US: Renovation of Lafarge's 50-year-old cement plant in Ravena, New York will be completed by mid-2016, preserving 112 jobs at the plant.
This is the first fixed timeline for the project since it was proposed in 2008. Delays have been blamed on the poor state of the economy. Lafarge also needed to obtain state and federal environmental permits, a process that involves rounds of reports and public hearings.
Construction is expected to cost several hundred million US$. A specific price tag has not been disclosed.
Company officials say that renovation was necessary in the face of stricter pollution controls from the federal government. Either they would shut down and abandon the location, or gut it and build a massive new kiln to meet the stronger standards. Pollution is a particularly sensitive issue as the cement plant and its quarry sandwich the middle school and high school for the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk district.