Two new Russian plants open

Supply of cement in the Moscow region of Russia has been boosted with the opening of two new major plants to the south of the city today. 680 Holcim has inaugurated its new cement plant in Kolomna, 100 km south of Moscow, is one of the company’s biggest plants in Eastern Europe. At the same time, 150 km south of Moscow in the city of Novogurovsky, in the Tula region, Heidelberg Cement also officially opened its newest plant.

Heidelberg’s new €300million facility has a capacity of 2million tonnes of cement a year and employs 400 people. "We are very pleased that we are today able to inaugurate our state-of-the-art cement plant TulaCement, which is one of the largest in Russia," explained Dr Bernd Scheifele chairman of the managing board. "In the future, the new plant will primarily supply the rapidly growing market in Greater Moscow with high-quality cement. We have thus reached another milestone in the expansion of our cement capacities in attractive growth regions and have increased the capacities in Russia to around 5million tonnes per year."

Holcim’s plant was officially opened by President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, the President of the Swiss Confederation, Micheline Calmy-Rey, and the Swiss Federal Councillor Johann Schneider-Ammann. The new €500million plant – which is built on the site of Russia’s first cement plant constructed in 1870 - has an annual capacity of 2.1million tonnes of cement, which will also primarily serve the Moscow construction market. At the inauguration ceremony, Calmy-Rey said, “This inauguration is symbolic of the modernization process in the Russian economy.”