In the 1960s, Bob Lightbourne, then Minister of Trade and Industry, conceived and developed plans for an oil refining trans-shipment complex to supply the United States, utilising the unique deep water facilities of Cow Bay to accommodate supertankers bringing oil from Abu Dhabi in exchange for alumina, which would be smelted in Trucial Oman. The new political administration of the 1970s relocated this project to Font Hill in St Elizabeth, formerly home to one of Jamaica’s largest Red Poll cattle farms.

This project was eventually scrapped; however, it was subsequently envisaged that the extensive designs for the supertanker port facility required by the refinery, could be used for a South Coast port to facilitate cruise liners, as well as for the export of limestone and aggregate. This, too, was never realised.

Robert Charles Lightbourne, a direct descendant of National Hero Paul Bogle, son of St Thomas, was an accomplished inventor and musician (composed our National Anthem) as well as a successful businessman, shareholder and chairman of several prosperous companies. Before returning to Jamaica from the United Kingdom, he had well over 20 patents, ranging from the design of a kitchen ladder to the first aluminum propane gas cylinder. Prior to this, these cylinders were made from steel. He designed the ‘crab’, a converted army tank into one that could detonate mines, thereby saving hundreds of lives during the invasion at Normandy. After the war, Bob designed agricultural attachments for the Massey Ferguson Tractor Company, many of which were patented, including a ploughshare and fertiliser spreader. With regard to the latter invention, he won a silver award at the Royal Agricultural Show in 1949.

Peter King, in giving Bob Lightbourne’s remembrance delivered at St Margaret’s Church, on January 4, 1996, said: “After the devastation wrought by Hurricane Charlie in 1951, the Governor Sir Hugh Foot invited Robert Lightbourne to return home for a six-month stint. His formidable task — to see whether the economy could be rebuilt and moved in the direction of industrialisation.”

Bob was the founding General Manager of the Jamaica Industrial Development Corporation (JIDC) which provided the foundation upon which the economic boom of the 1960’s was built. He was Independent Jamaica’s first Minister of Trade and Industry.

Dawn Rich wrote in her article ‘Wanted: More Robert Lightbournes’ published in the Gleaner on Sunday May 9, 2004, “It is worth noting that in the 1960s, Bob Lightbourne’s ministerial portfolio encompassed tourism, sports, shipping, telecommunications, mining, commerce, industry, energy, foreign trade, export promotion, investment attraction and lighthouses. Today, about six or seven Cabinet ministers carry these portfolios separately, and to far less effect. By any measure, Bob was a superior human being.”

While at JIDC, Bob was bothered by the red mud waste generated from the processing of alumina, and with his research associate, Barclay Baetz, proceeded to develop a process to recover the titanium and iron from these wastes. This process was patented in 1972. The saddest part of this story is that our universities have not, it appears, actively pursued research in the recovery of minerals from bauxite red mud waste. At least not to the extent of the research undertaken by universities in Australia and Canada as reported in the trade journals.

Bob always had a vision for the development of industry in Jamaica, using alumina, a vision that was shared by Alexander Barclay Ewart (ABE) who, as the Managing Director of Industrial Chemical Company, developed what eventually became Jamaica’s only wholly-owned chemical industry, with significant exports within the region, as well as Central and South America. ABE’s companies produced aluminum sulphate, sulphuric acid, sodium sulphonate, salt, as well as tanning leather and producing shoes and other leather products.

The USA owes the development of its prosperity to a handful of visionaries like John D Rockefeller, J P Morgan, and Henry Ford, who laid the stage for their country’s development and were followed by many others. In Jamaica’s case our visionaries Lightbourne and Ewart, like those of the USA, laid the groundwork, but their legacy has been interred with their bones as, to date, no one has followed.

Where are the visionaries who can develop our alumina industry in similar fashion to the development of the oil industry in Trinidad, for example, and in most if not all of the other oil-producing countries? They have a myriad of downstream processes utilising their crude. Barclay Ewart recognised that it was not necessary to have a smelter in Jamaica for development of an alumina-based chemical industry and started with the production of aluminum sulphate, a water treatment chemical. But there are many other chemicals that can be produced from alumina.

Polyaluminium sulphates and polyaluminum chlorides are chemicals widely used in the treatment of water. Overall world demand is in excess of 2.5 million tons annually. Before his death, ABE’s company was actively researching the manufacture of these water treatment chemicals, including their manufacture from red mud.

In addition to its use in water treatment, polyaluminum chlorides are used extensively in deodorants and antiperspirants. Then there are the calcium aluminate cements, used for construction, as well as precipitated silicates used in toothpaste, in foods and the manufacture of tyres.

There are many many other aluminum-based chemicals that can be made in Jamaica and which do not require excessive amounts of electrical energy for their production. Furthermore, the introduction of liquified natural gas (LNG) at the Old Harbour Power Station opens the opportunity for developing a manufacturing centre, with stable LNG fuel and electricity prices. This centre, coupled with a revitalised rail system, would encourage processing of our abundant limestone and dolomite resources into more valuable finished products.

When the Esso refinery was constructed, the plant also included a pipeline to Old Harbour for the supply of fuel oil to Alcan. A similar pipeline could be constructed to move LNG from Old Harbour into Petrojam for use as feedstock for chemical processing. Possibilities for use of this fuel are only limited by our vision.

With the use of LNG in JPS’s Montego Bay Bogue plant, regasification there, as well as at Old Harbour, offers major opportunities for developing refrigerated storage which, among other uses, could be utilised to extend the storage life of many of our crops, thus reducing periods of shortages and surpluses. It also allows the development of juice processing. But manufacturing is a risky business. In Jamaica it is much less risky to import, mark up and sell, and much easier to finance.

Jamaican entrepreneurs in the sugar sector, all of whom recognise the need to invest in factory modernisation, are faced with a major difficulty of financing projects through a local banking system that prefers to invest in motor vehicles rather than factories. Our entrepreneurs in the dolomite and limestone mining sector, are equally challenged and face the additional difficulty of governments that prefer to invest in highways, rather than a rail infrastructure essential to the mining sector. To date, only bauxite/alumina mining enjoys the benefits of our rail system.

Rather than develop facilities for haulage by barge, our roadways, especially those from Morant Bay and Yallahs, will continue to be used by overweight trucks and trailers, and our roads will continue to deteriorate.

And we will continue to complain about the lack of industrial development. We will continue to laud the development of huge retail outlets, mostly for imported goods as well as the opening of more and more used car lots and continue proudly with examples of our success, measured by the number of persons who have two cell-phones. At the same time, the IMF will continue to tell us that our currency is overvalued and we are on the brink of fixing our structural problems.

Are there no more visionary entrepreneurs like Lightbourne and Ewart?

William “Bill” Saunders is a Professional Engineer (PE) with a wide range of experiences in Jamaican Industry.