South Ferriby Cement Plant does sterling service in our Readymix operations in the North of England in a wide range of concretes.  Unfortunately, when used in very high performance concrete with demanding requirements for the fresh properties of the concrete, South Ferriby was falling short.  For these applications customers require high workability and a long working window, together with high strength that can only be achieved with specialist CEMEX admixtures and low water/cement ratios.

A project team from Readymix, Cement Operations and Cement Commercial has been working together to get to the bottom of the issue.  Using Lean Management principles, the team has examined a wide range of possible influences and identified a possible cause hidden deep in the clinker chemistry.  Cement Operations ran two kiln trials to try to correct the issue, and Readymix tested the resulting cement in concrete laboratory trials at Southam.  The results look very promising.

The next step is to incorporate the process change into normal production at South Ferriby and the cement will tick all the boxes for very high performance concrete.  As an added bonus the process change will consume plasterboard gypsum in the kiln, using an alternative raw material.

Another win for Lean and for ONE CEMEX!