"Today, our products are used for the construction of highways, interchanges, airports, sea ports, oil, commercial and industrial installations, residential houses and other structures," says the spokesman.

National Cement started operations using the wet production process but in 1983, modified this to the dry process using a three-stage pre-heater, mainly to increase the clinker production capacity from 1,500 to 1,950 tonnes per day (tpd) as well as to economise on fuel.

Elaborating on how the cement is produced, the spokesman says: "The process starts at a primary cone crusher with a capacity of 700 tonnes per hour (tph), where huge limestone boulders are crushed into sizes up to 200 mm. Further crushing is done in a secondary crusher with a capacity of 500 tph. The crushed limestone is then stockpiled through a mobile stacker into a raw material shed, which has been built specially to avoid any dust pollution.

"These materials are proportioned in certain ratios and then fed to the double rotor raw mill, which has a capacity of 180 tonnes per hour. The raw mill's product is stored after blending into two storage silos, each having a capacity of 10,000 tonnes.

"The raw meal is then fed to a three-stage pre-heater kiln where it is dried, partially calcined and entered into a kiln where it is fired at 1,450 deg C to produce cement clinker. The clinker is stored in four storage silos with a combined capacity of 213,000 tonnes to avoid any dust pollution and quality deterioration.

"To produce high-quality cement, the clinker is ground with 4-5 per cent gypsum in closed circuit mills equipped with a state-of-the-art separator. The combined capacity of both mills is 250 tph. The cement is then transported to the packing plant where it is stored in three concrete silos of 5,000 tonnes capacity each and four steel silos of 1,800 tonnes each. This large storage capacity gives the plant greater flexibility to produce and keep different cement types in safe storage as per international standards and the customers' requests.

"Then at a packing plant, the cement is bagged by four state-of-the-art-packing machines from Haver and Boecker, each having a capacity of 90 tph. The bagged cement is shrink-wrapped and palletised based on customer requests in a modern palletising plant with a capacity of 90 tph. In addition, another facility is available for bagging cement into jumbo bags.

"For readymix operators - which account for nearly 75 per cent of its business - National Cement has eight bulk-loading chutes for prompt service backed by a large fleet of bulk tankers, trucks and flat trailers to meet the toughest of schedules.

Elaborating on the company's concern for the environment and commitment to quality, the spokesman says: "National Cement is totally committed to environment-friendly production. It utilises waste from the Dubai Municipality as fuel and emissions, if any, are always well below set limits.

"National Cement has been ISO 9002 certified since 1997 and advanced ERP solutions Sap R/3 (System, applications and products in data processing) ensure consistent quality control at every stage of production. In addition, our plant is well supported by a powerful in-house modern laboratory with the latest equipment available in the market, for quality control and continuous improvements in the products."