A Cemstone Companies Safety Edition
Cemstone, the upper Midwest’s leader in high performance concrete, has been awarded the 2023 National Ready Mixed Concrete Association’s (NRMCA) “Innovative Company of the Year”. The NRMCA recently celebrated industry innovators at the 2023 Concrete Innovation Awards at the Keep Memory Alive Events Center in Las Vegas. Winners were selected from a panel of five judges for their commitment to improving the resilience, performance, and sustainability of concrete. The Innovative Company Award focuses on a company that offers quality concrete products or services that demonstrate significant improvements in performance and sustainability, including carbon footprint reduction.
Photo: Justin Lashley and Vanessa De La Vega Meza of Cemstone
Cemstone continually seeks methods and utilizes technology to increase concrete performance while improving its environmental impact of its processes and end products. In 2022, Cemstone used nearly 6 million gallons of clarified (recycled) water, reducing the amount of fresh water used to produce concrete. Additional clarified water was utilized for washing ready-mix trucks. Cemstone was the first producer in Minnesota to have a MnDOT approved clarified water source and this approval allowed for clarified water usage in DOT projects. Alongside the use of clarified water, Cemstone has increased its focus on using recycled concrete aggregates to decrease the amount of virgin aggregates that are mined for concrete use. Over 1,400 tons of recycled concrete aggregates were used in Cemstone’s concrete production in 2022. Cemstone continues to maximize the use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) along with strength enhancing admixtures to minimize the carbon footprint of our concrete mixtures. For decades, Cemstone has designed and produced concrete mixtures for high performance applications that increase the strength and durability of the structure while reducing the embodied carbon by as much as 85%.
“We are so proud to win this award, it is a recognition of the great work of our team pushing our company to strive for innovation and excellence in all that we do. Our mission is to produce and deliver a more sustainable and innovative concrete to solve the challenges and needs of our customers and ultimately, the communities we operate within. Our company has been built on innovation and people for the past 96 years, our family looks forward to continuing the tradition of striving for innovation in all we do and who we are.”
– Timothy Becken, Sr. Vice President
In addition to the Innovation and Environmental awards, the NRMCA has bestowed 24 Safety Gold Awards to 24 Cemstone plants in 2022. The safety culture has continued with weekly safety communication from the Corporate Safety Director leading to a decrease in injuries for 2022 and continuing to focus on this in 2023. Cemstone has also received the NRMCA Producer Excellence in Quality Award for the last 12 consecutive years.
Check Out The Podcast Featuring Timothy Becken!
The newest episode of Concrete Credentials is out! This episode features guest Tim Becken, a former NRMCA chairman and a Senior Vice President of Cemstone. Tune in to this exciting discussion TODAY!
