J.R. Vinagro accepted the challenge of demolishing a paper mill in Luke, MD. The mill was a total of 1.335 million square feet of buildings, or roughly 31 acres. The property also had multiple tanks for storage that totaled around 116,000 square feet. We started this job in September of 2023, the paper mill had not been functioning for quite some time and the new owners plan on redeveloping but needed the existing structure to be demolished, that’s where we came in. The job required abatement in all structures and to be demolished one by one. Due to the sheer height of some of the buildings on the property, we needed equipment that had the reach such as, a Komatsu 1250 high reach, Volvo 750 high reach, and 6 other excavators of various sizes to process and move all the material. Our main responsibility for this job was abatement and demolishing the structures to ground level. Bill Miller, owner of Bill Miller Equipment Sales Inc., was crucial in helping to service our equipment. As stated in Construction Equipment Guide, Miller “values the long relationship he has had with JR Vinagro Corp. and appreciates their capabilities and professionalism." Some of the structures were upwards of 280 feet tall, we successfully collapsed multiple high height buildings bringing them down to ground level. One tower being as close as 6 feet away from the railway that runs along the mill, not a single piece landed on the railroad even though it was 280 feet up and 6 feet away. Most of the paper mill had been under constant renovation over the 100 years it had been up and running, unfortunately for us that meant most of the plant had reinforced concrete floors and steel beams that created tight areas for our crew to work. Although this posed a challenge, with strong will and determination we removed the structurally reinforced mill successfully. There was an estimated 50,000 tons of steel and 1,500 tons of C&D removed from the site. Concrete and masonry material remained on site. For one of the building removals, we used 2 Komatsu 1250, D9 Dozer, and a 349 Excavator pulling on a cable with around 1,000,000 pounds of pulling force to collapse the building.
One of our biggest challenges was travel. This being one of our farther job sites, crews and equipment had to move to the job site regularly. With travel time being 8 hours away, most of the crew flew to the location but in many circumstances our crew had to drive. Shipping heavy equipment, especially the size of the heavy equipment required for this job, created a travel-based challenge as well. Another challenge we faced was finding an abatement contractor in the area to work alongside, luckily, we did find one. Weather challenges arised shortly after beginning in the fall of September 2023, with the winter months coming, days became shorter and colder. Equipment breakdowns are bound to happen on jobs big or small, so finding a quick efficient solution in the surrounding area became difficult. Removing the demolished material from the site brought attention to another challenge, what facility could we bring the demolished material to and how are we trucking the demo and scrap metal? For both of those questions we were able to find facilities and local trucking that fit our needs.
J.R. Vinagro completed this job in September of 2024, a full year at the site, right on schedule. With proper scheduling we were able to stay on track, but it was our hard-working crew that truly made it happen. They worked long days, 10-11 hours a day, 6 days a week. Our crew worked tirelessly to execute the job perfectly, spending a year away from their families. To support them, we gave them every other weekend to reconnect with family and friends. Without our all-star crew, this job would not have been possible.