Cementos Portland Valderrivas, S.A., the cement company owned by the FCC Group, has inaugurated a new cement factory in Harleyville (South Carolina) in which it has invested 132 million dollars (108 million euros). In recent years the company has invested a total of 650 million euros in the United States.

The new factory, equipped with the most highly advanced technology and the most rigorous environmental measures, replaces the old one which had become obsolete. It has one dry furnace instead of the old factory's four wet furnaces. The new furnace has a production capacity of 3,000 tons/day which is equivalent to 1 million tons/year (compared to the former furnace's capacity of 2,000 tons/day) but uses just half the energy.

The work commenced in July 2003 and production began in mid March 2005. 25,000 cubic metres of concrete, 7,650 tons of steel and 360 electric engines were used to build the plant.

The following new equipment has been installed at the factory:

-240 T/h raw material vertical mill.

-6 homogenisation silos.

-3,000 t/day precalcination and cooling furnace.

-Automated quality control laboratory which includes automatic sampling, transport and analysis without manual intervention.

-High performance sleeve filters for emission control.

-7,000 T clinker silo.

-110 T/h horizontal cement mill.

-Electrical system with two 24 MVA transformers each.

-New control room and administrative offices.

-Centralised equipment control system.

The Harleyville factory employs 170 people including administrative and sales staff.

The Cementos Portland Valderrivas Group has three factories in the United States, which is the world's third largest market in terms of total cement consumption: one in Harleyville, another in Bath (Pennsylvania) through Giant Cement Holding Inc., and a third one in Thomaston (Maine) which belongs to CDN-USA. In 2004, these three factories produced more than two million tons of cement, nearly 20% of the Group's total production.

In Spain, the market with the highest per capital cement consumption in the world, this cement group controls six production facilities located in Andalucía, Castilla y León, Madrid, Navarra, Cantabria and the Basque Country, with a total cement production of 8.2 million tons.

Its net turnover in 2004 was 881.5 million euros, with gross operating profits (EBITDA) of 265 million euros and net profits of 116.1 million euros.

The turnover for the first four months of this year was 284 million euros (an increase of 1.4% over the same period the year before) with EBITDA of 54.5 million euros, an increase of 14% compared to the first four months of the previous fiscal year).