CASCO’s Industrial Roots: Guyana Liquor Company’s Industrial Plant

Since the beginning of the company back in the late 1950’s, CASCO Corporation has had some significant projects and clients that have led to its ultimate success throughout its history. CASCO Corp. wasn’t always called CASCO; it in fact used to be called CASSIS Associates Inc. which was named after the founder E. George Cassis. On April 30th, 1980, Mr. Cassis transferred ownership of the company to the Principals of today’s CASCO Corp. One of the first large scale projects built under this new management was a “corrugated paper box plant" in Georgetown, Guyana, South America for the client Guyana Liquor Company.

The project site was located in Guyana, South America. The spot in which the plant would be built wasn’t ideal. The working conditions for the project were that of a third world country: insufficient electrical supply, inadequate water supply, no air conditioning, etc. In addition, the soil condition where the industrial plant was to be built was not ideal either. From a Soil Report, it was determined that the heavy metal building would sink a total of 1’-0” within the first 6 months of its construction and would continue to sink at a slower rate throughout the life span of the building. Instead of constantly battling the settling of the foundation, the structural engineers needed to come up with a design that would allow the foundation to settle and help prevent any future damage to the plant. Without having complete details about the structural foundation, I can’t explain exactly how the engineers supported the building. So at a later time there will be more detail about the building’s support system attached to this blog.

The total square footage of the project was somewhere around the vicinity of 150,000. Within this building were major pieces of equipment that needed to be installed and supported. The engineers of CASSIS had to help the architects design a floor plan layout for the equipment. Since Guyana didn’t have sufficient local equipment supply and adequate utility supply, CASSIS had to find a way for the procurement of equipment and materials, as well as the need to ship large amounts of both cargo and key building components overseas as part of its contract. The new firm’s Principals all contributed a large amount of time and effort to assure that all the materials, equipment, and logistics of the project arrived to the project site on time. Arrangements between CASSIS and the client were made to meet at several banking locations such as: the United States Export/Import Bank in Washington D.C., and the Caribbean National Bank on the island of Trinidad. These meetings were necessary for reimbursement payments to CASSIS for the purchases of building components and for the work that CASSIS provided to the client. These meeting arrangements also dealt with the planning of overseas shipments of equipment and coordination with the Guyana Liquor Company.

Major building component “packages” that needed to be exported consisted of: electrical power generators, containers supplied with various pumps, electrical and plumbing supplies, and other equipment with various other components. Another “package” that needed to be exported to the site was the structural steel package, which was the entire metal building. Yes that’s right, the whole entire metal building had to be shipped down to the site to be built. Guyana didn’t have the resources that we do here in the United States so components like these had to be shipped to site. The generator package was to consist of three huge Cummins generators that were used when the power would go out in Guyana, which reports indicated would be a frequent occurrence. Thought the generator package was supposed to have three initially, they ended up only shipping two. The other packages included things such as ventilation fans, power distribution equipment, and other building materials that couldn’t be supplied from Guyana.

The principals of the company took turns rotating at the job site to make sure construction went smoothly and that the job was completed correctly. Each of them were down at the site on average for around two weeks at a time. Though the workers of Guyana, which was a third world country, didn’t know many US industry techniques and procedures for this type of construction, CASSIS supplied them with the knowledge and tools necessary to complete the job. CASSIS hired an on-site professional Construction Superintendent to reside in Guyana to ensure proper protocol was followed, and that the imported equipment needed such as generators and other construction tools were properly installed.

The job was completed within the scheduled time frame with very few interruptions and actually turned out to be financially rewarding project. In total, the cost of the industrial plant back in 1981 was around $2.8 million and in 2015, that would be equivalent to nearly $8 million dollars. The net result of the job was overall a huge success for CASSIS.

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