A £20 million project to install a giant cement grinding mill and upgrade the rail loading facilities at Padeswood works in north Wales is under way. Preliminary construction work began in November after Flintshire council’s planning committee unanimously approved the development application.
Cement technical director Gareth Price said: “Securing planning consent got us over a critical hurdle and I would like to thank everyone involved for their efforts. We can now focus fully on the project.”
The nearly new Loesche vertical roller mill is coming from an Italcementi/CRH joint venture cement plant in Bilbao in northern Spain, which was forced to shut down three years ago when the regional market collapsed. It can grind up to 650,000 tonnes of clinker a year and will reduce energy consumption by around 30 per cent due to the efficiency of the electric motors.
The plant’s existing mills are old and inefficient and do not have the capacity to grind the volume of clinker made by the kiln, creating a production imbalance and resulting in some of the clinker being transported to Ketton and Ribblesdale for grinding.
The project also includes installing new cement silos alongside the existing railway line to allow up to three trains a week to be loaded for deliveries to the depots at Kings Cross, London, Avonmouth, Bristol or Belshill, Glasgow depending on demand. At present, the rail link is only used to bring in coal to fire the kilns.
