Displaying items by tag: Pakistan
Pakistan: The UK’s Asian Precious Minerals has announced plans to build a US$400m cement plant in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Asian Precious Minerals’ chief executive officer (CEO) Nadim Khan, Executive Director Peter Frost, Country Manager Irshad Ali Khokhar and Jason Mumtaz of the British High Commission met with provincial Chief Minister Pervez Khattak to discuss the plans, according to the Express Tribunal newspaper. The project hopes to take advantage of infrastructure demand being driven by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Syed Jamal Shahid retires as a director of Fauji Cement
01 February 2017Pakistan: Syed Jamal Shahid has retired as a director of Fauji Cement with effect from 19 January 2017. Tahir Ashraf Khan has been appointed as a director of the company with effect from 20 January 2017.
Pakistan: Lucky Cement’s sales have risen by 13% year-on-year to US$514m for the six months to 31 December 2016 from US$454m in the same period in 2015. Its profit after tax rose by 14% to US$83m from US$73m. It attributed the increase in revenue on rising sales volumes and its cost of sales fell due to lower fuel costs.
Its cement sales volumes rose by 5.4% to 3.5Mt from 3.3Mt, although exports fell by 16.3% to 0.75Mt from 0.9Mt. Overall the cement producer reported that its market share in Pakistan grew slightly to 18.8% due to an increase in its share of domestic sales.
The cement producer reported that construction at its Punjab cement plant project is awaiting governmental approvals and that it is expected to start in June 2017. A waste heat recovery unit at its Pezu plant is planned to finish commissioning and start operation by the end of January 2017. A joint-venture 1.18Mt/yr plant in the Democratic Republic of the Congo started commercial operation in December 2016 and a 0.87Mt/yr cement grinding plant in Iraq is expected to come online in August 2017.
Cherat Cement to build new production line at Nowshera plant
24 January 2017Pakistan: Cherat Cement has announced plants to build a third production line at its plant at Nowshera in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The new line will have a cement production capacity of 7100t/day, according to the Express Tribune newspaper. The upgrade will increase the company’s production capacity to 4.5Mt/yr.
The cement producer opened at second production line at the site in late 2016. It is also planning to build a waste heat recovery unit.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to invest US$245 in cement plant
24 January 2017Pakistan: Pervez Khattak, the chief minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has ordered that plans to build a cement plant at Haripur be sped up. He made the pronouncement while attending a meeting to plan infrastructure development in the region including new towns, an oil refinery and hydroelectric projects, according to the Dawn newspaper. Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) officials who attended the meeting said that US$245m would be invested in the cement plant project. Altogether the investments total nearly US$10bn and are part of the on-going China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative.
Arif Habib Group to expand production at Power Cement plant
19 January 2017Pakistan: Arif Habib Group plans to spend US$235m on upgrading its Power Cement plant in Nooriabad to 3.37Mt/yr from 0.9Mt/yr. The upgrade will be completed by the end of 2019, according to the Express Tribune newspaper. Company chairman Nasim Beg said that he was hoping to take advantage of growing cement demand in the country as the effects of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor heighten.
Power Cement has also completed a US$3.4m upgrade to its filter bag house equipment by installing new equipment to reduce dust emissions. Company officials say the plant is now capable of reducing dust emissions to just 17mg/m3. This is below the 300mg/m3 level set by the Environment Quality Standards in Pakistan and the World Bank’s limit of 100mg/m3 for old cement plants.
FLSmidth receives plant order from Maple Leaf Cement
17 January 2017Pakistan: Maple Leaf Cement has ordered a 7300t/day cement production line from FLSmidth. The plant will be located in Iskanderabad in the Mianwali District. The order has been placed at above Euro75m and it will be completed by the end of 2018.
The order will include an ATOX 52.5 vertical mill for raw grinding, an ATOX 27.5 vertical mill for coal grinding, an EV 200x300 Hammer Impact Crusher, stacker and reclaimer systems for storage, a ROTAX-2 rotary kiln with low NOx ILC calciner, a FLSmidth Cross-Bar cooler, a JETFLEX burner and two OK 39-4 vertical mills for cement grinding.
"This is the latest project to underline FLSmidth's strength as the leading supplier of the most productive and energy-efficient equipment and technology - and our position as the preferred supplier of complete production lines to the Pakistani cement industry," said FLSmidth’s Group Executive Vice President, Cement Division, Per Mejnert Kristensen.
Pakistan powers forward
11 January 2017The All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) struck a triumphant note this week as it announced that its industry has over 26Mt/yr of capacity upgrades in the pipeline. Its chairman Sayeed Saigol concluded in a press release that the country’s growth trend required ‘massive’ investment and that its producers were working on it.
Graph 1 – Local and export cement despatches in Pakistan, 2008 – 2016. Data source: APCMA.
Graph 1 shows how the local industry has changed since 2009. At this time exports hit a high of over 11Mt, constituting 34% of all cement despatches at the time. Since then though exports have fallen to below 6Mt or 14% of despatches, as local despatches have started to increase. Although local despatches have risen each year, the growth rate was below 1% in 2011. In 2016 it was over 14%.
Much has changed since 2010. At this time production capacity hit a high of 45Mt/yr in the 2009 – 2010 Pakistan financial year, according to APCMA data, but then utilisation sunk to below 73%, its lowest rate in over a decade. Pakistan’s cement producers sought a way out by exporting their cement. Export volumes subsequently exploded to a high of nearly 11Mt in 2008 – 2009 from next to nothing at the turn of the millennium.
The effects of this had particular repercussions in eastern and southern Africa as local producers suffered against seaborne imports. In 2012 the outgoing chief of South Africa’s PPC summarised the problem by saying that imports were not a threat to African expansion, provided that a cement plant was not built within 200km of a port. Rightly or wrongly cement from Pakistan was vilified by the African press and then legislated against. South Africa even implementing anti-dumping duties to howls of derision from Pakistan.
Funnily enough though the APCMA has recommended that Pakistan’s government do exactly the same thing against imports of cement from Iran. Industry scare stories about Iranian cement being sold illegally in Pakistan have circulated since at least 2012. Iran’s nuclear deal in 2015 must have worried the local industry, as the prize for Iran was the lifting of international sanctions making it easier for one of the world’s largest cement producers to start exporting its product. However, president-elect Trump’s disdain for the Iran deal may put those worries to rest if the deal is ‘cancelled’.
Back to the present, the Pakistan cement industry appears to be booming. One motor is the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of infrastructure projects worth US$54bn. There is some disagreement at this point about how the usage levels of cement breakdown, with the chief executive of Thatta Cement placing it at 60% for infrastructure and 40% for housing but with other commentators placing it at 70% for housing and 30% for infrastructure. If the latter is true then Pakistan’s cement producers may receive an even bigger payday. The emphasis on housing shouldn’t be underestimated though as the country’s production capacity per capita, below 200kg/capita, is low by international standards. Either way, things are looking good for the local producers.
Pakistan cement sales to grow by 28Mt by 2020 says association
09 January 2017Pakistan: The All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association expects local cement sales to grow by 26 – 28Mt by 2020. It made the forecast as part of a six- month review of the industry. Chairman Sayeed Saigol said that local sales grew by 8.6% year-on-year to 19.8Mt in the first half of the country’s financial year to 30 June 2017 from 18.2Mt in the same period in the previous period. Based on current growth trends he added that the industry would need to increase its production capacity. To this end it is increasing capacity to 72.3Mt/yr from the current capacity of 46Mt/yr.
Despite the anticipated growth in cement sales Saigol defended import duties to the countries on the grounds that the government benefits from taxation of the local industry. He has also urged the government to support the industry by placing an anti-dumping duty on Iranian cement. Exports of cement fell by 3.5% year-on-year to 2.91Mt from 3.02Mt with a particular fall in exports to Afghanistan.
Lucky Cement says all of its cement plants are operational
05 January 2017Pakistan: Lucky Cement says that all of cement plants in Pakistan are operating as normal. The plants are not facing any unscheduled shutdown and sales and cement dispatches are progressing as per the company’s regular routine.
The cement producer made its comments in response to a news story in the Nation newspaper alleging that a district authority had shut down Lucky Cement’s Pezu plant near Darru Pezu in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in early January 2017 due to breaches of environmental regulations.
Amendment: This story was amended following comment from Lucky Cement.