Gravel firm to complete purchase of Long Beach port site

Gravel firm to complete purchase of Long Beach port site A subsidiary of British Columbia-based Polaris Minerals Corp. announced Monday it has completed a due diligence review for the purchase of a 12.4-acre site within the Port of Long Beach and will move forward with the purchase.
   Eagle Rock Aggregates Inc., a construction-material aggregate subsidiary of Polaris, said it would complete the $15.18 million purchase of the privately held parcel by Aug. 18. The company said it entered into an agreement with the current owner in January to purchase the site.
   Polaris intends to finance its portion of the purchase price through a $19.2 million one-year bridge loan facility arranged by GMP Investment Management L.P.
   'We will now concentrate on the permitting and development of a highly efficient and environmentally progressive facility, which could make possible the commencement of sand and gravel distribution by the beginning of 2011,” said Marco Romero, Polaris president and chief executive officer.
   Eagle Rock said the first phase of development would construct a sand and gravel receiving terminal to supply products from the firm's Orca Quarry in British Columbia to the Los Angeles area. A second phase would construct an additional aggregate terminal to receive granite from the proposed Eagle Rock Quarry, also located in British Columbia, the company said.
   Eagle Rock would maintain a 66 percent interest in the Long Beach parcel, with the remaining 34 percent owned by an unidentified 'strategic alliance partner.'
   Despite Polaris' signing last September of what the firm described as a 'long-term strategic alliance' with Mexico-based building-materials giant CEMEX — which included plans for the alliance to develop future terminals in California — neither Polaris nor Eagle Rock have named CEMEX as the minority partner in the Long Beach development.
   The Long Beach parcel sits within the Port of Long Beach boundaries but is not controlled by the municipally governed port authority, and is one of only a handful of privately owned plots within the City of Long Beach Harbor Department's jurisdiction. It is a former industrial facility that Eagle Rock said would likely require some environmental cleanup. Like all commercial ports in California, the Long Beach port is owned by the state and operated by the city under trust.