MARTINSBURG -- As officials with the Essroc cement manufacturer wrap up a three-year, $500 million transformation in the state's Eastern Panhandle, one major task remains: paving the elaborate system of roadways that traverse the facility's 870-acre campus.

With construction of a new operation line and several new buildings finished on the site, the project is 95 percent complete, according to plant manager Paul Biel, who joined the management team of the plant in 2005, three years after Essroc purchased it from Capitol Cement.

"Finding your way around the plant is still difficult," Biel said. "We change the roads around literally every day as we close buildings and open new ones and deal with all the construction. Logistics-wise, things have been a little complicated. But we're almost done, and there hasn't been one minute that we haven't served our customers."

The Martinsburg site is part of the Italcementi Group, the fifth-largest cement producer in the world. Based in Bergamo, Italy, the company has a presence in 22 countries. Its North American division, based in Nazareth, Pa., is responsible for manufacturing about 6 million metric tons of cement each year.

Once a new entrance, parking lots and connecting roads are in place in Martinsburg, Biel said he hopes to host an open house for the community to unveil what he describes as the company's most modern cement plant.

"We're the flagship," said the 54-year-old New York native. "We've put into place every modern technology here so that we're absolutely state of the art in every way possible."

Good Timing

Many people assume that federal stimulus spending has been a boon to cement manufacturers, but Biel said the money has been spread across so many projects that there hasn't been much impact on the industry. But, he said, the overhaul of the plant amid the recession has created an economic boost for the Eastern Panhandle, allowing Essroc to retain a staff of 150 full-time jobs and add additional short-term contract workers.

When Essroc unveiled the specifics of the plan to upgrade the plant in 2004, many employees reacted with skepticism, Biel said.

"This was a massive change for everybody," he said.

The company opted to spend approximately $2 million to train employees in the new processes involved, Biel said.

C.D. Linton, a Berkeley County native who is the human resources manager for Essroc in Martinsburg, credited the Governor's Guaranteed Work Force Program with helping to provide the training necessary to transform processes at the plant.

"We've raised the skill level of our workers to the new standards of a technologically demanding industry," he said.

Most of Essroc's employees now fully embrace the new way of doing business, Biel said.

"I hear employees all the time saying how excited they are," he said. "To get to be part of new technology is something that feels good. And these are good jobs with high paying salaries."

Getting Greener

The upgrade also positions Essroc as more environmentally friendly, Biel said. While in the past some raw materials or coal might be stored outdoors, all the raw materials at the new plant, including tons of coal, stone, gypsum and more, are stored away in silos or otherwise covered, avoiding the risk of spreading dust.

"Our intention is to be a good neighbor and one way of doing that is to make sure there's no dust leaving our site," he said. "We want to go beyond what the regulations require. Our aim is to make sure that no dust leaves our property."

Essroc's upgrade has also made it much more energy efficient with less water and heat necessary to create the cement, Biel said.

"Now we're operating one line versus three the old way, but we're producing twice as much product," he said.

The process also unfolds more quickly, he said.

"We've gone from what used to take three hours or more for the slurry to work its way through the kiln to now where we're looking at 15 minutes start to finish."

The main fuels used at the plant are coal and pet-coke. Biel said that the Martinsburg plant may use coal mined in West Virginia, but it's a decision made at Essroc headquarters' centralized procurement department. The plant normally has between 8,000 and 12,000 tons of coal on the property at any given time.

Quarry reclamation efforts represent another important environmental consideration, Biel said. As Essroc mines stone, the land is no longer left brown and bare, he said.

"You used to see piles of rock, but now we have a hillside that's green and something that instead of being an eyesore for people driving by actually looks really beautiful," he said.

Looking Ahead

Essroc's investment in Martinsburg has won it fans. Last month, the company took home the Large Business of the Year award during the Martinsburg-Berkeley County Chamber of Commerce dinner.

Tina Combs, the chamber's executive director, said Essroc's investment in technology and employee training makes it stand out. The company, she said, is "a world class organization positioned to compete for the long term success."

She also praised Essroc's contributions to the community, citing donations and volunteer hours with the chamber, Habitat for Humanity, the Boys and Girls Club, local schools and other entities.

Biel said he appreciates the business climate in West Virginia.

"We've truly been embraced by community and by the state overall," he said. "I've worked in a lot of states and not everywhere is like that."

As for what's to come, Biel's personal guess is that it will be 2012 before the industry rebounds.

"The cement industry runs on a seven-year cycle and when this downturn happened we were coming off a nine-year high," he said. "We're moving in the right direction now, with the stock market up, but I don't think it's going to be an instant recovery."

The changes in Martinsburg came at just the right time, Biel said.

"This downturn has been a death sentence for all inefficient plants," he said.

Biel believes that both the company and its workers are well positioned.

"This is a demanding job where you're working in large volume with a narrow profit margin and everything's time sensitive," he said. "But we've found that fine line where the company and its people are both profiting from the future. When you find that, you're going to succeed."