Cementos Argos inaugurates Innovation Center, Colombia

Cementos Argos yesterday inaugurated its Innovation Center, based at the EAFIT University, Colombia, underlining the company commitment towards productive, competitive and sustainable growth.

The Innovation Center has been designed to foster a collaborative environment, making laboratories available to researchers, students and scholars from different universities to find solutions for the cement and concrete industries in terms of materials, process and applications.

“We see innovation as an essential driver to the evolution of our company and the transformation of our industry, which is why we invest in it and reinvent ourselves in order to discover new ways of working, gathering different actors in order to solve the big challenges of this region and the country. We expect this joining of knowledge and collaborative work not only to allow us to develop high-impact products and processes, but also to lead to knowledge transfers that can be useful across different industries,” says Jorge Mario Velásquez, Cementos Argos’ CEO.

The company invested COP25bn to build the Center, and COP5m to equip its laboratories. Lorenzo Castro was the architect in charge of bringing this building to life, with 4807m2 of gross floor area, distributed over six floors with 12 laboratories and close to 60 work stations. It provides the necessary environment for open innovation through which Argos seeks to continue contributing to the construction sector, which plays an important role in the Colombian government’s economic development agenda, the company added.

“The Argos Innovation Center represents a true milestone in the history of our industry and private entrepreneurship, not just because of the investment made in it, but also because of the contribution it will make to developing innovation capacities and because of the cooperation with the academic world. Thanks to its high-tech equipment and materials, we will be able to develop projects together, opening doors to new generations of processes and products that will make it possible to add value to our production chain,” Mr. Velásquez adds.