Editorial comment
Whenever I describe World Cement, I like to (clumsily) paraphrase Abraham Lincoln – it is ‘by the reader, for the reader’. World Cement is a platform for sharing best practice: a means of celebrating success stories, but also disseminating technical information, aggregating news and debating industry-specific challenges. At the moment, those challenges can be divided into three main groups: the economy, the environment and employment. World Cement is doing its best to round up experts to help you meet these challenges, and though we can’t do much about recession in Western Europe or the slow return to growth in North America, we are going to try to help you improve your market share, comply with emissions regulations and keep your talent pool topped up.
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With that in mind, last month we launched a new series on our website, www.worldcement.com, in which Titan Cement’s Tim Kuebler shares his 8 rules for successful concrete streets and roads advocacy. Though Tim is sharing his experience as a cement producer based in Florida, USA, those of you in markets where infrastructure is still being developed could well make use of his insights while contracts for new roads are being brought to tender. We’re looking to develop this part of the website – which you can find under the heading ‘Special Reports’ – so if you have valuable experience that you consider worth sharing with the international cement industry, please do get in touch.
In terms of the environment, this issue contains a host of information on emissions reduction, the use of alternative fuels, and the impacts of these measures on the rest of your process. In recent years, the environment has become an increasingly important part of our focus in order to keep the cement industry apprised of technological advances, unique projects and legal issues. The number of interesting and informative articles in this area from both cement plants and equipment suppliers has been incredible, and to make sure these are not lost in the sands of time, we have put together a ‘Reducing Emissions’ package that collates the best articles from 2012 in an accessible PDF. Looking through the back issues, there were so many excellent articles that we decided to also make packages on ‘Pyroprocessing & Fuels’, ‘Comminution & Maintenance’ and ‘Case Studies’. Together these make up the Cement Collection, which is freely available to subscribers at www.worldcement.com.
As for employment, well we are working on training features for later in the year and we’d be happy to hear your ideas on ways World Cement can aid your training efforts. Additionally, you might be interested to know that the Concrete Industry Management degree programme featured in the September 2012 issue of World Cement will add cement classes from next semester, so could be a good place to find new talent.
Finally, I would like to extend my thanks to those plants that have recently submitted articles about maintenance projects – articles that you will see in forthcoming issues. This is exactly what I’m talking about when I say we are a platform for sharing best practice. We couldn’t do it without you.
