Ketton Cement Works is a large cement plant and quarry based in the village of Ketton in the county of Rutland in the United Kingdom. Now owned by HeidelbergCement, the plant produces around one tenth of the UK's Portland Cement needs. Ketton works employs around 220 people.[ citation needed ]
Ketton stone, a Jurassic oolitic limestone, has been used as a building stone since the 16th century. [1] Some areas of former quarrying, Ketton Quarries, are now a Site of Special Scientific Interest, maintained by Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. [2]
Ketton Cement works can trace its history back to Frank Walker, a Sheffield builder, who was looking to establish a works for sectional buildings and cement products. In 1921, he bought 1174 acres of Ketton parish, most of which consisted of old quarries and clay pits. In 1925, Walker established a small concrete block factory company under the name "Walkers Ketton Stone Company", and by 1927 was looking to raise the capital for a cement works. The project was taken up by Sheffield businessman Joseph Ward, the brother of Thomas William Ward and chairman of the business which also had interests in machinery, scrap metal, fuel and ship breaking. For most of its history, Ketton Cement was treated as a subsidiary of Thos. W. Ward. Frank Walker sold his block business to the newly formed The Ketton Portland Cement Company in July 1928, followed by his land at Ketton in August. Work began on the cement works on 1 August 1928, with much of the machinery and railway equipment coming from Ward's. The first full weekly wage-bill of £202.2.11 was paid on the week ending 10 August 1928 for about 90 men. By the week ending 8 November, the wage bill had risen to over £600 for around 250 men and boys, who worked on the site.
The works was built with just one kiln but in 1933 Kiln Two was added. Kiln Three soon followed in 1939. A major part of the construction of Kiln Three was its new chimney built out of reinforced concrete, as opposed to brick. The chimney stood at an impressive 338 feet (103 m) high and was the tallest structure in the south of England, visible for as far as 50 miles away. The rapid growth of the plant was in line with a rise of cement prices towards the end of the late 1930s. By 1939, production had increased from 50,000 tonnes in 1930 to well over 200,000 tonnes. During the Second World War, the demand for cement increased hugely due to the construction of military bases and defences, but, as with most industry at the time, Ketton Cement suffered from labour shortages due to the call up of most able-bodied men.
Kiln Four was built in 1954, increasing the plant output to around 300,000 tonnes by the late 1950s. Further growth continued into the 1960s as the mass slum clearances lead to mass redevelopment in towns and cities. By the late 1960s, the plant had grown by an extra two kilns and production stood at over 600,000 tonnes. Development by the Ketton lab saw a rapid-hardening cement (branded "Kettocrete") and a waterproof cement product being made, thanks to the further understanding of what differing proportions and quantities of minerals in the clinker could achieve. Water repellent and masonry cement were also developed by the laboratory, with differing quantities often controlled manually with little control by technology.
As production increased, the transport of limestone and silica clay from the quarry to the plant needed to become more efficient. The standard gauge railway that had operated since the opening of the factory was replaced initially by dump-trucks, before being superseded by conveyor belts. New, larger crushers were installed in the quarry to reduce the size of the limestone before mixing with the clay. Kiln 7 was completed in 1975 at a cost of £10m. This kiln produced clinker by the dry process, as opposed to Kilns 1 – 6 which heated the crushed lime and clay as a slurry mixture. Dry-process kilns were more efficient as there was no water to evaporate first. Kiln 7 also featured a preheater which heated the raw meal using the kiln exhaust gases to around 800 Degrees before entering the main kiln. By the late 1970s, Ketton was producing around 700,000 tonnes of cement per annum from all seven kilns.
In the early 1980s, Thos. W. Ward became part of worldwide group Rio Tinto Zinc, and Ketton Cement was rebranded as Castle Cement. With an increasing market share, Kiln 8 was designed and built in the mid-1980s. At a cost of £70m, the kiln is 68m long and the preheater tower is around 80m high. Two large stores with capacity of 43,000 and 10,000 tonnes each were constructed to enable storage of raw materials to feed the kilns. This enabled working hours in the quarry to be reduced to a five-day week. Once Kiln 8 was operational and initial faults were rectified, Kilns 1 – 4 were closed in 1986, followed by Kilns 5 & 6 in 1987. These have been demolished and the area where they stood grassed over. The workforce at Ketton was reduced from around 520 to 310 mostly through compulsory redundancies. In 1989, Castle Cement passed into the ownership of Scancem, which was a cement and building materials manufacturer operating across Europe and Africa.
Scancem was bought by Heidelberg Cement in 1999 and the Castle Cement logo was adjusted to incorporate the name of its new parent company. In 2007, Hanson Plc (formally ARC) was bought by Heidelberg [3] and two years later Castle Cement was merged with Civil & Marine to form Hanson Cement. The distinctive Castle logo was replaced by the Hanson "H" logo though the Castle "Turret" was retained on packaging due to the strength of customer loyalty. The economic downturn hit Ketton hard, and with a reduction in the output of cement, Kiln 7 was mothballed in September 2008 with no prospect of restarting in the near future. Following a shake-up and cost-cutting exercise in 2012, many office functions including planning and distribution for the prepacked aggregates business were moved to Ketton. This includes logistics for bagging plants such as Needingworth and Nuneaton.
One of the initial factors in the location of the plant, other than the high quality of lime and silica clays present onsite, was the proximity of the LMS Birmingham to Peterborough Line to the south of the factory. Exchange sidings (known even today as Ward's Sidings) were built to receive and dispatch train loads of cement while receiving fuel into the plant. Shunting duties were handled initially by steam locomotives procured from Thos. W. Ward. These were replaced in 1961 by five Fowler diesel locos, also from Ward's. Following plant efficiencies, Diesels 2 & 3 were returned to Fowler in 1967 and No. 5 was withdrawn in 1971. "Ketton No. 1", Fowler 0-4-0DH No. 4220007, built in 1960, is on display at Rutland Railway Museum.
Now shunting is handled by British Rail Class 08 shunters on hire from DB Schenker, who also provide traction for outbound cement and inbound coal trains on the main line. Following rationalisation of receiving terminals during the 1970s and 1980s, cement from Ketton is now sent four or five days a week to a large terminal at Kings Cross Central in North London. Rail-borne cement is handled in four-wheel tankers and cement is discharged pneumatically.
Cement has always been transported by road, however with the growth of ready-mixed concrete plants from the 1960s onwards, and the rationalising of the railway network, road haulage has grown in importance, with both Ketton's own fleet of trucks as well as external hauliers used to transport finished cement products both in bulk tankers and palletised in curtainside vehicles.[ citation needed ]
When Kiln 5 was built in 1962, electrostatic dust arrestment equipment was fitted to reduce the dust pollution that was so common with earlier cement works. In the 1990s, Castle Cement embarked on a programme reducing the amount of coal burnt by Ketton works. Profuel, a recycled fuel product consisting of shredded paper and plastics that would otherwise go to landfill was introduced in the mid-1990s. In 1996, used car tyres were introduced as an alternative fuel. The introduction of burning waste as a fuel initially created concern within local communities as worries about health and environmental risks created news headlines. Much was done by Castle Cement and the staff at Ketton to communicate with its neighbours and to be open about its activities at the plant including local meetings, visits and newsletters. Hanson Cement held an open day at the Ketton production facility every year in July. [4]
In 2013 Lark Energy built a solar power farm on land reclaimed from a 1940s quarry. The second phase was opened in 2015 by Secretary of State for Energy Amber Rudd. [5] The solar farm provides 13% of the cement works' annual energy consumption. [6]
A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel (aggregate) together. Cement mixed with fine aggregate produces mortar for masonry, or with sand and gravel, produces concrete. Concrete is the most widely used material in existence and is behind only water as the planet's most-consumed resource.
Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general use around the world as a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar, stucco, and non-specialty grout. It was developed from other types of hydraulic lime in England in the early 19th century by Joseph Aspdin, and is usually made from limestone. It is a fine powder, produced by heating limestone and clay minerals in a kiln to form clinker, and then grinding the clinker with the addition of several percent gypsum. Several types of portland cement are available. The most common, historically called ordinary portland cement (OPC), is grey, but white portland cement is also available. Its name is derived from its resemblance to Portland stone which is quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England. It was named by Joseph Aspdin who obtained a patent for it in 1824. His son William Aspdin is regarded as the inventor of "modern" portland cement due to his developments in the 1840s.
A lime kiln is a kiln used for the calcination of limestone (calcium carbonate) to produce the form of lime called quicklime (calcium oxide). The chemical equation for this reaction is
Rutland Railway Museum, now trading as Rocks by Rail: The Living Ironstone Museum, is a heritage railway on part of a former Midland Railway mineral branch line. It is situated north east of Oakham, in Rutland, England.
Ketton is a village and civil parish in Rutland in the East Midlands of England. It is about 8 miles (13 km) east of Oakham and 3 miles (5 km) west of Stamford, Lincolnshire. The 2011 Census recorded a parish population of 1,926, making it the fourth largest settlement in Rutland, after Oakham, Uppingham and Cottesmore. The village has a primary school.
ENCI is a Dutch company based in Maastricht, Rotterdam and IJmuiden. Their core business activity used to consist of the digging of marl out of St Pietersberg, which they used to make cement. The company has been around since 1924, with some key locations being in Maastricht and Sint-Pietersberg. The Maastricht location was closed in 2020, along with the cement production.
Aberthaw Cement Works are cement works in the Vale of Glamorgan near the village of East Aberthaw in Wales.
Hanson Cement was a cement production company located in the United Kingdom. It was called Castle Cement until it was rebranded in 2009. The company is now owned by HeidelbergCement, with the UK business managed by Heidelberg Materials UK. Hanson Cement has a long history dating back to the early 19th century, when it was founded as the Portland Cement Company.
Cement kilns are used for the pyroprocessing stage of manufacture of portland and other types of hydraulic cement, in which calcium carbonate reacts with silica-bearing minerals to form a mixture of calcium silicates. Over a billion tonnes of cement are made per year, and cement kilns are the heart of this production process: their capacity usually defines the capacity of the cement plant. As the main energy-consuming and greenhouse-gas–emitting stage of cement manufacture, improvement of kiln efficiency has been the central concern of cement manufacturing technology. Emissions from cement kilns are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for around 2.5% of non-natural carbon emissions worldwide.
A raw mill is the equipment used to grind raw materials into "rawmix" during the manufacture of cement. Rawmix is then fed to a cement kiln, which transforms it into clinker, which is then ground to make cement in the cement mill. The raw milling stage of the process effectively defines the chemistry of the finished cement, and has a large effect upon the efficiency of the whole manufacturing process.
Heidelberg Materials is a German multinational building materials company headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany. Formerly known as HeidelbergCement AG, the company has rebranded as Heidelberg Materials in September 2022. It is a DAX corporation and stands as one of the world's largest building materials companies. On 1 July 2016, HeidelbergCement AG completed the acquisition of a 45% shareholding in Italcementi. This acquisition made HeidelbergCement the number one producer of construction aggregates, the second-largest in cement and the third-largest in ready-mixed concrete worldwide. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, HeidelbergCement was ranked as the 678th -largest public company in the world.
Adbri, formerly Adelaide Brighton Cement, is an Australian manufacturer of cement, lime and dry blended products.
Rutland is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Leicestershire to the north and west, Lincolnshire to the north-east, and Northamptonshire to the south-west. Oakham is the largest town and county town.
Mysore Cements Limited is one of major producers of Cement in south India since its establishment in 1958 – 59 by Karnataka-based industrialist Sarangapani Mudaliar and by collaboration of Kaisers USA as a Public Limited Company The company produced its major output of 1 ton cement with the investment of about 20 million Rupees, in 1962. MCL was immediately taken over by Kaisers and G.D Birla and from then the following years company started producing more cement and it was 4 tpa by the end of year 1968. With an investment of 23 million, MCL produced 6 tpa of cement in Ammasandra unit Based in Tumkur District of Karnataka State. After the death of G.D Birla, in 1983 MCL was totally under control of Birlas and Shri. S.K Birla, grandson of GD Birla was declared the chairman of the organisation.
Thos. W. Ward Ltd was a Sheffield, Yorkshire, steel, engineering and cement business, which began as coal and coke merchants. It expanded into recycling metal for Sheffield's steel industry, and then the supply and manufacture of machinery.
Raffan's Mill and Brick Bottle Kilns is a heritage-listed lime kiln at Carlton Road, Portland, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1884 to 1895 by George Raffan and Alexander Currie. It is also known as Raffan's Mill and Brick Bottle Kilns Precinct, Portland Cement Works Site, Williwa Street Portland. The property is owned by Boral. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 3 August 2012.
Portland Cement Works Precinct is a heritage-listed former cement works and limestone quarries and now disused industrial site at Williwa Street, Portland, City of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed and built in various stages from 1890 to 2003. It is also known as Portland Cement Group and Commonwealth Portland Cement Company Ltd. The property is owned by Boral Limited. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 3 August 2012.
Hope Cement Works, is a cement plant located near to the village of Hope in Derbyshire, England. The plant is mostly self-contained with its own shale and limestone quarries adjacent, with only fuel and small amounts of additives needing to be brought in. The site is located inside the Peak District National Park, and so is subject to tighter planning restrictions than other cement plants in the United Kingdom. It is now the largest cement plant in the United Kingdom, and is also one of the largest emitters of CO2 within the national park.
Horton Quarry is a limestone quarry near to Horton-in-Ribblesdale, North Yorkshire, England. The quarry, which is some 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Settle, has been operating since at least 1889, and produces limestone for a variety of purposes. Stone used to be exported from the quarry by rail, but now leaves by lorry, although there are plans to re-instate the railway sidings. The quarry used to produce its own lime by roasting the limestone in big kilns on the site, but the last of these were removed in the 1980s. Since 2000, the quarry has been owned and operated by Heidelberg Materials UK.
The Antoing cement kiln is in the Belgian province of Hainaut. The facility is next to the Scheldt River in the Tournai region. It was built in 1929 under CBR which was later taken over by Heidelberg Materials.