About Basalt World Corp
Basalt World Corp was founded by President Elina Jenkins in 2018, but the companies story really began in 1988 with Don Smith's discovery of continuous Basalt fiber and the many advantages it had to offer over steel and the man-made recipe for fiberglass. This eventually lead to the thought that BFRP (Basalt Fiber Reinforced Polymers) could and should be used to reinforce concrete. To test this theory Don would need a way to efficiently produce BFRP composite rebar. Don's discovery of a new way to pultrude glass-state basalt fiber without the use of any heated dies was groundbreaking, and put Don on the path to creating the first ever pultrusion machine specifically designed to run BFRP.
Over the next 20 years Don continued to further his career in the boat building and marine construction industries, but didn't allow those businesses to get in the way of him developing the first prototype pultrusion machine designed to run Basalt fiber. With the first machine complete and pumping out BFRP composite rebar, Don now needed a way to optimize its efficiency and a way to successfully replicate it. This lead to him teaming up with close friend Elina Jenkins, a computer aided design professional who moved to the United States from Latvia in 1994. Since 2008 the team of two have been working together to morph the original prototype machine into what we now call the Lean Green FRP Rebar Machine ® .
Our mission is to become the driving force in growing the FRP industry, pushing to align our innovative technology with the public good while we make Basalt Fiber Reinforced Polymers the standard reinforcement for concrete. This would ultimately help us to save taxpayers billions of dollars a year while also lowering the carbon footprint left behind to build and reinforce our concrete infrastructure. Our technology will help to maintain an exceptionally high quality control standard throughout the entire FRP industry. Basalt is the stepping stone to a greener, sustainable future; and the sales of our Lean Green FRP Rebar Machine ® will help the industry keep up with the amount of composite rebar that will need to be produced!
The FRP Reinforcement Industry
THE PROBLEM
Today we live in a steel reinforced concrete world. We didn't know it at the time but our concrete structures like bridges, roadways, seawalls and dams all have a useful life span of roughly 35 years before they're in need of serious repairs or replacement. Extreme weather conditions such as fires, rising sea levels and flooding all contribute to the cracking of concrete.
Black steel rebar is used to reinforce the brittle nature of concrete. Due to concretes porous nature water gets inside causing the steel to rust, when this happens the rebar doubles in size eventually cracking concrete structures. American infrastructure was recently given a D+ rating by the American Society of Civil Engineers. the same failing grade awarded to the country back in its 2013 report card. The nation’s association of Civil Engineers quoted that “The nation’s roads, dams, airports, water and electrical systems need $4.6 trillion of work”.
THE SOLUTION
Traditional black steel rebar needs to be replaced with NON-CORROSIVE Basalt Fiber Reinforced Polymer composite rebar. When BFRP composite rebar is placed inside of a concrete structure to be used as tensile reinforcement, the Basalt composite rebar is 2.5 times STRONGER than steel while weighing just 1/4th the weight! Most importantly because fiber reinforced polymers aren't steel BFRP composite rebar can NEVER RUST!
OUR TEAM
DON SMITH
Co-founder / Chairman / Chief Director of Technology
At 66 Don has amassed over 50 years’ experience managing
Startups, to scale up, to commercialization. RockRebar ®
was spun out of technical discoveries Don Smith made while
rigging, racing and winning both national and World Offshore
Power Boat Championships. Professional boat building is a
complicated and highly faceted business. Racing boats aside,
it was largely from managing his company www.smithboats.com
producing from scratch, private, commercial and military
powerboats of his own design, that has afforded Don so much
invaluable experience with machines, plastics, resins and
structural materials such as fiberglass, Kevlar®, carbon fiber
and ultimately continuous basalt fiber. Coupled with an earlier
hands-on career in concrete construction, the experiences
together have caused Don Smith to conclude (volcanic basalt
rock converted into a "glass-state" structural fiber will prevail
over all others on a performance/cost basis for reinforcement
of cement materials for infrastructure).
RockRebar® will now
bring to reinforced concrete the lowest carbon footprint of any
non-rusting alternative to black steel rebar. Much of Don’s
success came by way of approaching technical problems from
a different angle, something which ultimately resulted in our
company’s mission statement and its brand with registered
trademark RAW®Researching Alternative Ways
ELINA JENKINS
President / Co-founder / Design Director
As well as Design Director for Yellow Turtle Design LLC, Rock Rebar Inc. and all registered RAW® Companies, creating 3-D models and shop drawings for all of RAW's® concrete reinforcement products, eventually creating the presentations to go along with the design.
Elina was born in Riga, Latvia where she was a teacher and interpreter for the deaf, she also taught English to deaf children. She’s fluent in Latvian, Latvian sign language, English and Russian, and moved here to the United States in 1994. In her free time, she loves to garden and even uses her basalt products for support (plants love basalt). Elina also is a certified diver and loves to swim with the fish every chance she gets.
Elina who is a mother of two, spent over 10 years painting murals for children’s rooms, the flexible schedule was ideal and allowed her to spend quality time with her children. But as the kids grew, her career grew with them and she moved to a different type of design.
Elina now specializes in computer aided design work. Elina joined RAW® in 2008 and loves how far the company has come. More recently Elina’s been working on the graphics and CAD drawings of Basalt World Corps Lean Green FRP Rebar Machine®.
Elina attended the Art Institute in 2006, and in 2010 received a Bachelor of Science degree in Yacht and Marine Design. She’s also received her SolidWorks Associates certification and has over 10 years of CAD design experience under her belt. Elina has chosen to also further her education and is currently pursuing a degree in Business Management.
BILL FLORES
Director of International Sales
Raised in the International Industrial Sales World in South Florida catering to the Caribbean, Central and South America since the early 80s.
Bill has interacted with individuals from every level within an organization. Successfully maintaining long term relationships with his clients, solving the many challenges in the marine, aviation, industrial manufacturing and Now the Greatest Challenge is educating our current society about long term “Non Corrosion” infrastructure with RockRebar® (Basalt FRP) and many patented designs. As a bearing and power transmission specialist for over thirteen years and currently for the past 15 years dedicated to industrial plastics and composite international sales.
A Fort Lauderdale resident since 1977, Bill is an enthusiastic member of his community and enjoys spending time with his grandson, nature photography and weather permitting, Fly Fishing. “You Go Where Your Vision Is”
