By Jenny Callison
Enquirer contributor

Richard Martina (right) driver and safety director with Sakrete, and Donnie England, plant supervisor, load a palette of Sakrete cement mix on a truck at the Sakrete plant in St. Bernard. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

ST. BERNARD - Arthur Avril claimed that he cast his lot with concrete to avoid spending a lifetime behind the counter of the family meat market.

Whatever his reasons, the founder of Sakrete devoted his entire adult life to refining and promoting concrete - and was responsible for three breakthrough ideas that revolutionized the industry. He worked until his death in 1996 at the age of 95, helping his company expand its product line and its geographic scope.

"He was a very interesting guy," said his great-nephew Craig Avril, Sakrete's president. "He really made a mark."

Arthur Avril always said he chose to study mining engineering because the courses were taught only at Ohio State University. He knew that if he stayed at home and attended the University of Cincinnati, his parents would insist that he work part-time at the former Avril & Sons market. (That business survives today, on downtown's Court Street, as Avril-Bleh.

Mary Avril

Arthur Avril

After graduation in the early 1920s, Avril worked briefly at a stone company in Toledo. Then he returned to Cincinnati and started his own ready-mix concrete plant, one of the few in the country at that time.

Those engineering courses at OSU gave Avril a competitive edge in an industry largely lacking in scientific know-how.

His creative mind and fascination with all things mechanical led him to design ready-mix concrete trucks with a rotary drum. His understanding that different types of stone had different properties led to another brainstorm.

"He developed and sold concrete and mortar on the basis of their physical specifications rather than the proportions of their ingredients," said Avril's nephew Jack Avril, chairman of the family owned company. "Those physical characteristics determined such things as strength and set-up time."

SAKRETE FACTS

• Arthur and Mary Avril mixed and bagged 36,000 bags of Sakrete by themselves in 1936, their first year of production. Now, with 62 plants and two under construction, the company sells about 100 million units a year - and the name Sakrete is protected by a trademark. • Through its system of 25 licensees, Sakrete is moving aggressively into new markets as well as increasing its penetration of existing markets. The most recent Sakrete plants are in Hungary and Turkey. • The entire Sakrete line consists of about 100 products, ranging from basic concrete mixes to blacktop products, specialty mortars and grouts, performance additives and industrial products. • 25,000 bags of Sakrete were used to build the Palm Springs Tramway on Mount San Jacinto in California. • Sakrete was used to preserve a 2,000-year-old Roman bath in Trier, Germany. It's used today to protect prehistoric sites in Turkey. • The elephant doors at the Cincinnati Zoo are made of lightweight, high strength Sakrete concrete. Sakrete's also the foundation of the zoo's aviary landscape. • A modernist fountain with sculpted bathers in Frankfurt, Germany, is made entirely of Sakrete. • For information, call 242-3644.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

As part of Ohio's bicentennial, the Enquirer this year will periodically profile some of the state's signature companies - those with long histories or those that are well known for their unique products sold around the globe, for instance. If you have a nominee, e-mail business@enquirer.com

The company's founder sold his concrete for projects in Greater Cincinnati - most notably supplying 500,000 cubic yards of the material for construction of Union Terminal, which was built from 1929 to 1933.

The terminal's builders recognized the genius behind Avril's mixing methodology and specified the concrete on the basis of its strength rather than its proportion of materials - the first project to do so in the United States. That concept subsequently became standard practice for all concrete projects in this country.

On a trip to the West Coast, Avril tracked down and wooed a former schoolmate, Mary Joyce. Not long after they married, the new husband's company foundered, a victim of the Depression. But, as always, Avril had an idea.

"He had noticed that, when he was pouring concrete, people in the neighborhood would come by and ask for a barrel full to fix a step or whatever," Jack Avril said. "He went to bed one night, and in the morning he had come up with the idea for a concrete mix that would be sold in a sack and could be mixed in small amounts as needed."

One day in 1936, Arthur and Mary sat down at their dining table and made a list of possible names for the new product. Once they decided on Sakrete, they sprang into production, transforming the making of concrete into a task comprehensible to anyone who could whip up biscuits from a mix.

Said Craig Avril: "The three original products were the concrete mix, mortar mix and a resurfacing/finishing mix. The concrete mix is just what it sounds like and does what you would imagine: making things like sidewalks and pathways all the way up to major structures. The mortar mix is used for holding masonry together. The resurfacing mix, commonly called sand mix, is just cement and sand; there's no aggregate in it. It's typically used for overlaying concrete and it has high strength."

The couple quickly bonded to their routine. Arthur Avril would mix and bag his products each morning, then go out and sell them. His wife dried the sand and gravel, using a method developed by Avril, monitored deliveries and kept the books. She wasn't averse to loading Sakrete when the occasion demanded.

"Imagining Mary swinging around those 80- and 90-pound bags is somewhat fun to think about," Craig Avril said. "She was about 5-foot-4 and never weighed more than 110 pounds. And Art used to refer to himself as an old mudslinger."

As the company grew, the couple started slinging luggage instead of sacks of concrete. Their frequent business travel earned them the distinction of being the first U.S. couple to travel more than a million air miles together by major airline.

"They were never able to have children," Jack Avril said. "Sakrete was their child. They traveled all over the world, negotiating licenses, starting plants, installing equipment."

When Arthur and Mary Avril died within a few months of each other in 1996, full management of the company passed to Jack Avril. In 2001, his son Craig became president, and Jack assumed the role of chairman.

Sakrete has continued to form partnerships with companies abroad, spreading the sale of ready-to-mix concrete throughout North America, Europe and into the Middle East. Those Sakrete bags now contain a variety of mixtures.

"We've subsequently evolved about 24 concrete products," Craig Avril said. "Last year, we launched a new line of repair products for smaller repairs. Each 'recipe' is unique in terms of its ingredients and proportions."

Recipes yield concretes of different strengths and different degrees of fineness for different applications.

"Sakrete may be a basic, very fundamental and simple type of product, but the closer I get to it, there's some very interesting, very complex science and technology to cementitious mixes," Craig Avril said.

E-mail jcallison@zoomtown.com