01
It starts as a limestone bluff
Cement begins as rock. At the quarry the face is drilled, blasted and hauled to a primary crusher — roughly a ton and a half of raw material for every ton of finished cement.
Our supplier's quarry
02
Ground, burned, ground again
The raw mill grinds the stone finer than flour. It falls through a preheater against the rising gas, then down a rotary kiln to about 1,450 °C, where it half-melts into clinker. Cooled, then ground once more with 3–5% gypsum — and it is cement.
Raw mill · kiln · cement mill
03
Landfall at Point Comfort
A chartered bulk carrier comes up the Matagorda ship channel and ties up at our own berth on the Calhoun Port Authority dock. No lightering, no transhipment, no waiting on someone else's window.
Point Comfort, Texas
04
Our dock, our window
The unloader travels the length of the wharf on rails at a 45-foot gauge and slews out over the hatches. Because the berth is ours, the vessel works to our schedule rather than a queue.
Rail gauge 13 716 mm · travel 2 × 76 m
05
The Siwertell
A MacGREGOR screw-type ship unloader, rail-mounted on the dock. The boom slews out over an open hatch and lowers a vertical conveyor into the cargo — an arm that hangs plumb whatever the boom is doing. This is the machine the whole terminal is built around.
ST-940 D · reach 25 251 mm · arm 23 750 mm
06
It digs, it doesn't suck
The trick is at the bottom. A counter-rotating inlet feeder takes cement from below the cargo surface — so the dust never gets airborne — and its outer casing turns against the screw inside it. That opposition is what fills the conveyor: from about 15% full to about 80%.
Counter-rotating inlet feeder
07
Up a sealed screw
From the feeder the cement climbs 23.75 metres inside a closed tube. The bearings sit in the tube wall rather than the middle, so the screw flight runs unbroken end to end — nothing to catch on, nothing to shed, nothing open to the air.
Enclosed vertical conveyor
08
Across, and down the turret
At the top an enclosed chute hands the cement onto a belt running inboard along the boom. It drops through a chute on the slewing axis itself — so the boom can swing anywhere over the ship without ever breaking the line — and onto the jetty conveyor.
Boom belt 1 600 mm · slew ±110°
09
Ashore, under cover
From the unloader the cement runs inland along a covered jetty conveyor to storage. From the ship's hold to the silo it is never open to the weather — which is the difference between cement and a ruined cargo.
Enclosed belt, 1 600 mm
10
North by rail
Covered hopper cars take the cement off the coast and up to North Texas. Loading into our own cars on our own track means the cost of the move is a number we control, not one we are quoted.
Pressure-differential covered hoppers
11
Fort Worth — 2000 South Main
The cars arrive at the Main Street Terminal, a concrete silo complex hard against the yard in south Fort Worth. Rail comes in one side; trucks load out the other.
Main Street Terminal, Fort Worth
12
Into storage
Cement is lifted into the silo battery and held under aeration until it is called for. Displaced air goes out through a baghouse rather than into the neighbourhood.
Aerated cone discharge
13
Onto your truck
A pneumatic tanker pulls under the spout, the sock seals to the hatch, and the load goes in closed. It is weighed on the way out and ticketed on the spot. One company from the ship's hold to this hatch.
Weighed & ticketed on site
