We are proud to announce that, once again, our company has taken an innovation lead in the new and emerging industry that is Ready-Mix Concrete by launching the first Concrete Recycling Plant in Kenya.
In construction, there is a lot of waste and possibilities of environmental pollution. Cement emits dust and a lot of water gets wasted. Additionally, during concreting, and especially traditional mixing, some water with cement and other aggregates will escape to the ground causing environmental hazards.
Ready-mix companies also have their share in this. The concrete waste after washing the delivery trucks and disposal of excess concrete thereof causes a huge environmental challenge. It also costs money.
The good news now is that Rhombus has invested in a state-of-the-art and first of the kind concrete recycling plant. The plant is from Bibko Systems, Germany, and has a capacity of recycling over 20m³ (cubic meters) of concrete per hour.
This is how the machine works:
When the trucks return from delivery, their tanks – which contains waste that has some cement and fine aggregates (ballast and sand) – are washed with at least 200 litres of water. The waste is then poured into the recycling machine which separates each component. The water with cement will go into collection tanks and be recycled into the batching plants while the fine aggregates are separated and recycled back again into their original stockpiles for re-use.
If we take an average monthly production of about 20,000m³ of concrete, the savings from this new recycling plant is enormous. On water alone, we recover over 500,000 litres of water that would have gone to waste per month. In 5 months, that water is enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool.
Using the same activity level of 20,000m³ monthly concrete production, we also save over 300 tons of ballast and sand that would have otherwise gone to waste.
Besides the commercial savings made from this waste, the biggest winner – and the main motivation for this investment – is the environment. With the new plant, we have minimal waste leaking into the environment.
The company’s management endeavours to continue investing in cutting edge technology and to maintain leadership in innovation, quality assurance and environmental sustainability in our young construction industry.
About Rhombus
Rhombus Concrete is a construction company whose core business is the production and sale of ready-mix concrete. We were founded with a higher purpose of improving Kenya’s construction credibility and trust by producing high-quality products using the latest technology and efficient delivery methods.
For the last 5 years, we have been made the construction of buildings, roads, bridges and dams easier, safer and faster. As such, and being Kenyan owned, we are proud to have played a key role in the country’s rapid infrastructure development, and we are looking forward to doing even more for our beloved country.