EcoCementos commissions new 1.5Mta Colombian cement plant

Empresa Colombiana de Cementos (EcoCementos) is today launching a greenfield cement plant capable of producing up to 1.5Mta of cement in the Magdalena Valley in Sonsón municipality in Antioquia, Colombia.

EcoCementos' new Sonsón plant is officially operational

EcoCementos is a joint venture between the Colombian building materials group Corona and the Spanish cement producer Cementos Molins. Both companies started working together in September 2015, with the contract signed one year later. The EPC contracted company was awarded to OHL Industrial, while FLSmidth was selected for the engineering, procurement and supply of the main equipment for the complete cement production line.

The project location is squeezed between a highway, a river and a mountain. As it is limited to a small, triangular ara with varying elevation levels, it has presented challenging building conditions. A big portion of civil work was related to increase the level of the plant site by some seven metres, so that the plant is not affected by any future river level increase.

Technology installed includes a state-of-the-art 3150tpd preheater/precalciner, five-stage short kiln, all designed in line with sustainability principles.

The plant will produce general-purpose and technical cements to supply Colombia's central region, which accounts for two-thirds of the country's cement demand and has the highest market growth. The company will sell its cement under the ALION brand.

EcoCementos' new cement plant will help boost local growth by providing approximately 110 direct and some 180 indirect jobs following the start of its full operation. Furthermore, a number of initiatives for local employment and forest conservation have been launched with neighbouring communities.

Looking to the future, the site and raw materials facilities have been built so that plant capacity can be expanded in the future with a second kiln, which has implied an investment of US$380m.