THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507280630
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 148 lines
The steel deck of the Greek bulker Nea Alpis reverberated as the front-end loader deep inside its No. 4 hold pounded on the ship's side. The yellow tractor was coated with the gray-white dust as it tried to shake the cement from the 32,000-ton vessel's ribs. The dust billowed out of the hold, coating the deck and ship's laborers.
The nearly empty hold, one of five on the bulk ship, had been full with more than 5,000 tons of cement the day before. Now the cement is in the towering silos of the Blue Circle Cement Co.'s Chesapeake terminal.
Change the name of the ship and perhaps the terminal, and it's a scene that's being repeated more often along Hampton Roads' waterfront.
In recent years the demand for cement has outstripped the capacity of domestic producers. With little or no new U.S. sources, cement companies must turn overseas for their product.
Imports of cement through Hampton Roads more than tripled in 1994 to 418,000 tons, from 121,000 tons in 1993, according to the Portland Cement Association. The port is the 10th-largest cement import point in the nation.
``We're importing more this year than last year,'' said Ray Whelahan, Blue Circle's regional sales manager.
Cement arriving at Blue Circle is bored out of a ship's hold by a screw attached to the long arm of an awkward-looking, cranelike machine on a barge beside the ship. It is then sucked into a bin on the barge, pressurized and blown out through long pipes into one of the 16 150-foot-tall silos dwarfing the southern branch of the Elizabeth River.
The Nea Alpis, docked Wednesday afternoon, will unload 18,000 tons of cement, about half Blue Circle's silo capacity, by Monday. Rain would delay the operation.
Cement is a mixture of lime and clay. When mixed with water, sand and crushed stone, it makes concrete or mortar.
``It's rare that you'll ever go in a building or walk on a street where our products are not being used,'' Whelahan said.
U.S. consumption of cement hit a record of 94.1 million tons last year, according to the cement association. Of that, about 12.4 million tons were imported.
The booming construction market for new homes, roads and schools in Hampton Roads, the rest of Virginia and North Carolina is driving demand for cement imports here.
``Our business really goes around housing,'' said Ed Fiorella, terminal manager for the Lehigh Portland Cement Co. facility adjacent to Norfolk International Terminals. ``When construction is booming, our business is booming.''
Demand is so strong that Roanoke Cement Co. is doubling the holding capacity of its terminal on the Elizabeth River, said Kevin Tuohy, a Roanoke Cement vice president.
Roanoke Cement, a joint venture of Greece-based Titan Cement Co. and England-based Tarmac Plc, makes 1 million tons of cement at a plant north of Roanoke. It supplements that supply with imports of Greek cement shipped to its terminal in the South Norfolk section of Chesapeake.
Roanoke Cement is investing about $3 million to double the capacity of its terminal to 42,000 tons from 20,000 tons, Tuohy said. The expansion is supposed to be completed by October.
It expects at least 13 cement-laden ships to call at its terminal this year, up from a handful last year, Tuohy said.
One shipping agent involved in the business said he expects that about 30 ships will unload cement in Hampton Roads this year. Many unload at more than one local terminal.
The new ships in the port are good news not just for the cement companies, but for many port-related businesses.
A few years ago the number of vessels calling in the port started to decline because of a worldwide recession that slashed demand for coal exports. Container-ship lines also started sharing space aboard their vessels to save operating costs.
Rebounding demand for coal and seven new container-ship services reversed the downward trend this year. The addition of the cement ships, which were rare a few years ago, is also contributing to the reversal.
``Everybody has benefited from these ships being in Hampton Roads - the agents, the tugboat companies and ships chandlers,'' said Doug Forrest, vice president of Colonna's Shipyard Inc.
Colonna's maintains the cement unloading barge that the Elizabeth River cement terminals share. The barge is owned by Titan Cement. A similar one owned by Blue Circle serves terminals in Baltimore.
Every ship that visits the port has a tremendous spinoff effect, said Jeff Keever, executive vice president of the Hampton Roads Maritime Association.
The cement sells for about $75 to $80 a ton. It has an economic benefit for Hampton Roads of about $18 per ton, or $7.5 million last year, according to an economic measure devised by Old Dominion University.
A few years ago most of the cement Blue Circle's and Lehigh's terminals handled was made in domestic plants and barged to Hampton Roads for distribution by truck or rail.
Blue Circle's terminal was constructed in the early 1960s by what was then Atlantic Cement Co. to serve as the local distribution point for a cement plant in Ravena, N.Y. That plant, with a 1.5 million-ton capacity, still serves the terminal here and others in Boston; Bayonne, N.J.; Baltimore; Savannah, Ga.; and Jacksonville, Fla.
Lehigh was supplied by barge from plants in Maryland, but right now nearly all its cement originates from overseas, Fiorella said.
``The only reason people import cement is their own manufacturing plants are sold out,'' he said.
The terminal, owned by a German firm, Heidelberg Cement Co., will see its business reach up to about 200,000 tons a year from half that a few years ago, Fiorella said.
Roanoke Cement's terminal used to be a cement manufacturing plant owned by Lone Star Industries Inc. that predated World War II. Lone Star built the plant in Cloverdale that was later bought by Roanoke Cement.
Because demand is so high, Roanoke began importing cement a year ago, Tuohy said.
Pier IX Terminal Co. operates a cement unloading and storage facility at its coal pier on the James River in Newport News for ESSROC Corp., the U.S. subsidiary of Paris-based Societe des Ciments Francaise.
Pier IX is investing nearly $1 million to add rail-car loading to the 36,000-ton capacity facility, said Charles Whitten, Pier IX president.
The number of cement ships calling at the Newport News terminal will increase to about 12 this year from four or five in recent years, Whitten said. He expects that the terminal will load trucks and rail cars with nearly 250,000 tons of cement this year, up from about 100,000 tons in recent years.
While booming now, the cement business is very cyclical, dependent on a robust economy.
``Clearly there's going to be an economic downturn eventually, and we won't need to import cement,'' Tuohy said. ``But the economy will come back again, and we'll need to import even more next time.'' ILLUSTRATION: VICKI CRONIS/Staff color photos
Kostas Nikolaou, second officer aboard the Greek bulker Nea Alpis,
waits next to the hold as cement dust flies during unloading of the
ship at the Blue Circle Cement Co. in Chesapeake.
Pipes move the cement from the ship to 150-foot-tall silos at Blue
Circle Cement.
Photos
VICKI CRONIS/Staff
Ray Whelahan is regional sales manager for Blue Circle.
A bulk ship unloads cement at the Blue Circle Cement Co. terminal on
the southern branch of the Elizabeth River.
Graphic
JANET SHAUGHNESSY/Staff
PORT OF HAMPTON ROADS IMPORTS & EXPORTS
SOURCE: Virginia Port Authority
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB