix - something important to production at Principio.
“With our materials, we don’t look at it as what percentage is recycled materials, we’re using terminology that indicates the percentage of virgin binder we’re replacing instead,” Lester said. “We have mixes that are 25%, recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) and 5% shingles that we use and we're also large believers in using a rejuvenator in most of our high recycled operations to ensure quality with these materials.”
Since Principio is a new venture, they also wanted to know they would have reliable support behind the location during design, construction, and beyond.
“We knew what Astec brings to the table as far as customer support,” Lester said. “Anytime you picked up the phone, when we were designing the plant, or if we had an idea for something we wanted to change, we never got an answer of, ‘We can’t do that.’ It was always, 'Let's get into it, let's talk about it.' We never asked them a question that they haven’t been able to answer. From their sales team to their parts guys, everybody from top to bottom answers when we call.”
Timing Was Everything
In order to meet the ambitious timeline that Principio had planned, it required a lot of back-and-forth communication with Astec's team.
“We had an aggressive timeline to get this all done and Astec was ready to meet our demands,” Lester added. “We were having conversations in April of 2020 to order the plant and the plan was to put it up over the winter going into the spring of 2021. COVID, however, pushed us back quite a bit and we were finally able to get permitting done later in 2021.”
With the delay, the Principio group was busy gearing up for the paving season, so the team at Astec stepped in to help with construction. The plant was installed and ready for production in late 2022.
“We are very familiar with Astec plants and so our team was able to assist with installing the electrical and complete some initial training for this location, but the Astec team was on hand to help with anything we did need,” Lester said. “Our team at Diamond Materials has attended the Customer School events put on by Astec and we were lucky to have some of those people available to get this plant up and running and ensure its success long term.”
What is impressive about Principio's achievement here isn't necessarily obvious on the surface, but those anyone owning or operating a plant right now will tell you that staffing a single asphalt plant is a challenge in today's labor market.
While many would be content to have enough skilled and trained employees for their existing plants, Principio has forged ahead in one of the most difficult times in history to expand their operations by building this new plant. They achieved this through a grassroots, farm-team approach to recruitment. Each person who joins their team can look at every employee that works above them and know that they once were where they are now. Being able to see the potential for your own growth, combined with management that has spent years getting their hands dirty, breeds a positive job environment.
"Almost every person that runs a plant for me started out on the ground straight out of high school, in a loader, doing mechanic work, or maybe welding," said Lester, who also started out originally as an entry-level laborer. "I started out there and here we are now, I'm the Executive Vice President of the entire company. So, it's kind of bred into us, to bring guys up and bring guys along with you. That's the only way to build a strong company."
Principio Asphalt's new asphalt plant, 400-tph Double Barrel drum mixer plant from Astec, York Belvedere Sand & Gravel in North East, MD.Provided by Astec Industries
"We push everybody to grow," said Lester. "Some guys want to be operators, because they like it. Ohers want to be estimators, but there are some that are always asking if they can learn a new thing or try out something else, to see if it's a good fit, and we want to give them that chance."
Forward Vision
Principio also planned ahead at this location, anticipating the future needs of the market.
“We believe that there's going to be a large future here,” Lester added. “We planned for four silos upfront and we planned enough room that we can add four more silos at any time.”
And when they are ready to upgrade their facility, Astec will be ready to help.
“From the top down, everyone at Astec is always great to deal with,” Lester concludes. “No matter what issues we have, we can call and know we’re going to get an answer. In my eyes, it’s the customer service that keeps us coming back and Astec treats you like family in that way.”
