Ozinga has opened a low-carbon cement mill in East Chicago, Indiana, that will produce 1 million tons of slag cement per year. The facility recycles slag from steelmaking to make ASTM C989-compliant cement and CarbonSense branded blends, which can cut embodied carbon by up to 80% compared with traditional Portland cement mixes. Once fully operational, Ozinga says the plant could avoid more than 700,000 metric tons of CO2 annually, roughly equal to taking 150,000 cars off the road. The site has rail, barge, and highway access, which lowers transport emissions. The project created about 250 construction jobs and will support around 50 permanent union steelworker jobs. The announcement was distributed as a paid press release, so the tonnage and emissions figures are company claims. Still, the project is a concrete example of domestic low-carbon building materials capacity expanding in the Midwest.
