Joe McWilliams
Lakeside Leader

We might see a new plant set up in Slave Lake in 2022. No guarantees on that score, but Rob Loroff of Paveit Construction says the company made some inroads with its exclusive pothole-patching material last year, and things are looking promising.

You may recall last spring we did a story about Paveit getting Canadian rights to something called Plastasphalt. It’s a European patching formula with a secret recipe. The word from Loroff back in April (or thereabouts) was that the stuff is so much better than the traditional patching material, it was bound to do well. And when it does, he said, a plant to produce it will be set up in Paveit’s home town of Slave Lake. Other – and bigger – plants would likely follow, he said, but Slave Lake would always be first and there “would always be one here.”

As noted, that was in April of last year. Contacted last week, Loroff said decent progress was made during the season.
“Alberta Transportation has approved it (Plastasphalt) on a preliminary basis,” he said. “And we did some work for the City of Edmonton.”

Edmonton has a bigger test in mind – something like 30 or 40 city blocks’-worth, Loroff said.

The Town of Slave Lake hired Paveit to do some patching as well; the evidence was all over 6th Ave. SE before it got covered by snow.

Of course the proof of the effectiveness of Plastasphalt is in how it endures rough treatment – by weather and by snowplows. The stuff on Slave Lake streets is “standing up pretty well,” Loroff said. “The grader isn’t pulling it off.”

So, if the patches done so far are holding fast in the spring, Loroff expects things to pick up considerably. Once there’s a solid commitment for orders of the material, the plant would be set up.

Some of the Paveit people visited Germany back in November to see Plastasphalt in action there. Loroff said they saw patches four and six years old in Hamburg and Berlin that are lasting well.

“And they get a lot more traffic than we do,” he said.