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Swan Portland Cement
Originally established as the Western Australia Cement Company in 1921, Swan Portland Cement began locally producing both cement and lime products. Originally located along Burswood Road in Rivervale, right on the edge of the Swan River, before operations later moved to Kwinana in 1997.
The Rivervale plant, often referred to as being in the locality of Burswood, was a large processing batch plant and quickly became one of the biggest cement producers in Western Australia. It came at a time when the state was still building itself. Roads, bridges, drainage and housing all needed cement and a lot of it.
During World War II, the role of the plant became even more critical. Cement from Swan Portland Cement was used in defensive infrastructure, including bunkers and military works. Supply was so tight that civilian construction was restricted, with new houses reportedly limited to a single bag of cement.
A by-product of that level of production was the pollution that came with it. Cement dust spread across Rivervale and surrounding areas, coating buildings, settling inside homes and even turning nearby ponds a pale, chalky colour. It was one of those industries people tolerated because it was considered necessary, but it came at a cost to anyone living nearby.
What Portland Cement is
This is the standard grey cement used in most construction. It’s made by heating a mix of limestone and clay, with small amounts of other materials like gypsum, in a kiln at very high temperatures until it forms hard lumps called clinker. The clinker is then ground into a fine powder, which is the cement.
White cement, on the other hand, uses purer raw materials like high-grade limestone and kaolin clay to avoid the darker colour.
A bag of Portland cement
Swan Portland Cement’s rough start
One of the more interesting parts of the Rivervale operation is where the raw materials came from, because most of it was sourced locally. Originally, marl was dredged from Lake Clifton, transported to Waroona by truck and then on to Rivervale by train, before a siding was established to connect Lake Clifton directly.
A kiln was later constructed on site to process the marl with deposited clay into limestone, before it was sent to Rivervale. However, as dredging went deeper into the lake, the quality declined and the operation became unviable.
The WA Portland Cement Company went into voluntary liquidation following a meeting at its Sydney head office in January 1927. Heavy debt from the Lake Clifton operations made it impossible to continue and the company was wound up.
A new company was formed in 1927, taking over the viable parts of the business with fresh capital, which allowed operations to continue at the Burswood works. Clay was sourced from a pit along the riverbank, while lime and some clay came from areas including Bullsbrook, Cannington and Armadale. Limestone from Fremantle was also used to supplement production.
Swan Portland Cement’s rough start
One of the more interesting parts of the Rivervale operation is where the raw materials came from, because most of it was sourced locally. Originally, marl was dredged from Lake Clifton, transported to Waroona by truck and then on to Rivervale by train, before a siding was established to connect Lake Clifton directly.
A kiln was later constructed on site to process the marl with deposited clay into limestone, before it was sent to Rivervale. However, as dredging went deeper into the lake, the quality declined and the operation became unviable.
The WA Portland Cement Company went into voluntary liquidation following a meeting at its Sydney head office in January 1927. Heavy debt from the Lake Clifton operations made it impossible to continue and the company was wound up.
A new company was formed in 1927, taking over the viable parts of the business with fresh capital, which allowed operations to continue at the Burswood works. Clay was sourced from a pit along the riverbank, while lime and some clay came from areas including Bullsbrook, Cannington and Armadale. Limestone from Fremantle was also used to supplement production.
Recovered from under the floorboards of the
Cygnet Como Theatre in March 2024
Making Swan Portland cement
The main ingredient was decayed oyster shells, dredged from the Swan River. Large deposits had built up over time and were pulled directly from the riverbed close to the plant, then processed as the primary source of lime.
Swan Portland Cement was one of the first in Australia to use shells like this at scale, a method later adopted by other cement works around the country. As production expanded, additional limestone sources further inland, including areas like Armadale and Bullsbrook, were brought into use.
Clay, the other key ingredient, came from further up the river. It was transported to the site by trucks, some of which were hauled using an electrically operated cable system.
The shell, limestone and clay were then mixed together and ground into a fine powder, forming a material dominated by lime silicates and aluminates.
Production and output
In September 1935, Swan Portland Cement doubled its manufacturing capacity by expanding its shell dredging operations, increasing the volume of material coming out of the river and the overall output of the plant.
By 1939, the Rivervale plant had the capacity to annually produce between 75,000 and 80,000 tons of cement, a serious output for WA at the time.
Expansion of works
Production ramped up heavily after the war. Further expansion followed in 1949, including a new raw grinding machine, a slurry mixer and a fourth rotary kiln, along with upgraded electric motors. Rotary kilns are the long, rotating furnaces that cook the raw mix at high temperatures, so adding another one significantly increased capacity.
By August 1949, the plant had reportedly produced a record 594,000 tons in just eight months.
Lime quarries
In June 1992, Swan Portland Cement was granted approval to construct and operate a 230,000 tonne per annum quicklime plant in the Nowergup area, with limestone supplied from nearby freehold land and leases. The construction phase was expected to employ 120 to 150 people, with a further 20 to 25 for ongoing operations and 9 to 11 for quarrying.
Swan Portland Cement acquired part of the Caratti family’s land in Kwinana in the early 1980s for limestone quarrying, effectively splitting the property in two. A right of carriageway was then established across the quarry land to maintain access between the remaining lots. The site was later sold to the City in 1989 for use as a landfill.
Contamination legacy
Like many older industrial sites, contamination was left behind when the plant shut down. A Public Environmental Review in October 1996 outlined the extent of it as the land was being prepared for redevelopment.
Asbestos was widespread, both above ground in cement sheeting and below the surface in fragments, offcuts and buried waste.
There was also cement kiln dust, alumina and chromate bricks, contaminated soils, drums containing lubricating oils and old fuel storage tanks.
Part of the site had also been used by James Hardie Industries to manufacture asbestos products. That operation closed in 1981 and was later taken over by Swan Portland Cement, adding further to the contamination issues.
Demolition
By the late 1990s, the Rivervale site was no longer an industrial operation.
The 19.1 hectare site was sold and demolished in April 1999 by Mainline Demolition. A large-scale remediation effort followed, to deal with decades of contamination before redevelopment could begin.
Once completed, a $300 million deal was struck with Mirvac Fini to develop the area into a residential estate. Originally marketed as Burswood Lake Estates, the project was later renamed The Peninsula, a stretch of land almost surrounded by water extending into the Swan River.
At the time, it was a pretty unique concept for Perth, turning a heavily contaminated industrial site into a high-end residential development. Two other consortiums had been shortlisted, Taylor Woodrow and Multiplex, in “conjunction with Macquarie Bank’s development arm, Urban Pacific Limited”, had also been shortlisted but Mirvac Fini got it over the line.
The Kwinana site
Swan Portland Cement, which by the mid-1990s was owned by Adelaide Brighton Ltd, CSR and Pioneer International, was granted government approval to construct a $40 million cement plant in Kwinana in June 1995. Construction of the clinker grinding plant began later that year and was completed in 1997. It was initially expected to produce up to 400,000 tonnes of blended bulk and bagged cement for the Western Australian market each year.
In 2025, Adbri Limited (formerly Adelaide Brighton Ltd) consolidated its Western Australian operations under a new unified brand called Swan Materials, bringing together Cockburn Cement, the legacy of Swan Portland Cement and newly acquired BGC businesses, which included BGC Quarries and Asphalt, several BGC Concrete plants, mobile concrete operations, transport assets and the BGC Materials Technology Centre.
