Bahamas Building Supply grew out of firsthand experience building in The Bahamas.

While developing our own home in Little Harbour, Abaco, we learned quickly that island construction is different. Materials that are common and easy to source in the United States can be difficult to find, expensive to move, or poorly suited to a hot, humid, salt-air environment. Every decision is affected by shipping, freight forwarding, customs, duties, lead times and the reality that replacing a failed material later can be far more expensive than choosing the right one the first time.

Then Hurricane Dorian changed everything.

The storm devastated Abaco and Grand Bahama and exposed weaknesses that had been hidden inside buildings for years. We saw cracked concrete, failed structures and heavily corroded reinforcing steel in places where the concrete itself should have remained sound. It reinforced something we had already begun to understand: materials that perform acceptably elsewhere do not always perform the same way in a marine environment.

That experience pushed us to look harder at alternatives.

We began working with fiberglass reinforcing bar to eliminate the corrosion problem inside concrete. We explored magnesium oxide panels as a durable alternative to conventional wall and sheathing products. We sourced engineered wood products better suited to the structural and logistical realities of island construction.

What began as an effort to solve problems on our own projects gradually became something larger.

We realized homeowners, contractors, architects, engineers and developers throughout The Bahamas were facing many of the same challenges: finding better materials, understanding how to use them, getting reliable technical information and then actually getting those products to the jobsite.

That is what Bahamas Building Supply is built around today.

We focus on products that solve real problems in island construction. We support those products with technical information, plan review, specification assistance and practical experience with the logistics of moving construction materials throughout The Bahamas.

We do not try to sell everything. We try to identify better ways to build.

Our goal is simple: help people make smarter material choices, build more durable structures and reduce the long-term cost of corrosion, moisture, termites, storms and premature material failure.

Build smarter. Build stronger. Build for the islands.