I am curious as to why we buy road salt from Africa when there is a mine in Carrickfergus?
Maybe it's orange salt.
Its actually has a purple/brown hue!
The Boston NRA guy was on Newstalk and he stated that be also buy from NI. The NI mine however is a commercial outfit and look after their long term very large UK customers in Scotland and England as a matter of priority.
aj
Presumably it's all down to price.
irish times said:KERRY
Kerry County Council wants to regain control of salt supplies from the National Roads Authority, and organise its own supplies in 2011, according to the Kerry county manager.
The NRA took over control of the supplies this year.
Manager Tom Curran said at a council meeting that during this cold spell the local authority had little or no control over where and when it could obtain supplies.
Last week it had to send two trucks to Greenore, Co Louth, for 60 tonnes of salt, which was only enough for one night.
Mr Curran said he was not at all satisfied with the service under the NRA and the council was to look at ways of obtaining its own salt supplies in future.
“At the moment, we are limited to where the NRA will allow us to purchase salt. The NRA has a framework agreement in place and local authorities are told where to get their salt,” Mr Curran told the meeting. The council did not have the same problems with salt shortages last winter because it controlled its own salt supplies, he said.
So far this winter, Kerry has spent €750,000 in dealing with adverse road conditions due to the weather, including overtime and machinery and other materials.
BelfastTelegraph said:Northern Ireland road salt resources will only stretch to two more winters, according to the salt mine that supplies the Roads Service.
Salt reserves in the Carrickfergus mine are almost exhausted and will be gone by 2012 unless it gets the go-ahead to start extending tunnels towards Ballycarry, mine owners Irish Salt Mining and Exploration Co Ltd said.
Ireland’s only salt mine centres on Kilroot in Carrickfergus and exploits the eastern edge of what was once a land-locked stretch of sea that eventually evaporated. It produces 500,000 tons of road salt every year which is transported throughout Ireland, across to England and even to New York.
I thought it was their responsibility to source all the salt but only to maintain the primary routes. The LAs had to maintain the other routes with whatever they allocated to them.I heard the NRA saying that their role was only to provide salt for national primary routes, and local authorities were free to do their own thing for salt for elsewhere.
As part of the response to last January’s big freeze the NRA, in conjunction with local authorities has put in place a framework contract for the procurement of salt. Additionally, some local authorities have procured salt directly for example for non-national roads.
Price, Availiability, lead times, quality, grade, quantity ordered, previous experience with that supplier etc. (maybe even carbon footprint, environmental impact etc)
And from the IT, clearly the Kerry Co Manager is not happy with the Stalanist "Command and Control" economics of the NRA!
And from the Belfast Telegraph. http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/n...salt-resources-almost-exhausted-14703009.html
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