Andy Ralph from Rodley, Leeds and Plant Supervisor at the CEMEX Elland Road Plant has got a new £1million+ concrete Plant to produce for local construction projects such as the Kirkstall Forge development.

The Plant held its official opening event this week with John Parker, Regional Fleet & Operations Manager, North East and Yorkshire, orchestrating events, including invitations to local media, students from 3 Leeds colleges and local community members.

Andy Ralph, who worked at the old Plant for 8 years, saw it demolished in January this year. The new Plant is a Parker Universal Plant built in Leicester which can batch 6 cu metres in around 4 minutes, approximately 90 cu metres an hour.

“The new Plant has a simple and logical layout, and is well engineered.  So for example, we have large silos for storing the cement so the tanker can make one delivery at night; an environmental saving on transport,” comments Andy.

“Business has been going well in the first part of this year so we’ve been very busy, along with the six trucks based at the Plant who will each deliver around 1400 loads or over 20,000 tonnes of concrete a year to the Leeds area. In addition, we have customers who come to the site to collect smaller loads,”   he concludes.

The old Plant had been in operation for 63 years, built in 1952, and produced over 3.5million tonnes of concrete which has gone into local buildings and infrastructure such as Leeds Rail station, the stands at Leeds United, White Rose shopping centre and many others.