Kirkpatrick Concrete cut the ribbon on their new concrete plant in Pell City Wednesday morning

Kirkpatrick Concrete cut the ribbon on their new concrete plant in Pell City Wednesday morning

PELL CITY — Kirkpatrick Concrete cut the ribbon on its new Pell City facility Wednesday morning. 

Members of the Pell City Chamber of Commerce and workers gathered to recognize the new concrete plant in the Pell City Industrial Park. 

Kirkpatrick Concrete President Terry Brasher said the new $3 million facility will almost double the amount of concrete the company can produce compared to their old plant just down the street. He said the old facility will be shut down.

“By increasing our capacity we are creating more jobs for drivers,” Brasher said. 

He said he was not sure on an exact number of new jobs the new facility will bring to the community as the work is somewhat seasonal, but once the facility is up and running this week they will start to get a better idea of how many more drivers they will need. 

Brasher said the new facility is just one of several investments the Vicat Group, Kirkpatrick’s parent company, has made in St. Clair County. He said Vicat is also the parent company for National Cement, which recently completed a $300 million expansion to its cement plant in Ragland. Brasher said the Vicat Group has been a family-owned company since the 1800s. 

“The Vicats have made a tremendous investment in St. Clair County and Alabama with the new cement mill,” he said. “That is an unbelievable investment and obviously our investment here is very closely related to the cement mill because we use cement in our business.”

Brasher said Kirkpatrick uses cement from Ragland as a part of its concrete mixture along with stone and sand also sourced from around Alabama. 

“Everything we use is local,” he said. “There may be some ad mixes, some chemicals that we put in, that come from somewhere else other than Alabama, but all of our materials, our main components, which is cement, rock and sand, are all local, very local.”

Brasher said Kirkpatrick chose to keep its facility in Pell City, not only because of its proximity to Ragaland but also because of the strength of the growth in the community and other nearby communities. 

“We think primarily that this area is going to continue to grow and so we need more capacity to meet the needs of the market,” he said. 

Brasher said the new facility was also built by local contractors through Goodgame Company, who are also a customer of Kirkpatrick. He said the partnership worked well as Goodgame Vice President Jason Goodgame, who oversaw the project, has a good understanding of Kirkpatrick’s products and what they need to make it.

Goodgame said while his company is a customer of Kirkpatrick, the concrete business has also worked with Goodgame to build several facilities. He said he was happy to help a fellow Pell City business expand their operations and felt the new facility would help Kirkpatrick meet the needs of the local concrete market. 

Taylor Mitchell is a Daily Home reporter covering Pell City.

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