Displaying items by tag: Canada

Canada: Lafarge Canada is planning to develop a community outreach plan as part of the plant expansion and modernisation project set to begin at its Exshaw plant in Alberta in the autumn of 2012. The Canadian unit of French cement giant Lafarge is looking to build a new kiln line on the western side of the current facility and intends to increase production by 60%. It will do this by replacing outdated technology at the 107-year-old cement facility.

The company submitted its development permit application at the start of June 2012 in order to begin constructing the necessary foundations to support the new equipment, including a five-stage preheater, precalciner tower and a new rotary kiln. The Alberta government has already given Lafarge permission to proceed with the project.

On 19 June 2012 Exshaw plant manager Heinze Knopfel said that the community outreach plan would address how Lafarge intends to keep residents informed and address the negative effects of constructing a large industrial plant could have on Bow Valley communities, specifically Exshaw.

"Over the next three years during the construction phase we anticipate that there is going to be additional traffic and extra contractors on site. We will be sharing regular updates with the community and will continue to respond as quickly as possible to complaints," said Knopfel. "Our neighbours are really important to us. We recognise it is a partnership. We meet regularly with the surrounding communities. We want to understand how they feel about their operations and what we can do to improve their life or lifestyle."

Lafarge expects that the construction will take approximately three years with the foundation work beginning in the autumn of 2012. Knopfel said that he expects that this first phase would not have a significant effect on traffic or noise as the number of contractors working on site would be low with only cement trucks and the drilling contractor coming to the site. Two cranes will also be working to move equipment stored on the project site.

Construction on the kiln line itself will likely begin in 2013 with the peak of activity seen in 2014. At that point, Knopfel said he expects there could be 200-350 contractors at the site. He added that the plant's expansion and modernisation project would also provide a good opportunity to improve traffic flows at the plant. Instead of having resource and product trucks enter the plant at the same point, which is what currently occurs, trucks will leave the plant through the current main entrance and enter through a new gate to the west of the plant.

"Instead of the entrance, which is a real bottleneck, we're going to streamline the flow of traffic, which we know will mitigate a lot of the concerns of the community," he said. The upgrade will also increase the amount of cement leaving the plant by rail.

Overall, Knopfel said that he expects the project to have a positive effect in the Bow Valley, environmentally, socially and economically. "I expect the plant expansion will provide tremendous benefits for the community."

Environmentally the standards will be raised beyond the new Alberta requirements. "We're consciously aware of where we are relocating equipment and we're trying to relocate the equipment as far away as possible from the community," Knopfel said. "(The new kiln) is going to be state of the art as far as technology is concerned. It is going to be the newest and the best technology on the market," he said.

The Municipal Planning Commission for the MD of Bighorn is scheduled to review Lafarge's municipal development permit application on 18 July 2012.

Canada: Politicians and community leaders were on hand yesterday to celebrate the fact that St Marys Cement's Bowmanville Plant has received North America's first International Organisation for Standardisation's (ISO) ISO 50001 certification.

Erik Madsen, CEO of St Marys Cement Inc. accepted the certificate at a ceremony at the plant. The award presentation was made by Michael Delisle, CEO of International Certification Services Inc. (ICS). Although the ceremony was official recognition of the plant had achieved certification the company was officially registered as the first North American recipient of ISO 50001 on 15 November 2011.

Upon receiving the Certificate, Madsen observed, "St Marys identified the benefits and embraced the certification process early. The ISO 50001 programme and cement plants are a logical fit. Our Bowmanville plant has a rated capacity of over 1.8Mt/yr of product, operates 24/7 and consumes significant amounts of energy. Managing these energy costs is a no brainer. it is good for the environment and our bottom line."

Fabio Garcia, Operations Manager at the Bowmanville Plant, told ceremony attendees, "Receiving this prestigious certification was not something that happened overnight. The origins of this certification can be traced back to 2005 when we were given the green light by senior management to move forward with an integrated strategy to reduce the plant's energy consumption.  This quickly became an initiative supported and made possible by all of our employees."

CEO Madsen concluded, "The  commitment to energy conservation, and the continual desire to improve processes by the entire staff at our Bowmanville plant,  is the reason that this is the first North American site to receive ISO 50001 certification. The energy conservation elements of ISO 50001 certification means we are on track for over US$1m in savings in 2012 alone.  I want to thank each and every one of our employees, who helped to make this possible."

Canada: René Thibault and Bob Cartmel have been appointed by the Lafarge Group as its senior leaders for all markets and product lines in Canada. Thibault will oversee the four western Provinces and three Territories as well as the Pacific north west and the Dakotas in the US. Cartmel will oversee the six Eastern Provinces.

Thibault has over 20 years of experience with Lafarge in Canada, which has included an assignment at the Lafarge group headquarters in Paris, France. He has an Engineering degree from Queen's University in Ontario and has completed executive studies at Harvard Business School in the US.

Cartmel has over 25 years of experience with Lafarge spanning Canada, the United States and Latin America. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario.

Lafarge said that the appointments, which are part of its wider geographical restructuring programme to bring all of Lafarge's businesses together under a single leader in each geographical area, would provide further career development opportunities for employees, strengthen the company's customer approach as it delivers sustainable solutions to the construction industry and allow its community investment projects to be more focused.