Annual Report 2011 Holcim Ltd

18
Twice Holderbank
In the spring of 1913, the district
councillors of the Swiss village of
Holderbank were summoned to appear
before the civil court in Basel
as witnesses. The case involved a
dispute between cement producers
and the operators of a cement factory
called “Holderbank”which had been
founded the previous year in the
Swiss canton of Aargau. Questioned
by the judge, the local politicians had
little information to offer. They had
not heard anything about a new
cement factory, nor were they aware
of any large land purchases. The judge
was understandably furious at what
he saw as a group of incompetent
local representatives – until one of
the witnesses, in response to a question,
was able to solve the conundrum:
they represented the Holderbank in
the canton of Solothurn, not the
Holderbank in the canton of Aargau.
The cement plant seen from the
north-east.
In the middle of the 1800s the Swiss canton of Aargau was still a predominantly
agricultural region, especially compared to many of the country’s other cantons.
Initial attempts at industrialization in the area had not come to much. This all changed
with the construction of the railway in 1858. It not only led to greatly increased
demand for lime and cement – it also solved a transportation problem which had
been holding back the local earth and stone industries. These included Aargau’s
first Roman cement factory, founded back in 1832 by Karl Herosé and ultimately unsuccessful.
Midcentury also saw a short period of cement production in Brugg (also in
Aargau), but it had to be abandoned after a few years.
The railroad changed all this. By spurring the growth of cities it helped increase
demand for cement. With it demand increased for the one raw material essential to
cement production and available in great abundance in Aargau: limestone. This was
thanks to the great deposits found in the Jura mountains. For a long time, however,
only the lime factories in the area had any success with this promising material
– and they were an exception in Switzerland, which otherwise lacks raw materials.
Most of the lime was exported out of
Aargau. The canton lagged behind in
terms of industrial and technical development
for quite a while, and there was
little know-how in the field of cement
production.
This all changed with the turn of the
century. New cement factories began to
spring up on both sides of the Jura. By
1902 there were already 13 producers in
Switzerland. Yet despite their growing
numbers these producers found themselves,
on the eve of World War One, unable
to meet demand. At the same time,
the domestic industry was suffering under
continued price pressure from neighboring
countries. In order to protect
themselves, the cement owners started
looking for ways to work together. But it was only in 1910, when an entrepreneur from
the Rhine valley named Ernst Schmidheiny founded the Eingetragene Genossenschaft
Portland, or E. G. Portland for short, that a first successful attempt at collaboration
was made.
Limestone excavated in the quarry arrived at the plant
via a cable car and was processed here.
In 1911, cement usage in Switzerland rose to half a million tonnes. The country’s cement
plants, several of which were hopelessly out of date, could no longer meet demand.
This fact was not lost on Adolf Gygi, then the director of the Portland Cement
Factory Laufen. His father Philipp owned a lime factory in Holderbank and knew the
local conditions well. The elder Gygi had already begun buying parcels of land in a
town called Holderbank with an eye to building a cement factory there and one day
turning it over to his son.