Raw Stone Shed

The raw stone shed at Kandos Cement Works is a steel-clad building that held crushed limestone after it arrived from the quarry and before it went to the raw mills. The shed has a high pitched roof in corrugated iron, with the roof line broken by a long monitor vent running along the apex. The floor is open concrete, sloped to a central reclaim conveyor that ran beneath the stockpile. The walls are clad in steel sheet from the inside, scored and dented where front-end loaders worked the stockpile against them. A residue of limestone fines covers the floor in places, pale grey, almost white where the daylight reaches it. Roller doors at one end open onto the truck and conveyor route from the quarry side.

The Kandos plant was built specifically because of the limestone deposit alongside it. Limestone is the primary raw material in Portland cement, accounting for roughly four-fifths of the input mix. The quarry was the reason the NSW Cement Lime and Coal Company purchased the 100 acres from local farmer John Lloyd Junior in 1913. Stone moved from the quarry by aerial ropeway in the early decades and later by conveyor and truck, accumulating in sheds like this one to buffer the supply against the mills' steady demand. The plant produced cement for 95 years until closure in September 2011. The reclaim conveyor underneath the shed is one of the last things in here that was still moving on the day the works closed.