Titan Cement Company

Stephanie

Tiffani

Janie Miller

ENG 112

18 May 2009

Titan Cement Company: Is It Worth It?

So we’ve all heard about pollution sometime in our lives but have you ever really thought about it? We hear on the news and other places about green house gases and global warming but do we ever think that something this large could ever take place in our own backyard? Recently I have been informed about a company that, in the effort to build and create new jobs, has actually caused a huge amount of pollution in Wilmington, NC. So what all is going on? What is going to happen to Wilmington residents? And could this type of pollution come to our neighborhood?

To begin, we need to know what the Titan Cement Company is and how they operate. Titan Cement Company S.A. is Greece's leading cement producer-the 100-year-old company is also that country's only domestic producer of cement and cement products. The company's four Greek cement plants produce more than six million tons per year, and command a 40 percent market share at home. Since the beginning of the 1990s, Titan also has made a push to become a diversified and vertically integrated company, adding ready-mix concrete production, aggregates, and cement products including cement blocks and mortar. Titan also owns a producer of china tableware in Greece, Ionia S.A. Together, these activities represent some 40 percent of the company's total sales of more than EUR 1 billion ($1.2 billion) for 2003. Meanwhile, Titan has matched the diversification of its products with a geographic expansion. Since the early 1990s, Titan has entered a number of foreign markets, most notably the United States, where the company controls Tarmac America Titan also is present in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Egypt. In all, the company operates 11 cement plants with a total production capacity of 16 million tons per year. This operation is supported by a network of seven cement...