Essroc plant, cemented into local economy, hits 150 years

LOGANSPORT, Ind. (AP) - It's tucked away in rural Cass County - around a few curves, through the woods, and across a couple of railroad crossings.

But just when you think you've taken a wrong turn, the silos of Essroc Logansport Cement Plant appear over the tops of the trees along 225 South. There, massive kilns and rotating grinders turn limestone mined from the cement plant's quarry into the critical component of concrete.

The plant's parent company, Essroc Italcementi, is celebrating 150 years of making Portland Cement, which has formed the foundation, literally, of innumerable buildings and roads across the country. Employees at the local plant built in 1962 are taking part in the celebration later this month.

Few understand just what happens at the local plant, Plant Director Tracy Crowther said. For starters, many get "cement" and "concrete" mixed up.

He and other Essroc employees use a simple simile to explain the difference: "Flour is to bread what cement is to concrete," he said.

But making cement? That's too complex to expain in nine words. It starts with mining limestone from the quarry at the back of the 1,500-acre industrial property. The mineral is eventually converted to a powdery binding agent after being milled, ground, mixed and fired at temperatures as high as 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit.

"You walk on it, you drive on it ... but you never really appreciate the amount of work that goes into making it," Crowther said.

And it's definitely work. Most of the process is automated, but the plant employs 91 people on site to monitor the processes, work hands-on in production and maintain the machinery and structures associated with producing several tons of cement each week.

The plant is on track to produce 290 tons of cement this year, Crowther said, which will be shipped to customers within about a 100- to 150-mile radius.

U.S. cement plants ship just regionally, according to the national industry organization Portland Cement Association, because of the cost of shipping. Like construction work, cement production ebbs and flows depending on the time of year and weather conditions.

One employee has been at the Logansport plant 44 years, Human Resources Coordinator Amy Guckien said. Several claim parents who were employees, too - some of them known as "Day Oners," or workers who were hired when the plant first opened 54 years ago.

"There's not any Day Oners around anymore, but there's their sons, nephews, grandsons," Crowther said.

Back in the day, Louisville Cement Co. built the plant with a single kiln, adding the second kiln shortly afterward. Louisville Cement was acquired in 1985 by Coplay Cement Co., which later became known as Essroc. The local plant's now the company's westernmost cement facility.

If you ask Essroc sales territory manager Craig Jankowski, the company name combines the names of the cities of Essexville, Michigan, and Rochester, New York, where two of the group's cement plants acquired in the 1980s are located.

"It's neat to be part of it - something that's been around so long," Jankowski said recently. He's been with Essroc 19 years, he said, and is still a comparative "newbie" in cement sales. "People are like family."

Not much at the plant has changed significantly over the years, Crowther said, other than its conversion to alternative fuels around 1992.

Formerly, the plant's kilns drew their heat from burning coal and a substance called petroleum coke, made from the byproducts of oil refining. Now, the plant goes through an estimated 15 truckloads a day of waste fuel from the automotive, pharmaceutical and petroleum refining industries, Crowther said - waste liquids like the used oil after your car's oil change.

"We get paid for the fuel," Crowther commented, instead of buying it. It's part of what has helped keep the local cement plant running through difficult economic times, he said.

Cass County Commissioner Jim Sailors praised the company's contributions to the local economy.

"They employ a lot of people out there. If it wasn't here it'd be a large impact to our county, so we do everything we can to try to help them," Sailors said.

Demand for cement has been growing slowly but steadily since the recession's low point in about 2008, Crowther said, mirroring housing growth. But the locally produced cement is found in concrete used to build other structures besides homes, too.

"A good portion of the windmills have Essroc cement in there," Crowther said. It was also used in building the new Hoosier Heartland Corridor and the U.S. 31 bypass around Kokomo as well as for the foundation of Bowen Laboratory at Purdue University.

And he and sales managers expect demand for Logansport's cement will continue its slow but steady increase.

"How many houses have you found - nothing in modern history that's not built on concrete," Crowther said.

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Source: (Logansport) Pharos-Tribune, http://bit.ly/1rafCT1

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Information from: Pharos-Tribune, http://www.pharostribune.com