Many customers still consider price as the main factor in their decision-making process when planning a new cement import terminal. Price is important, but if you only look at price, you lose sight of value. To achieve the best long-term solution, we need to look at the value of the technical solution. A terminal operator can gain a lot by understanding what the right solution can ultimately do for his business.

Knowledge is the key to an optimal solution here. Without accurate information about different technologies, operators are doomed to lose money. This is because they miss the opportunity to develop the operation and raise it to a more profitable level, or to design a completely new, optimized cement terminal from scratch.

It is helpful here to use a cost calculation method that makes it possible to simulate the effects of various technical solutions on the long-term profitability of the terminal. Factors such as:

• Planned duration of use
• Storage volume
• Space requirements
• Operating costs
• Ground conditions
• Port infrastructure
• Construction restrictions
• Occupational safety
• Environmental compatibility

There are simple solutions and highly efficient ones, but in new planning the cement import terminal must always be considered as a whole, i.e. ship unloading, material transport, storage and distribution. Here, too, the calculation model can be a powerful tool to show how an optimal interface consideration can achieve the best results in terms of capacity, efficiency, and profit.

Projects within existing terminals serve to optimize unloading or reduce dust loads, for example. However, the capacity should be kept at the same level, as the downstream conveyor systems are limited. A requirement that is increasingly being made by cement terminal operators is to increase the capacity on the pier and within the terminal. This is to maximize the speed at which material can be unloaded from a ship and then transferred to a downstream conveying system.

The time the ship spends at the pier and the time the material spends in storage are minimized. The faster the terminal handles the cement, or ideally bypasses it altogether, the faster the financial turnover. With the help of a terminal logistics and profitability calculation, the optimal solution can be backed up with values. And this happens independently of the technical solution used and of suppliers.