Lehigh Southwest Cement

With the wet “slurry” process used at Permanente, more than 25 million cubic feet of costly and scarce natural gas were needed to produce one day’s output of cement. This was equivalent to supplying the heating requirements of approximately 140,000 homes.

Responding to public and government concerns, more and more resources were dedicated to restoring and protecting the environment while the company searched for a more cost-effective method of producing cement.

For forty years, the kilns at Permanente had used the wet-process method to produce clinker. One-half million gallons of water a day carried the limestone, clay and iron ore in a slurry to the kilns, where the mixture was calcined. In the aftermath of the 1973 oil embargo, the fuel for heating the water, along with the minerals, was now too costly.

Although a dry-process had been used before, it wasn’t until the late ‘70s that technology came together to make it truly cost-effective. By combining a precalciner with a preheater to reclaim heat from a single kiln, energy use could be cut dramatically. A $112 million program was launched in 1977 to replace Permanente’s six kilns with a single dry-process one. It would be equipped to burn coal as well as fuel oil and natural gas.

Opportunities were changing, and Kaiser Cement & Gypsum with them. If the market was tough at home, why not, in true Henry Kaiser fashion, see what else was out there?

Drawing on its growing expertise in the cement markets of the Far East, Kaiser Cement found a bright spot of opportunity in Indonesia. There, with strong local partners and an affiliate of the World Bank, it constructed and managed a state-of-the-art plant for P.T. Semen Cibinong in West Java.