ENCI: Голланд цемент өндірісі және табиғатқа әсері

Dutch cement company

ENCI (Eerste Nederlandse Cement Industrie First Dutch Cement Industry) is a Dutch company based in Maastricht, Rotterdam and IJmuiden. Their core business activity consists of the digging of marl out of St Pietersberg, which they use to make cement. The company has been around since 1924, with some key locations being in Maastricht and Sint Pietersberg. The Maastricht location was closed in 2020. A pair of Eurasian eagle owls have been nesting at the ENCI quarry since 2001, making the quarry one of the most well known nesting sites for the bird in Western Europe.

In 1924, the First Dutch Cement Industry was founded in Maastricht, the cradle of the current company. In 1926, the company obtained an exploitation concession from the Dutch government for the extraction of Limburg marl on the Sint Pietersberg, part of the Plateau van Caestert, just south of Maastricht. As early as 1923, Herman de Ronde made the first sketches for the new factory on the Lage Kanaaldijk. Four years later, the so called 'Peutzhal' was created, now AINSI, designed by Frits Peutz, who collaborated with De Ronde during this period, and the Dutch Portland cement factory in Vijlen was bought by the ENCI. It would later be closed in 1929. From its inception, ENCI's shares have been largely owned by the Brussels based company CBR (Cimenteries et Briquetteries Réunies de Bonne Espérance). This company was acquired in 1993 by the German HeidelbergCement, an internationally operating group that is currently the fourth largest cement producer in the world. Despite its name, ENCI was founded by a Belgian Swiss consortium in 1925 with the first factory starting production in 1928. With the founding of ENCI, the Netherlands were no longer fully dependent on foreign cement.

Until about 1970, the ENCI was one of the largest employers in Maastricht. Since the 1970s, criticism of the company has increased because more and more people found the activities of the quarry and the factory harmful to nature and the environment, in particular because of the degradation of the Sint Pietersberg by excavation, the desiccation of the Jekerdal, which is partly due to the pumping of groundwater by ENCI, and the emission of harmful substances into the air, partly due to the co firing of waste materials in the clinker kiln. In 1998, ENCI was bought by the Belgian CBR Group (itself part of HeidelbergCement) and Holcim. Currently, HeidelbergCement is the sole owner. In 2019, HeidelbergCement announced that ENCI's Maastricht plant would be closed.