LONE STAR INDUSTRIES TO SPEND $9.75 MILLION ON SILO PROJECT

Groundwork is under way on a $9.75 million project that will provide three clinker storage silos at Lone Star Industries Inc. in the 2500 block of South Sprigg.

The silos will be about 120 feet tall and 70 feet in diameter.

"This will give us storage for 40,000 tons of clinker," said John Burian, director of operations at the plant. "The project will take most of the year to complete."

The towers will rest on steel pilings being driven 110 feet into the ground.

"We're installing 750 pilings," said Burian. "That's a total of 82,500 feet of piling, or more than 15.5 miles."

The deep pilings are necessary because Lone Star is in a seismic zone.

The piling groundwork accounts for the lion's share of the cost; Lone Star recently received a $7.5 million building permit for the pilings from the city's Division of Inspection Services.

The towers will replace a 50,000-square-foot clinker storage warehouse that was destroyed by weather more than two years ago. A January 1994 storm that dumped 8 inches of snow on top of a layer of ice caused the collapse of the three-sided warehouse. Since then Lone Star has been crushing clinker as it is made.

Clinker is a concrete material produced in kilns. It is used in the concrete-making process.

"We place the raw materials used in the production of concrete into the kiln and blend them," he said. "All of these materials are cooked in the kiln, and what comes out is concrete clinker."

Clinker, which is small, walnut-sized pebbles, is then ground with gypsum and the resulting product is concrete.

This is maintenance month at Lone Star.

"We're not producing concrete right now," said Burian. "We're just performing maintenance work throughout the plant."

The maintenance period does not result in any layoffs. "Our workers have the skills to help us with maintenance," said Burian.

In addition, the company is replacing some metal shelves in the finishing mill at a cost of about $2 million.

When in operation, Lone Star operates 24 hours a day, producing 1.2 million tons of Portland and masonry cement a year.

About 85 percent of the cement is shipped by barge from the plant's loading terminal on the Mississippi River to Lone Star's terminals in St. Louis, Paducah, Ky., Memphis and Nashville, Tenn., and New Orleans.

Cape Girardeau area customers pick up cement at the local plant.

Lone Star has five cement plants in the United States, of which the Cape Girardeau plant is the largest and most modern. Other plants are in Illinois, Indiana, Oklahoma and Texas. The Cape Girardeau plant has about 200 employees.