LafargeHolcim has been awarded major long-term contracts worth EUR 110 million as part of the Grand Paris Express (GPE) project. The GPE is the largest transport infrastructure project in Europe and represents a total investment of about EUR 38.5 billion. The project will meet the growing city’s needs for an improved transport infrastructure and will prepare Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games.

To help realize the GPE’s anticipated 200 kilometers of new railway and 68 new rail stations, LafargeHolcim will deliver 600,000 tonnes of aggregates and 260,000 tonnes of cement to produce 650,000 cubic meters of ready-mix concrete. Further LafargeHolcim will use barges on the Seine to sustainably manage excavated earth equal to six times the weight of Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. Jan Jenisch, CEO: “We are proud to be a key partner on this historic project. With this partnership we are demonstrating our leadership in the building materials industry, making a lasting contribution to improving the transport experience of the people living and working in the Paris area. The project once more shows our capacity and reliability in delivering a large amount of high-quality concrete and our ability to provide efficient logistics and supply solutions. As part of our Strategy 2022 – ‘Building for Growth’ we have committed to grow our Aggregates and Ready-Mix Concrete segments and the GPE is a major milestone in the delivery of this commitment.”

To meet the project’s challenging schedule, LafargeHolcim has added mobile ready-mix concrete plants to its existing Parisian ready-mix concrete network, enabling an average production of 300 cubic meters per hour for the GPE. Further LafargeHolcim will remove and treat at least 3 million tonnes of earth from the construction site, then use the excavated material to re-landscape its nearby quarries. For the transportation of both aggregates coming from nearby quarries situated in the Seine valley and the excavated earth, LafargeHolcim will use barges on the Seine river. This solution is more efficient and sustainable than road transportation as two barges can handle the load of 220 trucks. With this concept LafargeHolcim will also meet the challenge of transporting large amounts of material through an urban area with over seven million inhabitants. With the contract LafargeHolcim is continuing a tradition of supplying aggregates and concrete to the French market that has endured for more than one-hundred years. The company aims to work on the GPE over the next 15 years.