How Does a Cement Plant Work?

by Javohir Mahmudov, Murod Aslamov

Published: November 23, 2025

Last Updated: November 23, 2025

80% of buildings in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, were destroyed because of the earthquake in 1966. Following this event, the number of apartment buildings built per year was the highest in the same year, according to the project Age Tashkent by Tashkent City Administration. There had been a big increase in the rate of construction in the following two decades.

This, in turn, brought attention to the research and development of cement, the main ingredient in construction. This article is about one of the biggest industries in Uzbekistan – cement production. We will explain the history of the industry, the production process, and the current state of Uzbek factories.

Working Process

The majority of cement production companies in Uzbekistan were built by Soviet institutions during the 20th century. Hence, all equipment and production methodologies resembled those in the Soviet Union. According to Robert Philleo’s 1979 book Building Materials and Components, until 1960, most soviet cement factories were working on the wet process. The wet process involved a lot of water. After 1960, due to energy price shocks, Soviet institutes started integrating semi-dry and dry processes into most of their factories. Later, in early 1970, preheaters and precalcinators were introduced by German manufacturers. In the late 1970s, these innovations were adopted in Russia and worldwide. In this part of the article, we will break down the dry process cement production line with modern facilities like preheaters and precalcinators. Also, we will focus on the Kyzylkumcement factory working process, as there is no universal recipe used across all Uzbekistan cement plants; rather, the industry uses a blend of clay, mudstone, and shale, depending on local geology and quarry availability.

The process starts at the mining site, where raw materials are obtained. Two main ingredients are limestone and clay shale; additional ingredients are silica sand, iron ore, and blast furnace slag. They are mined from quarries by blasting or using heavy machinery. Each ingredient might be located in different deposits. From a chemistry standpoint, limestone contains lime, and clay shale contains silica, alumina.

Then the materials are transported to the factory. The material is transported to the additives hopper with conveyor belts. Then, in the additives hopper, iron ore and other chemicals are added in small quantities, as salt and pepper to food, and transported to the mill. In the mill, ingredients are ground into powder.

Then the resulting mixture reaches the preheater and precalciners to partially prepare it for the main rotary kiln. Preheaters and precalciners use the heat from the rotary kiln to prepare materials for the main stage, and this saves a lot of energy.

The main rotary kiln is the heart of the cement factory, where a long cylindrical pipe rotates and fully calcinates the mixture. The output material is a hard, rock-shaped material called clinker. Clinker is the main component of cement, accounting for 90-95% of it.

Then clicker, along with additives like gypsum, is ground in a cement mill. The output is the final product - cement.

Cement Plants in Uzbekistan

As a part of the 2017 Issue 2 journal Cement and Its Application, the work Cement Industry of the Republic of Uzbekistan by B. K. Zaripov reported that Uzbekistan has 12 cement factories, out of which 9 are large-scale factories with a capacity exceeding 1 million tons of cement per year each. All of the large-scale factories in Uzbekistan are integrated: all processes, from mining to producing ready material, happen at the same factory.

The first large-scale cement plant of Uzbekistan is “Bekabadcement”, which was built in 1926 during the USSR times. In fact, 5 out of 9 large-scale cement factories were built by Soviet Research Institutes. There were three principal research institutes in the cement industry. They are the NIIcement Institute in Moscow, the Giprocement Institute in Leningrad, and the Yuzhgiprocement Institute in Kharkov. For example, the largest factory, Kyzylkumcement, was designed by the Yuzhgiprocement Institute in 1977.

The factory with the biggest production volume, Kyzylkumcement, is located in the Navoi Region. Jizzakh Cement and Sherabad Cement belong to Amlalyk Mining and Metallurgy Company. 3 out of 9 large-scale cement factories are built by Chinese cement companies.

Cement factories consume a lot of gas, and in winter seasons, this puts a lot of pressure on the government's national energy system.

Ecological Concerns

According to Statista’s 2023 Report Cement Industry Emissions Worldwide, the global cement industry emitted 2.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which accounts for 6 percent of total global emissions.

According to the 2024 Issue of Global Carbon Budget led by Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, Uzbekistan’s total annual carbon emissions and annual carbon emissions from cement are 139.23 million tons and 3.41 million tons, respectively. This highlights that 2.5 percent of the country’s total carbon emissions come from the cement industry.

In 2024, the team led by Zafar Turakulov found that energy efficiency and clicker substitution should be the first steps to reduce emissions.

Conclusion

Although cement production is a big contributor to global carbon emissions, attempts to reduce the effect on global warming are being carried out at leading institutions and research centers. As urbanization in Uzbekistan is growing and companies are building more buildings, the cement industry of the country is becoming larger, and it is acquiring unprecedented amounts of foreign investment, particularly from Chinese companies.