Displaying items by tag: Plant
Cemex announces US$530m Puebla plant expansion
27 January 2020Mexico: Cemex has announced that it will expand its 7.2Mt/yr integrated Tepeaca plant in the state of Pueblo in 2020 into ‘the largest Cemex plant in the world and one of the largest in the entire American continent.’ It did not enclose the capacity of the upgrade, which will cost a total of US$530m.
Visiting the plant on 24 January 2020, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador expressed hope in a boost in private investment in the Mexican economy, which fell by 12% year-on-year in 2019, in the wake of the new Free Trade Agreement between Canada, Mexico and the US. Cemex said that its planned investment ‘indicates its trust in the country.’
ASK Cement plans integrated plant in Sverdlovsk
23 January 2020Russia: ASK Cement is set to begin development of a new integrated cement plant on a greenfield site near Yekaterinburg in Sverdlovsk Oblast. Germany-based Aumund has announced that it will supply KZB and KZB-Q pan conveyors, BZB bucket apron conveyors, SDG clinker silo discharge gates, BWZ chain bucket elevators and BWG-L belt bucker elevators to the project in early 2020. Aumund designed the line in collaboration with ASK Cement and its engineering partner Sibniiproject Cement Design Institute.
Cemex may reopen Wampum plant
23 January 2020US: Residents of Shenango, Pennsylvania attended a public hearing regarding Cemex USA’s plan to begin limestone mining at a 593 acre site in the township. New Castle News has reported that the proposal is part of a planned reopening of the company’s 0.9Mt/yr integrated Wampum plant, decommissioned in 2010 after 136 years’ operation, located nearby in Lawrence County. Cemex USA director of cement resources Mark Davies said that Cemex has plans that would generate ‘as much as US$109m’ for Lawrence County and Pennsylvania. Cemex’s legal staff advised residents that 100 new jobs and at least US$100m was at stake.
Philippines: Phinma Corp.’s cement subsidiary Philcement has ramped up its return to production with the commissioning of a 2.0Mt/yr integrated cement plant with attached terminal facilities in the port of Bataan. The Philippine Star has reported that the company, whose six integrated plants had a majority market share in the country prior to the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, has invested US$100m on its re-entry to production, including on the Bataan facility, since it announced the return of its Union cement brand to the market in 2018.
Phinma Corp. president and CEO Ramón del Rosario said, “We believe in this government’s ‘Build Build Build’ program and we want to help ensure the success of this program by augmenting supply and offering the highest quality cement to support critical projects.”
Phinma Corp. is among domestic producers awaiting the result of an appeal by the country’s importers against the legality of the government’s safeguard duty on imported cement.
Pioneer Cement commissions 3.7Mt/yr integrated cement plant
17 January 2020Pakistan: Pioneer has announced the completion of a new 3.7Mt/yr integrated cement plant with a 12MW waste heat recovery (WHR) power plant and 24MW coal-fired power plant. It said that production and dispatch would start ‘in due course.’ It commenced construction of the facility in 2017.
Cemenco commissions cement plant
16 January 2020Liberia: HeidelbergCement subsidiary Cemenco has commissioned a 0.3Mt/yr cement plant in Liberia following an investment of US$14m. The Daily Observer newspaper has reported that the plant is equipped with a 2000t silo, bulk truck unloading equipment and a bagging line, in addition to four Samson Eco Hoppers for dust-free delivery in the Port of Monrovia. Cemenco already operates a 0.8Mt/yr grinding plant on Bushroda Island in Monrovia.
Resident alleges insufficient checks made on use of glass at Holcim Süddeutschland Dotternhausen plant
16 January 2020Germany: A Zollernalb, Baden-Württemberg resident who mounted legal action against Tübingen Council in June 2019 over LafargeHolcim subsidiary Holcim Süddeutschland’s use of waste glass in cement production at its 1.1Mt/yr integrated Dotternhausen plant has submitted ‘extensive reasoning’ for the challenge. The Schwarzwälder Bote has reported that Holcim Süddeutschland allegedly did not complete the proper tests before introducing glass to cement production at Dotternhausen in late 2017. The claimant ‘noticed a rise in heavy metal levels.’
At a subsequent council meeting, a Holcim Süddeutschland employee bore witness to the presence of a defective bag filter. By receiving glass ground to grains of a certain fineness, the claimant alleges that Holcim Süddeutschland was able to bypass federal waste regulations necessitating contaminant checks. They said the company was ‘taking citizens for idiots.’
Uzbekistan: Chinese investors have announced the launch of a 0.9Mt/yr integrated cement plant in the Fergana region of Uzbekistan as a result of a total investment of US$113m. Trend News has reported that a second phase of work beginning in May 2020 will further increase the cement plant’s production capacity. This is one of five upcoming Chinese-owned integrated plants in Uzbekistan, with a shared capacity of 6.0Mt/yr.
Dyckerhoff completes Geseke quarry road paving
10 January 2020Germany: Buzzi-Unicem subsidiary Dyckerhoff has paved the 3700m2 of road outside the limestone quarry at its 0.4Mt/yr integrated Geseke plant in North Rhine-Westphalia. It used a concrete blend containing PKZ Doppel N cement produced at the Geseke plant, which it applied to a thickness of 20cm over an asphalt base. Dyckerhoff made the decision to pave the road ‘to minimise dust emissions, especially in prolonged dry spells.’ It says the concrete’s low water content and good compression give the road a strength rating of 50N/mm2.
Production picks up - update on Russia
08 January 2020Last month Soyuzcement, the Union of Russian Cement Producers, reported that cement production was on course to grow by 8% year-on-year to 58Mt in 2019. This estimate was based on growth from January to October 2019 followed by a modest rise in November.
Graph 1: Cement production in Russia, 2010 – 2019. Source: CM Pro, Ernst & Young.
The pickup is significant because it’s the country’s first annual resumption of growth since 2014. At that time low commodity prices, a worsening economy and international sanctions broke a fairly steady growth cycle that had started in 2000. The only blip in that run was the global economic downturn around 2008. In the medium to long term Soyuzcement’s review pinpointed growth drivers as being government-backed residential housing schemes, integrated land development projects and an increase in the construction of concrete roads. This increase has been driven by consumption growth in most regions, led by a 12% rise in the Central Federal District although the Volga Federal District started to slow in the second half of 2019.
Figure 1: Russian Federal Districts by cement production in 2016. Source: Soyuzcement.ru.
Anecdotally, this change in the fortunes of the Russian cement industry can be seen in the volume of news coverage on the Global Cement website over the last few years. The mean number of news stories on the country in 2016 and 2017, increased by half in 2018 and then again in 2019. Partly this is down to our attempts to increase our coverage of the region but it also shows a general trend. In the news specifically there haven’t been many new plant projects domestically but there has been a steady stream of upgrades and maintenance related stories. For example, Eurocement subsidiary Kavkazcement reported in recent weeks that it had installed a replacement dry kiln. This has been part of a group of upgrades that Eurocement has started in 2019. On the supplier side both Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer and Italy’s Bedeschi opened subsidiaries in Russia in 2019.
One thing that didn’t seem to slow down the growth were mounting tariffs on Russian exports into Ukraine. Russia’s neighbour first blocked imports of cement from Russia in May 2019 due to, what it said was a Russian ban on imports. It then followed this with an antidumping rate of 115% for imported clinker and Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) from Russia. It also penalised imports from Belarus and Moldova, although at lower rates. Russia’s cement export rates seemed untroubled by this, rising by 13.5% year-on-year to 0.8Mt in the first 10 months of 2019. Exports hit of high of just below 2Mt/yr in 2014 but have since stabilised at around 1Mt/yr. Imports reached around 5Mt/yr in the early 2010s and have been slowly declining since then, reaching 1.5Mt in 2018.
The lowered production rate that the Russian cement industry has faced over the last five years has been noteworthy given the apparent low capacity utilisation rate. The Global Cement Directory 2019 records the country as having a production capacity of 111Mt/yr. This gives Russia a capacity utilisation rate of 48% in 2018! Unlike, say, the countries in southern Europe that have had to rationalise their cement industries following the post-2008 decline, Russia may have structural aspects to the industry that have helped protect it from lower utilisation rates. These include relatively low export-import rates and the large size of the country with limited sea access to many regions. Most of its production capacity is located in the west but a sizable minority of plants are based further east across the Ural, Siberian and Far Eastern regions. Even under subdued economic conditions, plants in these places are likely to be less susceptible to foreign imports, for example.
Looking ahead, the question is whether the current growth that the cement industry is enjoying is viable once government spending slows down. Alongside this the industry could also focus on sustainability. As the government announced in early January 2020, the country expects to face both negative and positive effects from climate change. The cement industry could be at the front of this trend if it decides to clean up production and/or move into new markets as the Arctic region opens up.