FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Going the Extra Mile

A Every time I had bought a piece of land, I had had a particular purpose in mind. But as the business grew, the potential of each piece of land seemed to grow with it.

nd now I was beginning to understand something else: how the value of an asset grows as you learn to use it better. Every time I had bought a piece of land, I had had a particular purpose in mind. But as the business grew, the potential of each piece of land seemed to grow with it. Right now, we were using Mulberry Way for the purpose we had originally intended; but I had the feeling that it was a piece of our jigsaw that hadn’t yet found its final place in the big picture. It had more to offer. It was more important than it looked – like a pawn in a game of chess that is about to be promoted to a queen. Another important piece in our jigsaw (another pawn looking for promotion) was the land at Chelsfield that we bought in that same year. As soon as we decided to go for a cutting-edge Asphalt Plant that could make use of recyclable materials, we knew that we would also need a new storage area for the planings that we were going to recycle. In the past, when you planed the surface off a road, the planings were thrown away because no one could do anything with them. But, at about the same time that we bought Chelsfield, the Environment Agency came up with a new protocol that allowed you to recycle the asphalt planed off a road so long as you followed certain procedures. And what is more, the recycled material could be used as top-quality Type 4 asphalt.

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