Loulé Manufacturing Plant
The Loulé Manufacturing Plant (LMP) is located in Cerro da Cabeça Alta, 7 km from the city of Loulé, and is one of CIMPOR's 3 cement plants in Portugal.
Panoramic view of the Loulé Manufacturing Plant
Production capacity:
Currently, the Loulé manufacturing plant has a production capacity of 635 thousand tonnes of cement clinker and 850 thousand tonnes/year of cement.
Products:
The primary operations conducted at the Loulé Manufacturing Plant include manufacturing and shipping the following types of cement, which are produced by grinding various combinations of cement clinker, gypsum (which controls the set time) and other constituents. All products are certified as meeting PS EN 197:
- CEM I 52,5 R
- CEM I 52,5 N
- CEM II/A-L 42,5 R
- CEM II/B-L 32,5 N
History
The growth of civil construction and foreseeable increase in the demand for cement in the late 60s led to the Portuguese Government granting two new licenses for cement plants to be built in the country. The opportunity arose for CISUL - Companhia Industrial de Cimento do Sul, led by Mário Gaspar and with the support of Banco Fonsecas e Burnay, to lay the first stone of the Loulé plant in the early 1970s.
Panoramic view Loulé - 70s
Creusot Loire Entreprises - CLE supplied the technology chosen for the plant as providers of the most advanced technology available at the time, and the installation was designed as an integrated clinker production line with cement grinding.
Industrial production began on the 14th September 1973, registering a production capacity of 350,000 t/year of cement clinker.
Following the political changes brought about in 1974, CISUL was nationalised on the 9th May 1975, becoming part of CIMPOR - Cimentos de Portugal, EP on the 31st March 1976.
Production capacity would increase in 1982 with the installation of a precalciner and the second raw mill. Besides contributing to increasingly stable kiln operations, the stoppage of plant operations so as to implement these additions also allowed for extensive maintenance to be performed on the machinery after ten years of industrial production. Another cement mill was installed in 1983 to continue to optimise processes. These successive changes to processes led to an increase in the plant’s production capacity from 1100tpd to 1950tpd.
In 2005, LMP registered with the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), voluntarily committing to improving its environmental performance and reflecting CIMPOR's commitment to promoting sustainable development.
Timeline
