Oldcastle Materials has announced a $50 million investment in American Cement Co. LLC, a joint venture with New Jersey-based Trap Rock Industries eyeing a 1.2 million-tpy cement plant. Already permitted, the facility is earmarked for a Sumterville, Fla., site about an hour north of Orlando and Tampa, with 150 million tons of limestone reserves and proximity to the major north-south thoroughfares of Interstate 75 and Florida's Turnpike. Oldcastle Materials will fund the plant construction, which is scheduled for completion in 2008 and, by Cement Americas estimates, will cost upwards of $200 million.

“The outlook for Florida construction is excellent,” says Oldcastle Inc. CEO Tom Hill. “With up to 40% of total annual cement consumption in the state currently imported, we believe there is real need for the local production capacity ACC will add.”

Oldcastle Materials' first cement-milling venture, ACC appears positioned to supply 11 sister properties from the Florida Panhandle to Miami: three paving stone and four bagging plants under Oldcastle Architectural Products, plus four Oldcastle Precast (drainage, vault) properties. Oldcastle Materials' counterpart operation, CRH Europe Materials, is a major cement player shipping about 15 million tons per year from Ireland to the Ukraine.

The ACC plant continues a ramp up of cement and cementitious materials production and distribution in Florida. Earlier this year, CRH's neighbor in the U.K., Hanson Plc, acquired Civil and Marine Holdings Ltd., whose assets included a 700,000-tpy Port Canaveral slag-grinding mill opened in 2005. The Sunshine State has also seen two other greenfield cement plants opened in the past three years: Suwannee American in Branford, 850,000 tpy; and Titan FloridaPennsucco in Medley, 1.8 million tpy. The latter facility was followed by Titan Florida's dedication of a 57,000-ton-capacity Port of Tampa terminal.