Excerpt from The Concrete Review: German Methods in Portland Cement Manufacture, Dry and Wet Processes

The sale of the cement is done through a central office, which has five further sales-offices under it to facilitate the transaction of business. No factory can sell direct to the consumers, and all sales must be made through the sales-offices. The sales territory of each syndicate is carefully defined by contract, so that each syndicate may only sell within a definite circuit of the factories belonging to it, whereby large economies in freight are made. The price of a barrel of cement is at present $1.00 to $1.25.

The fixing of the price is determined so that the smaller factories belonging to the syndicate shall have a normal profit, but the price of foreign cement and of other building materials has also to be considered.

It would certainly be wrong to assume that the regulation of prices is done arbitrarily for the sole object of getting the highest possible prices. The principal merit of the syndicates is that they balance the production of the factories with the sale of the cement. The syndicate in Rheinland and Westphalia operated its factories last year 57 per cent. of their producing capacity, and the South German syndicate 78 per cent.

The syndicates in the different districts of Germany are connected by agreements, which determine how far each factory can sell in its environs.

Raw material for Portland cement is found pretty nearly all over Germany, principally limestone with shale, and it frequently has naturally the proper combination for Portland cement. Such deposits you will find in south Germany, principally in Wurttemberg, in the Swabian Jura, around Hannover and also on the Rhine. Some factories, principally in central Germany, use limestone with clay, which is mostly very damp. The cement works on the northern coast around Hamburg and Stettin use wet chalk and clay as raw material and work on the wet process.

Such pure limestone as is used for cement-making in many places in America is not met with in Germany. On this account white Portland cement is not made in Germany on a large scale.

The quarry of a German cement factory presents quite a different aspect from an American one. The steam-shovel, which is found here in almost every cement factory, is not yet used in Germany, as the factories are mostly so small that the purchase of a steam-shovel would not pay.

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