FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Chapter 6 Putting the Pieces in Place

From now on, I was going to produce my own asphalt. It was a big decision, and actually it wasn’t that simple.

with us, and they had to put their prices up – no matter what it said in our agreement. Well, I wasn’t having that, so I arranged to go to Anglo American’s headquarters in London with John Sullivan and Nick Burman to talk to their UK Chief Executive, David Weston. When we got there, the meeting started, and things heated up pretty fast. They were banging the table a bit, but their boss still hadn’t arrived. So I asked Terry: ‘Where’s David?’ And Terry said: ‘Oh, David won’t come to a meeting like this. But you are very honoured because he will be meeting us for lunch.’ After that, I wasn’t sure that we wanted to stay for lunch, but we did. And over lunch, the story from David Weston was just the same: they were going to put their prices up. As we left, I told John right out: ‘I don’t want to buy another tonne off Tarmac.’ And I asked Nick, my Director of Surfacing, what he was going to do about it. He looked a bit startled, but he said he would source the asphalt elsewhere. ‘And what will that cost?’ I asked him. He looked even more startled. ‘Crikey. Nothing?’ he said. ‘Right,’ I told him. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’ nd of course it didn’t cost us. As far as the other suppliers were concerned, Christmas had come early. But, in my head, I was already making a bigger decision. I wasn’t going to be held to ransom like that ever again. From now on, I was going to produce my own asphalt. It was a big decision, and actually it wasn’t that simple. It was going to take a lot of thinking about. London didn’t need another asphalt plant. But that wasn’t the point. I had considered buying an asphalt plant before, and I had even spoken with Tarmac about investing in one of their old plants. But I didn’t want an old plant. My asphalt plant was going to be the most modern A

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