The GPE is said to be the largest transport infrastructure project in Europe and represents a total investment of about €38.5bn. The project is designed to meet the growing city’s needs for an improved transport infrastructure and prepare Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games.
To help realise the GPE’s anticipated 200km of new railway and 68 new rail stations, LafargeHolcim will deliver 600,000 tonnes of aggregates and 260,000 tonnes of cement to produce 650,000m3 of ready-mix concrete. LafargeHolcim says it will be usinm barges on the Seine to sustainably manage excavated earth equal to six times the weight of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. The company plans to work on the GPE project over the next 15 years.
LafargeHolcim CEO Jan Jenisch said: “With this partnership we are demonstrating our leadership in the building materials industry, making a lasting contribution to improving the transport experience of the people living and working in the Paris area. The project once more shows our capacity and reliability in delivering a large amount of high-quality concrete and our ability to provide efficient logistics and supply solutions. As part of our Strategy 2022 - ‘Building for Growth’ we have committed to grow our aggregates and ready-mix concrete segments and the GPE is a major milestone in the delivery of this commitment.”
To meet the project’s challenging schedule, LafargeHolcim has added mobile ready-mix concrete plants to its existing Parisian ready-mix concrete network, enabling an average production of 300m3 per hour for the GPE. In addition, the company will remove and treat at least 3 million tonnes of earth from the construction site, then use the excavated material to re-landscape its nearby quarries.
For the transportation of both aggregates coming from nearby quarries situated in the Seine valley and the excavated earth, LafargeHolcim will use barges on the Seine river. The company says this solution is more efficient and sustainable than road transportation as two barges can handle the load of 220 trucks. It adds that the solution will also meet the challenge of transporting large amounts of material through an urban area with over seven million inhabitants.
