1957-08-17 — Page 13

1

NEWS FROM BRITAIN

Britain Is

Short On

THE CHINA MAIL,

Push-button

SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1987.

BRITISH CEMENT IS THE CHEAPEST IN THE WORLD

THIS CHART SHOWS HOW MUCH CEMENT £100 BUYS IN FIVÉ COUNTRIES

Manager's magic boosts 17.85 15.74 12.01 11.61

By Les Armour

THE economists seemed last week to be in as much of a ther the politicians. There seemed to be some sort of agreement to the effect that English- men are producing too little, con uming too much, Con- ducting their industrial wars with too much fervour and their production battles with too little.

Sume blamed the wicked trade unions who were suspect-

e of conducting a plot to bring down the government; Others horrid capitalists blamed the

living fatly on expense accounts while the pensioner's pittance dwindled and faded.

SUIL others more detached academic men, bought there was some strange, nimol mystical force nuout which made it impossible to run the economy at full speed without automatically inducing infa- tion. But the consequences of running at less than ful! ult were, agreed Io involve un- employment k] everybody agreed that that was politically anthinkable.

Soine

Meanwhile, the Action So- ciety Trust was lime long-range "regearch iclo the canies of lost lime In Industry.s

Waste, it was agreed, might be one of the root causes of the inflation cyli. But where was the waste to be located?

The

report of The Trust published as

unassuming little booklet, contained the surprising conclusion that neither strlices For restrictive labour practices were the prime

Bouter.

GRINDING

TO A HALT

The biggest cause of lost time Who the shortage of skled managers,

Time and time agali, it says. the industrial machine is ¿rlud- ing to a hull because There aren't enough ILT with the skill to keep it going.

The time hug long since passed when Д man with a good noe for making monty, plenty of energy, and a mind full of Samuel Smiles' rogans could run a production line.

The kind of man now most needed seems to be just the kind of man there is no pro- vision for producing.

Ho must first have a lot scientific knowledge and en- gineering skill. But that In facit is not enough. He must

well have

thorough grounding in economics, familiarity with modern bust- ness methods, and probably be a bit of an accountant as well, The schools and the univer- gities seem to produce with one set of qualification and the Freat corporations themselves produce meh

the other sci,

men

Whi

The combination, however, Is

seldom foună.

Many up jobs as a resul; go

begging. And, while they

go

to stop and wait,

begging a lot of things are opt

TRAFFIC JAM

A few years ago, when

new London Airport

the drawing bourds,

the

Wus on

it Wus

reckoned that it would be able

to handle all the air traffle in

and out of the metropolis for

a long time to come,

Now, it seems, London will need at least two airports of the same size and may, before long, need three..

For the last કાઝ ycans. passenger trafle has been in- erensing at the rate of 18 per cent a year. And it a prob- ably accelerating.

Three million people passed through Landon Airport last year alone.

will probably be nine million. In

In 1985, the

owned Beures it.

number

boom

the happy industry...

LONDON

IN fairy tales you often find witches' cauldrons. Outside the Stafford- shire village of Cauldon (population 606) they now have a touch of magic-without any witches. It is a new plant that Britain's Blue Circle cement group has just put to work as the last word in progress in one of our most progressive industries.

Although it has cost more then £3,000,000, the payroll is only 150 including lorry drivera and canteen girls. For here the modern magic of push-button working has gone further

than ever before.

New methods

Fuel and power make up near- ly half the cost of producing cument. At Chulder methods have slashed the fuck bill by 40 per cent.

£1

PETER

by

DICKINSON

The biggest job on hand Just new is laying the runways for the new Gatwick airport On the Brighton Road. There will be 7,000 yards of them in all.

They will require 0s much cement as 50 miles new

of 33ft carriageway roads. For to stand up to the strain of handling modern jet aircrafi, the runways must be anything frem 10 inches to 3ft chick.

This new plant in the latest in £50 million spending pro- Framme which the industry has carried oft since the mounting

way to meet the demands of peace.

First there were the big demands of the new jet oge. These have caller for millions of tons of cement for airplane runways In the last 11 years. Last year alone 050,000 tons were used this way.

Seven feet

And, now.

there is the atomic age coming up at almost jet- propelled speed. It will be on immense user of cement and reinforced concrete, too.

2NI

MR

The baskatwork

Where a

conventional power- station takes around 4,000 tons for te foundations. sh A-

power plant will need all of 30,000 tons. Seven feet thick shields standing 00ft. high, round the maletr reactors are where the extra cemont goes. In the old days steel and coal word considered Britain's Now you basle industries. can include cement as well. For there is hardly CUN in- dustry in the land that docs not depend on it to come de-

of

FRANKFURT

PARIS

the

houses a year going up, bullders have been buying A lot of cement.

This vital raw material is the offspring of mortar which hos been holding stones together since Roman times, Meinr was made by the simple pro- cess of burning pulverised chalk and mixing 34 with sand and water,

A Leeds bricklayer, Timmed Joseph Aspdin, produced our first real cement. In 1824 he disctrocred that the chalk, when mixed with a mely pulverised clay and burned at s high temperature, was the basis of u much harder material.

A brainwave

The idea of mixing cement with shingle and reinforcing it with steel rods came about 75 years after bricklayer Aspain had his brainwave. The know-how" for waing this reinforced concrete has since made huge strides, TO- day it is the heart of all civil engineering.

Last year alone nearly 3,000,000 tons were used in building now Iacteries end for other jobs in general industry.

schemen recent years have also re- quired huge amounts of естель. The usual reckoning is eight tours to a house, So with something like 300,000 are proud of their achieve-

The big housing

Very rightly the cement makers

If we had to rebuild

o aten rods which are embedded in the

concrete floor.

THE WORLD HAS A CONCRETE SKY

T

HE new plantarium

at Baker Street shows

the vergatility ot roinforced concrete as

a building material.

The Bolt, dam is built of double-skin minlerced con- crata laid ovar reinforced concrete ribs. These mERT-

The usanotustum

completion.

bori wore pra-cant in the factory to enstura accuracy and to relieve congestion on the site.

akin k

Each concrete lin. thick, with space between for Ineola- tion against extremes of temperature. The dome has been weather-proofed in 22-gauge topper sheating.

The top picture shows the floor of the auditorium under construction, and illustrates the baile principle of reinforced concrete. Stoel jodu, or welded mesh, om- bedded in the concrete give this bullding material an simost indestructibl strength,

The floor is levated 18ft. above ground lav.) and sup- ported on reinforced con- crete columns.

saidi Mason, MR · ARTHUR MASON Abbey

again,"

cost would be gazed in a speculative "First, the manner at the Houses of

In the United States, it is more."

already cheaper to fly than to travel by train and, but for the

or

Arthur Mason, BSc,

fantastic.

the Houses of Parliament...

We'd just have to use the new materials

says Mr. Mason.

The cost of doing

it the old way would be fantastic.

by

PETER CHAMBERS

*

Or you can build it on "cage" of structural steel cr reinforced concrete. In this case. the main members of the build- ing support the whole weight, and the only function of the walls is to keep the draught cut.

Cage construction has more or less completely supplanted tradi- tional building methods, except in small-scale domestic architec- ture. It is cheap and strong, Fewer skilled men are needed, on the site, and the building can be put up rapidly.

The architect values the free- dom which relaforced concrete gives him. Since the Interior walls of his building do not have to carry any weight he can put them where he likes. He can leave them out altogether. He can create now perspectives.

'Shell' roofs

Concrete docs a big job in the mines.

The old type of colliery pit- head gear is being replaced by reinforced concrete structures, kustced of raiskig

tew the hundredweights of coal, concrete-based winder can raise (ons loaded slips of 10-15

weight.

a

Masses ai concrete- thou- sands and thousands of tons of It are being poured into Bri- tain's new

chaln of atomic power stations. A proposal been put forward 40 build Channel Tunnel out of pre- fabricated concrete sections, which would be lowered or to the sea-bed and connected un- derwater.

More knowledge

"We know a lot more about concrete than we did 30 ytura · ago," said technical director Arthur Macon. "Wo uso less of it and make a stronger job."

ware-

The disadvantage of reinforced concrete becomes apparent when 1970 15 is likely to be 19 Parliament. "If the whole "Secondly, we haven't got that

you try and kneek it down. The ralliion.

stut is almost indestructible. The size of the

has lot fell down," he said, "we'd kind of skilled labour any more."

Factory andi ecclesiastical

Muson tells how, during the been somewhat camouflaged in have to put it up again in Even cathedrals have moved architecture have come together Britain because the government | reinforced concrete. - It Into the Concrete Aze. Liverpool in the Concrete Azo. Sir Easil blitz, fire broke out in one of

transport system ob-might cost £10 million

Cathedral has been buliding, Spence has designed the roof of his reinforced concrete

10 years. Coventry Cathedral in

ot "shell houses

Gladstono Dock, traditional-style, for But Sir Dasil Spence

The Navy tried to has concreto-which is extensively Liverpool. designed Coventry Cathedral to used in building factories, wore make a fire-break by mining one houses and aireraét hangars, of the columns. The column blew meet the needs of the new age -In reinforced cartcrete,

up all right-but the building Careful calculation of stresses refused to fall down, enables the concrete engineer to spread to egg-shell thin layer of The fist reinforced concrete reinforced concrete over 100ft building put up in London looks as if it is good for another couple roof-spans. The concrola la cost

centuries. It

No. or even sprayed-on to rein- of forcing rods or welded wire Lincoln's In Fields. mesh.

When was 16. butll? In 1885. You can build, it so that the

The resulting structure is thin, walls themselves bear the weight

The history of reinforced coN=-

that This is how but immensely strong; and the crete

cofth of the sucture.

coduring "You nec,

we can never pal ordinary houses are built. This interior space of the building is bination of cement,, sand, gravel up buildings like the Houses of is hony Sir Charles Barry built sheet apack. No interior pillars and stoel has only fat boguri, Parliament

Westminster the Houses of Parliament.

are needed to hold up the roof.

---{LVACION · Kapruse, Kervice),

tian,

odd economics of nationalisa MICE, MI.Struct.E, MASCE,

it would probably be cheaper now to fly from Lon- knows what he is talking don to Paris or from London about. He is technical direc-

train

Old and now to Extinburgh thon to ride the tor of the British Reinforced Concreto Engineering Com-

Basically, there are two ways pany, the biggest firm of or putting up a building. concrete designing engineers in Britain.

Despite the protective colour-- ing, however, eir travel is assorting limelt in a way that has the planners almost on the Nobody of hysteria. verge knows quito how to go about catering for 18 million travel- Jars a your

9.80

MONTREAL NEW YORK

meats, Although theirs is # costly product to cart around, they are selling 10 milion worth a year in export mar- kets. For they have made British cement the cheapest In the world.

.

The next job

They have a happy and hard working industry. They pioneered holidays with pay and profit-sharing. The only strike they have ever had was in 1926 during the General Strike.

Last year their output per man

was higher than

for cement

makers anywhere, even in the USA, where produclivity idolised.

Is

And what of the future? The next big job for the commen! industry to have a hand in will surely be helping to im- prove Britain's roads. How soon can it be tackled? The Industry's leaders say

the cement and reinforced con- crete can be made available for the work to start right ztow

The magle of the comment makers' new plants like the one at Cauldon will see to that.

-(London Express Service),

Pare 13

The King of Whiskies

Bole Agents: DODWILL & CO. LTD.

FANS

No. 1038

HIDORT PAN

LATEST DESIGN PLASTIC-FANTING TAR SANDALWIGO DE DREA MIDGE EAN 80 106 TROUND PAYER FOLDING FAN

* WIEN ALUMINIUM HANDLO

ly

JO TÀI CHOEN BAN HƯ 194, OVERN ́D ROAD, C.

MÓNG NGH TEL. STORI

GABLE, BUB

The modern Blue Circța cament plant at Shoreham-this in how the Industry meets the Increasing demanda of

fat and atomic age.

Against

skin disease and itching

Mitigal

A GENUINE LAYER PRODUCT MANUFACTURED IN SEVERKUSEN. OLEMANT

BAYER

the

GREEN ISLAND CEMENT CO., LTD.

SOLE AGENTS FOR

CEMENT AIDS

DRIWAL

DIAMITE

N-TAIR

Silicone water repellent preserver

Surface hardener and dust proofor

Recommended for: Proofing concrete against dusting, abrasion, oil and acid corrosion,

Air entraining and plasticising agent

Recommended for: All concrete and cement work where speedier laying, improved surface finish and colour are desirable.

AQUAPEL Integral waterproofor (Liquid)

RAPIDARD

DURABLACK

ROK-ITE P.R.

L.B.9

Plastic glaze.

Rapid cement hardener

Recommended for: All cement mixes where accelerated set or high early strength is desirable.

Black dampcourse admixture

Scalor against patrol, oil and grease corrosion.

NEW TERRITORIES/

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