For the first time since 2015, we received cement in our Houston Port. The MV Winterset shipping vessel was loaded with cement from Argos’ Cartagena Plant. Over the next 12 months, we are expecting to receive the cement deliveries in Houston every 21 days to maintain a steady supply of Cartagena cement for Argos Ready Mix. The MV Winterset is expected to deliver approximately 21,000 MT of cement with every visit. Sourcing our own product from one of the most competitive Argos cement plants to the Houston market will be major driver to increase our customer service satisfaction and better control our costs and quality.
Earlier this month, all terminals and ports within the Argos USA footprint, fell under the responsibility of the Supply Chain area, which is led by Juan Vanegas (Sr. Director of Supply Chain). Over the last few years, we have been focusing our efforts on achieving higher performance levels that will allow us to reach new productivity goals within all of our operations. To achieve part of this challenge, we made some adjustments to our organizational structure so that we could strengthen alliances between the different teams in the company. This restructuring also came with changes that now have all terminals and ports (both north and south) reporting directly to Kyle Harrison (Terminals Operations Director).
Juan Vanegas stated, “Adding terminals and ports to the supply chain team, allows us to increase the logistic operational fluency and it will help us to strategically manage the end to end supply from vendors to the customers. You’re always trying to make sure that you have the most profitable moves between the plants, the terminals and the customers. Having terminals fall under supply chain will help to enhance the U.S. supply and demand decisions within the rest of Argos footprint.”
Cement being imported from Cartagena is not new for the U.S., Virginia has been receiving roughly 60,000 tons annually over the last two years. Houston is expected to have 360,000 metric tons annually. We are hopeful that importing cement from Cartagena will benefit our Houston RMX division, as well as our third-party customers.
The change also allows us to have a better strategic position in the market and the fact that we are trying to source the majority of the Houston market with cement from Cartagena, instead of relying on cement coming from our competitors. The cement coming from Cartagena has a great reputation in terms of quality providing excellent strengths and setting times, according to customers in our Colombian and CCA customers.
