Profile
Britain's four
cement manufacturers produce around 12 million tonnes of cement
each year from their network of 14 plants. A further 1 million
tonnes is imported through various terminals.
The industry provides jobs at both skilled and semi-skilled
levels for some 3,400 people and supports about 15,000 indirectly.
Many of those jobs are in rural areas where employment is
scarce.
Availability of suitable raw materials has usually been the
determining factor in the location of cement works. The industry's
origins lie in the south-east of England in the mid 19th
century.
Initially, a number of works grew up along the Thames and Medway
in Kent, where they took advantage of the ready availability of
chalk as an easily processed raw material. Development of machinery
capable of crushing limestone, coupled with a more energy-efficient
production process, encouraged the development in more recent years
of plants outside the south-east.
Modern cement operations are usually large-scale and long-lived.
The economies of scale needed to make them viable demand long
reserves of raw materials and mean that a typical plant has a
production capacity of at least 750,000 tonnes per year.
With fuel representing some 35 per cent of variable costs, the
need to remain competitive has led the industry to examine several
alternative fuels over the past ten years. These have included used
tyres, recycled liquid fuels, plastic packaging wastes, animal
products (tallow and meat and bone meal) and sewage sludge
pellets.
Read
Forty years of UK cement manufacture: 1966 - 2006 by Dr Chris
Clear, Research Manager, Concrete Performance at BCA. Article first
appeared in Concrete magazine, July 2006.
As a result of its development work, the industry now has a
significant role to play in developing solutions for the country's
problems in dealing with hazardous and other wastes. By extracting
energy from these wastes, it effectively lifts them up what is
known as the "waste hierarchy", and significantly reduces the
volumes going to landfill. Currently the industry burns about 50
per cent of the used solvents available in the UK; 10 per cent of
available packaging waste and has the capacity to handle about 50
per cent of the total volume of waste tyre arisings.
Coupled with the drive for greater energy efficiency is the
global need to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. UK
cement manufacturers have, as a result, signed a Climate Change
Levy Agreement with government to deliver an overall energy
efficiency improvement across the sector of 26.8 per cent by 2010
against a base year of 1990.
Achievement of the 26.8 per cent energy efficiency target
depends on the industry's investment in new and upgraded plant
coupled with increased use of alternative fuels.
The industry is investing heavily in new technology and in
ensuring high standards of environmental performance. Current and
recent projects include:
- Tarmac Buxton Lime and Cement opened its new £110
million dry-process cement plant in Derbyshire in 2004.
- Castle Cement opened its £62 million Padeswood kiln in North
Wales in summer 2006.
- CEMEX UK Operation's £180 million Rugby works has been in
production since 2000.
- Lafarge Cement UK is investing £20 million to cut emissions
from its Dunbar works and ensures the factory comply with new local
air quality standards and the EU Waste Incineration Directive.
Sustainability - the concept of satisfying today's needs without
compromising the choices of future generations is one of the big
issues for industry globally. The cement industry has taken a world
lead in tackling the challenge. Through the World Business Council
for Sustainable Development, ten industry leaders have developed
The Cement Sustainability Initiative (http://www.wbcsdcement.org/). The
UK industry is 100 per cent signed up to the initiative. Lafarge,
HeidelbergCement (parent of Castle Cement) and CEMEX were all
involved in the original project, and Tarmac Buxton Lime and
Cement has agreed to deliver its commitments.
It has taken three years of planning and a cost of $4 million to
examine the issues the industry faces globally over the next 20
years. But this is one sustainability initiative that is based not
just on words but on action, because it includes a five-year
programme of work, some involving individual actions and some
partnership projects.
*
Lafarge Cement UK
- 1. Dunbar
- 2. Hope
- 3. Cauldon
- 4. Aberthaw
- 5. Westbury
- 6. Northfleet
- 7. Cookstown
* CEMEX UK
Operations
- 8. South Ferriby
- 9. Rugby
- 10. Barrington
* Castle Cement
- 11. Ketton
- 12. Padeswood
- 13. Ribblesdale
* Tarmac Buxton Lime &
Cement