LafargeHolcim Modernizes North American Plants for the Future

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The world's largest cement company, LafargeHolcim Limited (Jona, Switzerland), is continuing with a modernization program that was started years prior to 2015's mega-merger of Lafarge and Holcim. Within the span of a year, the company is scheduled to complete three major modernizations totaling in excess of a billion dollars at North American cement manufacturing plants in Alberta, New York and Oklahoma.

Earlier this summer, Lafarge Canada Incorporated, a subsidiary of LafargeHolcim, completed construction on one of the largest cement sector projects to occur in North America in recent years. Lafarge spent about $450 million to expand and modernize the Exshaw Cement Manufacturing Plant in Alberta, Canada. Industrial Info first reported on the project in 2007, when it was in the early planning phases. Site preparation began on the project in late 2012. The project involved the construction of a new Kiln #6 to replace Kiln #4, which had older technology, as well as the retrofit of the existing Kiln #5. KHD Humboldt Wedag (Cologne, Germany) provided the pyroprocessing equipment and Gebr Pfeiffer (Kaiserslautern, Germany) provided the raw mill. The project will expand cement capacity to 2.2 million tons per year.

LafargeHolcim is spending a similar amount to modernize its cement plant in Ravena, New York. When completed next year, the project will increase capacity to 3.2 million tons per year from the present 1.8 million tons per year. The third project is at the company's Ada Cement Plant in Oklahoma, which is expanding to 720,000 tons per year.

A fourth large expansion at the Joppa Cement Plant in Illinois was cancelled earlier this year. LafargeHolcim cited poor market conditions as the reason for the cancellation of the project, which had been in the works since 2006.

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