Thomaston cement plant laying off more workers

Dragon Cement in Thomaston is planning six more layoffs as the plant continues to wind down its manufacturing operations and shift to a distributional model, Town Manager Kara George said in a memo shared with the PenBay Pilot .

About a year ago, the cement plant announced that it would begin gradually ending its manufacturing after nearly a century of business. Giant Cement, which has owned Dragon since 2006, cited growing operating and logistics costs, including the price of energy, as the reason for shutting down the plant.

The company planned around 65 layoffs over the course of a year since it began this change, and George said six of those are expected to happen between now and January. She said the operation now employs about 26 people.

Though the plant continues to process residual materials into cement, it has started a new distribution process, which includes importing loads containing 30,000 tons of bagged cement into Searsport, then trucking it into Thomaston and distributing it to customers, George said. This has already happened once this year, and will happen again in October.

George said rail transportation is also no longer available, because the short line between Brunswick and Rockland was not receiving enough business. Dragon Cement will use trucks to import and distribute cement.

Activities in the quarry across from the plant are currently on hold, George said, but there is still material in it that is suitable for both cement manufacturing and aggregate production, which is crushed rock used in construction.