Alfred S. Rogers and the start of a cement company

The sales agent of Grey & Bruce was Alfred S. Rogers, a Toronto entrepreneur, who owned a number of companies, among them a fuel supply firm that also sold cement. Rogers joined forces with Lind around 1910, when competition from other cement companies called for substantial investment in modernization.

One year later, Rogers and Lind led a group of investors who formed a new company on a 500-acre site in the limestone-rich region near St. Marys, Ontario. They called the company St. Marys Portland Cement Company Limited. The plant cost $250,000 and went into production in November of 1912, employing 90 people. It had two 165-foot rotary kilns and its initial capacity was 180 tonnes a day. The product was named "Pyramid Brand" Portland Cement and sold for $9 a tonne. It was an immediate success and the company prospered.

A view of Uplands; the home of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Rogers; on Bayview

1936, English