Eight employees were laid off last week when Graymont’s historic Summit lime plant closed.

“I’m the only one left as of today because I’m the plant superintendent,” said Larry Linderman on Friday Oct. 30.

Linderman said Drain Brothers Construction Ltd. would continue to operate the Summit quarry to collect aggregate and other products.

Graymont Ltd., a supplier of lime and limestone products, announced the closure in June 2015 because of low the low price of quicklime, hydrated lime, precipitated calcium carbonate and the other products the plant produces, most of which are used in construction.

The plant is also dwarfed by another lime works in Fort Saskatchewan, which can produce hydrate at the rate of about 30 to 40 tonnes an hour, while the Summit plant can only produce about seven tonnes an hour, said Linderman.
“We’re kind of too small to exist,” he said.

Surveyors first discovered the limestone deposits near Crowsnest Lake when the Canadian Pacific Railroad came through the area. The lime works began operating in 1903 under the proprietorship of E.G. Hazell and was incorporated in 1938. It began as a limestone mining operation and then began manufacturing lime.

Rob Beleutz, a manager with Graymont, said in over a hundred years of operation, the plant has gone through many phases of operation and closure.

Beleutz hopes the current closure will be temporary.

“It’s had quite a long history and we’re hoping to keep that going,” he said. “We’ll continue to evaluate markets from time to time and hopefully we can get some recovery and demand for product.”

Beleutz said the lime works have and hosted generations of immigrants who lived and worked at the plant.