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84 85 eries.After that, I bought a small, skid-steer loader from a bank that had seized it from somebody and that is how I got into the construction business.After I bought that one, I bought another one, I bought trucks, I bought into concrete.Then I got a quarry and then I got into big construction.” Today, the RG Group consists of Construc- tion & Industrial Equipment, (CIE) Ltd., and RG Quarry. CIE, first established in 1995, is a local leader in developing,managing, and constructing civil infrastructure, including roads, bridges, runways, and other municipal plants and facilities.The company has also built community housing projects, private residences, and commercial buildings throughout the island. RG Quarry opened for business in 1999. Its divisions include Aggregate Processing, Asphalt, and Concrete Block-Making.The Aggregate division occupies approximately 160 acres at Cul de Sac,Quarter of Castries. It produces a number of quarry products, including: boulders, pea gravel, crushed ag- gregate, sand fill,mixed aggregate, concrete sand, crusher run, and quarry waste. Pumice is mined at Anse La Raye, on the west coast, which is then transported to the quarry at Cul de Sac for processing. The company’s asphalt plant, also at Cul de Sac, is capable of processing different combinations of bitumen, sand, and ag- gregates to produce the desired quality of asphalt products. CIE’s ready-mix concrete plants are located at Vieux Fort and Cul de Sac, and produce a range of concrete types from blinding concrete to high strength con- THE RG GROUP OF COMPANIES crete, sulfate resistance concrete, and poly- propylene mesh fiber concrete. In 2012, Gajadhar established Rayneau Construction and Industrial Products (RCIP) Ltd., a 48,000-sq.-foot,“One Stop Hardware and Home Improvement Store” in Corinth, Gros-lslet. RCIP offers quality products for its residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional customers, for their home improvement, construction, and general building projects.The product/services port- folio includes: plumbing supplies, building hardware,windows and doors, paints, hand and power tools, lawn and garden supplies, welded wire mesh, concrete and cement, asphalt,wire and nails, and plywood and lumber. RCIP also sells lawn tractors, appli- ances, and lighting supplies, among other products. “We are the biggest construction compa- ny in St. Lucia,” says Gajadhar.“We employ, full-time, upwards of 700 people.We have ten different locations. In terms of where we stand,we are considered to be one of the bigger employers and businesses in every- thing we do–we are the biggest quarry in terms of supply; we are the biggest in terms of hardware; and in terms of construction, we are the only one that can handle proj- ects in excess of $50 million.” Gajadhar reports that most of the Group’s construction work has been in St. Lucia,with a small amount in Trinidad, but soon he will be moving almost a quarter of his equip- ment to Dominica,where Hurricane Maria recently severely damaged its buildings and infrastructure.“In the quarry,we supply the