Cement

Cement is the main basic ingredient of ready-mix concrete. Whether in bags or in bulk, CEMEX provides its customers with high-quality branded cement products for all their construction needs.

Cement is a fine powder, obtained from the calcination at 1,450°C of a mix of limestone, clay, and iron ore. The product of the calcination process is clinker—the main ingredient of cement—that is finely ground with gypsum and other chemical additives to produce cement.

Find out more about our main types of cement.

Cement is the most widely used construction material worldwide. It provides beneficial as well as desirable properties, such as compressive strength (construction material with highest strength per unit cost), durability, and aesthetics to a variety of construction applications.

Some properties of cement-based products are:

Hydraulic	The hydration reaction between cement and water is unique: the material will set and then harden. Interestingly, the hydraulic nature of the reaction allows hydrated cement to harden even under water.
Aesthetic	Prior to setting and hardening, hydrated cement exhibits plastic behavior. Therefore, it can be cast into molds of different shapes and forms, and can generate aesthetically interesting architectures difficult to achieve with other construction materials.
Durable	When properly used (e.g., good concrete mix design practices), cement can yield structures which have a long service life that withstand extreme changes in weather conditions and chemical attack.
Acoustic	Cement–based material can provide excellent noise insulation with the appropriate design.

Types of Cement

How Cement Is Made

Our customers' most commonly used types and varieties of cement are the following:

Gray Ordinary Portland Cement

Our Gray Ordinary Portland Cement is a high-quality, cost-effective building material—mainly composed of clinker—that meets all applicable chemical and physical requirements and is widely used in all construction segments: residential, commercial, industrial, and public infrastructure.

White Portland Cement

CEMEX is one of the world's largest producers of White Portland Cement. We manufacture this type of cement with limestone, low iron content kaolin clay, and gypsum. Customers use our White Portland Cement in architectural works requiring great brightness and artistic finishes, to create mosaics and artificial granite, and for sculptural casts and other applications where white prevails.

Masonry or Mortar

Masonry or mortar is a Portland cement that we mix with finely ground inert matter (limestone). Our customers use this type of cement for multiple purposes, including concrete blocks, templates, road surfaces, finishes, and brick work.

Oil-well Cement

Our oil-well cement is a specially designed variety of hydraulic cement produced with gray Portland clinker. It usually forges slowly and is manageable at high temperatures and pressures. Produced in classes from A to H and J, our oil-well cement is applicable for different depth, chemical aggression, or pressure levels.

Blended Cement

Blended hydraulic cements are produced by intergrinding or blending Portland cement and supplementary cementitious materials or SCM such as ground granulated blast furnace slag, fly ash, silica fume, calcined clay, hydrated lime, and other pozzolans. The use of blended cements in ready-mix concrete reduces mixing water and bleeding, improves workability and finishing, inhibits sulfate attack and the alkali-aggregate reaction, and reduces the heat of hydration.

CEMEX offers an array of blended cements which have a lower CO2 footprint resulting from their lower clinker content due to the addition of supplementary cementitious materials. The use of blended cements reinforces our strong dedication to sustainable practices and furthers our objective of offering an increasing range of more sustainable products.

To learn more about our resilient and efficient building solutions, visit our sustainable construction section.

1. Mining the raw material

Limestone and clay are blasted from rock quarries by boring the rock and setting off explosives with a negligible impact of the environment, due to the modern technology employed.

2. Transporting the raw material

Once the huge rocks have been fragmented, they are transported to the plant in dump trucks or by conveyor belt.

3. Crushing

The quarry stone is delivered through chutes to the crushers, where it is reduced by crushing or pounding to chunks approximately 1 ½ inches in size.

4. Prehomogenization

Prehomogenization is the proportional mix of the different types of clay, limestones, or any other required material.

5. Raw material storage

Each of the raw materials is transported separately to silos, where it later will be added in specific amounts according to the particular type of cement being produced.

6. Raw material mill

This takes places in vertical steel mill, which grinds the material through the pressure exerted by three conical rollers. Which roll over a turning milling table. Horizontal mills, inside which the material is pulverized by means of steel balls, are also used in this phase.

7. Raw meal homogenization

This process takes place in silos equipped for obtaining a homogenous mix of the material.

8. Calcination

Calcination is the core portion of the process, in which huge rotary kilns come into play. Inside, at 1400 degrees C, the raw material is transformed into clinker: small, dark gray nodules 3-4 centimeters in diameter.

9. Cement milling

The clinker is ground by different-size steel balls while it works its way through the mill’s two chambers, with gypsum being added to extend cement setting times.

10. Cement packaging and shipping

The cement is then housed in storage silos, from where it is hydraulically or mechanically extracted and transported to facilities where it will be packaged in sacks or supplied in bulk. In either case, it can be shipped by rail car, freighter truck or ship.

Questions?

We're here to answer any questions or concerns you might have. We also appreciate any feedback you'd like to give. It's only through close relationships and an ongoing dialogue with our customers that we're able to better serve your needs.