RIO BUENO, Trelawny — Tank-Weld last night shipped a donation of 100 tonnes of zinc, valued at $28 million, to hurricane-ravaged Dominica.

The relief supply, comprising roughly 14,000 roofing sheets, was donated by Tank-weld and is estimated to cover more than 1,000 low-income houses.

The cargo, which is consigned to Ronald Jackson, head of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), is scheduled to arrive in the Eastern Caribbean country by November 7.

CDEMA is a regional inter-governmental agency for disaster management in the Caribbean Community (Caricom).

“Not only have we produced the material in Kingston and trucked it down to Rio Bueno, but we are now (yesterday) in the process of loading it on board the vessel,” John Raulston, managing director of Tank-Weld Equipment Limited disclosed during a press conference at their Rio Bueno location yesterday.

“She (cargo vessel) will sail this (yesterday) evening and head towards Dominica. The shipment will arrive on November 7 and then immediately discharged to help the vulnerable people of Dominica,” Raulston said.

Chairman and CEO of Tank-Weld Chris Bicknell explained that his company wanted to make a significant contribution to the hurricane victims.

“We wanted to make something substantial and we want to do it in a way that would really be helpful at this time in their reconstruction after the hurricane devastated Dominica,” Bicknell shared.

“There was extreme loss and suffering in Dominica as a result of the worst hurricane we have ever seen and Tank-Weld considers itself fortunate to be in a position that we can help in a very meaningful and impactful way,” he said.

The CEO noted that Tank-Weld’s efforts to assist regional countries hit by natural disasters started in 2010, when it assisted St Vincent and the Grenadines after it was ravaged by Hurricane Tomas.

“We sent a boat-load of a variety of building materials to the Government of St Vincent and so it is not new to us what we are doing, because we have a port and we have a warehouse and we have a logistics hub which has the wide range of material that we can easily consolidate on vessels for discharge amongst the Eastern Caribbean islands,” the Tank-Weld boss declared.

He added: “So logistically, it’s very efficient. Those islands are hard to reach by regular shipping route and very expensive to reach, so we were able to get the full range of materials there a lot more efficiently than the regular shipping routes out of America or wherever else.”

Tank-Weld’s contribution to relief efforts in Dominica also includes the port, handling and shipping costs, in cooperation with ship owners Oslo Bulk.

Hurricane Maria hit Dominica as a Category Five storm last month, and devastated 95 per cent of the country’s buildings. The overall cost of the damage to Dominica is estimated to be 200 per cent of its gross domestic product.