Canada: Lafarge Canada is planning to develop a community outreach plan as part of the plant expansion and modernisation project set to begin at its Exshaw plant in Alberta in the autumn of 2012. The Canadian unit of French cement giant Lafarge is looking to build a new kiln line on the western side of the current facility and intends to increase production by 60%. It will do this by replacing outdated technology at the 107-year-old cement facility.
The company submitted its development permit application at the start of June 2012 in order to begin constructing the necessary foundations to support the new equipment, including a five-stage preheater, precalciner tower and a new rotary kiln. The Alberta government has already given Lafarge permission to proceed with the project.
On 19 June 2012 Exshaw plant manager Heinze Knopfel said that the community outreach plan would address how Lafarge intends to keep residents informed and address the negative effects of constructing a large industrial plant could have on Bow Valley communities, specifically Exshaw.
"Over the next three years during the construction phase we anticipate that there is going to be additional traffic and extra contractors on site. We will be sharing regular updates with the community and will continue to respond as quickly as possible to complaints," said Knopfel. "Our neighbours are really important to us. We recognise it is a partnership. We meet regularly with the surrounding communities. We want to understand how they feel about their operations and what we can do to improve their life or lifestyle."
Lafarge expects that the construction will take approximately three years with the foundation work beginning in the autumn of 2012. Knopfel said that he expects that this first phase would not have a significant effect on traffic or noise as the number of contractors working on site would be low with only cement trucks and the drilling contractor coming to the site. Two cranes will also be working to move equipment stored on the project site.
Construction on the kiln line itself will likely begin in 2013 with the peak of activity seen in 2014. At that point, Knopfel said he expects there could be 200-350 contractors at the site. He added that the plant's expansion and modernisation project would also provide a good opportunity to improve traffic flows at the plant. Instead of having resource and product trucks enter the plant at the same point, which is what currently occurs, trucks will leave the plant through the current main entrance and enter through a new gate to the west of the plant.
"Instead of the entrance, which is a real bottleneck, we're going to streamline the flow of traffic, which we know will mitigate a lot of the concerns of the community," he said. The upgrade will also increase the amount of cement leaving the plant by rail.
Overall, Knopfel said that he expects the project to have a positive effect in the Bow Valley, environmentally, socially and economically. "I expect the plant expansion will provide tremendous benefits for the community."
Environmentally the standards will be raised beyond the new Alberta requirements. "We're consciously aware of where we are relocating equipment and we're trying to relocate the equipment as far away as possible from the community," Knopfel said. "(The new kiln) is going to be state of the art as far as technology is concerned. It is going to be the newest and the best technology on the market," he said.
The Municipal Planning Commission for the MD of Bighorn is scheduled to review Lafarge's municipal development permit application on 18 July 2012.
