DEERFIELD — U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern’s tour of All States Materials Group (ASMG) got off to an explosive start Friday morning.

With a “Fire in the hole!” the long-serving congressman out of Worcester smacked the detonator with a closed fist, setting off tons of explosives planted in the asphalt and construction material company’s quarry, which sent up a billowing cloud of dust. Once that cleared, workers began collecting the leftover material.

The detonation served as the first stop of a facility tour, where McGovern, state Rep. Natalie Blais, Deerfield Selectboard member Tim Hilchey and Franklin County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jessye Deane learned about the company’s products and talked about the federal government’s partnership with the asphalt and road construction industry.

“Our biggest customer is the federal government and it trickles down from there,” said ASMG co-owner and Senior Vice President Seth Hankowski, as the tour progressed through the company’s quarry, research labs and liquid asphalt production areas, all of which he noted would not be possible without federal funding.

And federal funding, McGovern said in an interview, is as important as ever with infrastructure across the country requiring maintenance. He pointed to the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Acts — also commonly referred to as the bipartisan infrastructure bill — as an example of the federal government’s commitment to providing funding to the transportation and construction industries. Key components of that bill include a $110 billion investment in America’s roads and the reauthorization of several programs for state departments of transportation.

“We want to make sure that the baseline, in terms of federal transportation funds, doesn’t get lowered, doesn’t get cut,” McGovern said. “One of the things I learned here is the benefits of infrastructure bills that we passed, that is benefiting this operation and enabling communities to plan long-term, which is good for business.”

ASMG employs 250 people in the region and 525 across the Northeast, while providing asphalt and other road construction materials around New England.

The company is based here in Franklin County, with the corporate headquarters, as well as the operations and construction headquarters, located in Sunderland.

Its approximately 600-acre Deerfield facility, Director of Marketing Robert Betsold said, is a special case because there is no other place in the country where an asphalt and road construction company can blast and crush raw material and produce and ship asphalt, while also conducting its own mixing, research and development.

He explained this is a win for the company as well as the environment because there is significantly less trucking involved.

“It’s the only facility of its kind in the country,” Betsold said. “We’re able to do all of it here and avoid all those emissions.”

Alongside staying local, Hankowski said the other key part of ASMG’s business philosophy is to “buy America.”

He explained that keeping business within the country maintains ASMG’s jobs, which then allows them to produce material for construction projects in the U.S., thus sustaining thousands of other jobs.

Those jobs, McGovern noted during the tour, are important because without workers, roads would get less maintenance than they already do.

Even now, he joked he sometimes needs a chiropractor after hitting some of the potholes and bumps around the state.

He said he was “heartened” when he was driving on Route 2 Friday morning to see numerous road projects being undertaken across Massachusetts.

After a tour past the company’s liquid asphalt facility, which has a storage capacity of 7 million gallons, as well as ASMG’s asphalt research and development labs, McGovern said he came away “impressed” with the operation.

“This is an incredible operation. They employ a lot of people in this community and they are producing something that is essential; and they’re doing it in a way that is environmentally friendly,” McGovern said. “I learned a lot today, and I got a chance to set off an explosion, which I’ve never done in my life.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.