Green investment for Cauldon cement works

Lafarge Cement is building a new pre-processing plant for the storage, handling and feeding of solid alternative fuels diverted from landfill.

A new chloride bypass is also being installed, to protect product quality and reduce waste.

Cauldon was the first dry-process cement plant in the UK. It is part of Aggregate Industries, which is owned by LafargeHolcim. It has been calculated that this investment should reduce the company’s carbon dioxide emissions by 30,000 tonnes a year.

Steve Curley, managing director cement, said: “We have a successful history at Cauldon of moving away from the traditional use of fossil fuels and instead utilising renewable fuel sources. This investment marks the next step forward for our sustainable future, allowing us to provide a circular economy by recycling waste supplied to us by reputable organisations that are approved against our strict specification standards, and then using it as fuel within our production process.”

The project started construction in March 2021 and is scheduled to complete in early 2022.

The project consists of two parts. The new pre-processing facility with a haulage and feeding platform will be constructed across the road from the main plant, connected via a conveyor that contains the waste fuel during transfer to the plant. This facility can provide 100,000 tonnes of waste fuel per year to the main plant, burning materials that would otherwise go to landfill.

The second part of the project is the chloride bypass, which is built into the existing kiln equipment in the main cement plant. The new bypass removes any additional chlorine that may be present due to the use of the new fuel sources, ensuring a consistent quality product is still produced. The excess chlorine is then used at the end of the process, resulting in no additional waste materials.

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