Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Thursday attended the commemoration ceremony of the Jamaica-based Caribbean Cement Company's Ltd's kiln five/mill five projects. Caribbean Cement is a subsidiary of Trinidad Cement Ltd (TCL). The function was held at the company's Rockfort, Kingston, facilities and included a plant tour of the kiln five and mill five sites. Persad-Bissessar was in Jamaica to attend the 31st Caricom heads of government conference. In a statement, TCL said completion of the projects signalled the culmination of the Group's expansion and modernisation of its operations throughout the region, which began in 2004.
TCL said kiln five–the new state-of�the-art pre-calciner, dry process kiln–was commissioned in August 2008 after a two-year construction period and more than 2.3 million man hours worked. "The introduction of this kiln has significantly increased Carib Cement's clinker–the intermediate product in the production of cement–manufacturing capacity.
"With the commissioning of mill five in October 2009, Carib Cement's cement manufacturing capability is now in excess of 1.8 million tonnes per annum. "This forms part of the TCL Group's medium-term strategic goal of achieving a combined cement production level of 3.5 million tonnes across its three plants (Trinidad Cement, Arawak Cement and Carib Cement)," TCL said in its statement.
The company said the successful completion of these projects at Carib Cement has undoubtedly enhanced the Group's capability to reliably supply Caricom's demand for cement. "Currently, the TCL Group has a productive capacity of 2,515,164 tonnes per year compared to Caricom's demand of 2,160,000 tonnes per annum. Additionally, the Group has reserve capacity of approximately 560,640 tonnes of cement per annum," the statement read.