Sustainability
The cement industry plays a key role in meeting government recycling targets by recovering energy from wastes produced by other industries. Castle is in the forefront of this activity and burns some 90,000 tonnes of the nearly 150,000 tonnes of waste burnt by the cement industry. Use of alternative fuels reduces the companies consumption of finite fossil fuels such as coal and also helps to improve overall environmental performance. Alternative fuels have been burnt at Ketton since the mid-1990s.
The first to be introduced was Cemfuel. This is a highly specified product that includes methanol, ethanol and acetone extracted during the recycling of everyday products such as printing inks, nail varnish remover and paint thinners. The works is also helping to overcome the nationwide problem of used car tyre disposal. Since 1997 almost 14,000 tonnes of tyres were burned up to the end of 2003, adding up to about 1.9 million individual tyres. This saved some 15,500 tonnes of coal. The intense heat in the kiln system means that tyres are completely consumed without creating black smoke or fumes.
In 2001, Castle announced a £4 million investment at Ketton to build a new plant to process an alternative fuel known as Profuel. This can replace up to 40 per cent of the coal previously used in Ketton’s kilns and at full capacity the factory can save 70,000 tonnes of this finite fuel each year. Profuel is made from materials such as paper that cannot be recycled, low-chlorine plastics and off-cuts from nappy and carpet manufacture. The benefit to the environment is that these items would previously have gone into landfill sites.
Not content with its efforts so far, Castle Cement announced that it was examining the use of Agricultural Waste Derived Fuel as yet another alternative fuel. This is produced by sterilising and grinding abattoir waste that would otherwise also end up in landfill sites.
Use of these alternative fuels has to be approved by the Environment Agency before they can be used, with Castle Cement needing to demonstrate the benefits to the environment before permission is granted.
“The benefit to the environment is that these items
would previously have gone to landfill sites”
Cement in Action
Ketton provides about 11 per cent of the UK's total requirement of cement, primarily to locations in central and southern England.
The Second Severn Crossing and the Jubilee Line tube extension are among its more high profile successes.
Castle also supplied over 40,000 tonnes of cement for the Thurrock Viaduct section of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, most of it from Ketton. And 250 tonnes of Ketton cement went into the Medway Bridge M2 motorway-widening project in Kent.
Ketton Quarry has even been useful for reasons that could never have been dreamed of years ago. It was chosen as the location for a BBC TV Top Gear programme in which presenters shot cars off the quarry ridge onto a dartboard painted on the quarry floor.
There was also the mystery of the “black cat” seen in the quarry. Some think it is a black panther and the story was featured in a BBC television documentary. Ketton has even been the base for an international running event over a 10.4 k course.
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Ketton Freestone
Not all the stone quarried at Ketton is used to make cement. The area is noted for a particularly attractive and light coloured material known as Freestone, and this has been used on fine architectural buildings since the 16th century. It is called Freestone because it is easy to carve in any direction. In geological terms it is an oolitic limestone and its composition makes it less vulnerable to splitting.
What appears to be Ketton Freestone has been found in Roman remains at St Albans in Hertfordshire, but it does not seem to have been quarried on any scale much before AD 1600. At around that time it began to be bought by wealthy men who were intent on building fine mansions. Later Christopher Wren used Freestone for Pembroke College chapel in Cambridge.
In modern times Ketton Freestone has been used in the construction of the Millennium Tower at Bury St Edmunds Cathedral, one of the most significant ecclesiastical masonry constructions projects in the past 100 years. It has also been used in the construction of a new Centre for Islamic Studies in Oxford.
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Ketton and The Community
Like all Castle Cement locations, Ketton has a policy of being a good neighbour to the community in which it is located. As well as making sure the environment is protected, this manifests itself in both practical and financial support for local groups.
A fine example of this support is its membership of Stamford Town Centre Management Partnership. Using money through the landfill tax credit scheme, Castle Cement has been able to provide funding for a number of local amenities and for the restoration and repair of buildings such as Stamford’s Corn Exchange.
Other examples of Castle’s support include a sponsored walk by employees to raise money for the local air ambulance service, the donation of stone to create a “clock” in a local school’s grounds, supplying kit for a junior football team and creating a low maintenance nature garden at another local school.
Caring for the community includes caring for the environment. Ketton quarry is home to 26 different species of butterfly and a large number of birds, including nightingales.
The company has also built a 63-metre long bat cave in the quarry and works closely with local conservation groups to protect the flora and fauna in its quarries. It has also been the major sponsor for National Insect Week.
These activities are often reported in Open Door, a newsletter circulated by the company to every household within a five-mile radius of the works as a means of keeping the local community informed. |
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Fascinating Facts
- Ketton Village was once owned by William the Conqueror and had to pay him £10 per annum
- When first created, Ketton Portland Cement Company was a subsidiary of a scrap metal and recycling business
- The company's first full week's wage bill was £202.2s 11d - wages for ninety men.
- During cement making raw materials are heated to a temperature that would melt steel
- Castle Cement was the first UK cement producer to carry out annual environmental audits of its sites
- Castle Cement planted nearly 13,000 trees and shurbs on an extension to its Wytchley Warren Farm quarry in Ketton.
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