Displaying items by tag: Plant
Eurocement installing gas power plant at Kavkazcement plant
03 October 2018Russia: Eurocement is installing a 24MW captive natural gas power plant at its Kavkazcement plant in Chelyabinsk. The equipment was purchased from Finland’s Wärtsilä for the Euro15.5m project. Construction of the buildings to house the power plant is expected to be completed in November 2018.
The project is a part of an energy efficiency program that Mikhail Skorokhod, the president of Eurocement, signed with Rashid Temrezov, the head of the Karachay-Cherkess Federal Region, as part of the Russian Investment Forum, in 2018.
At present Eurocement has a power generation capacity of 150MW. It has built captive power plants at its Mordovcement, Sengileevskiy, Peterburgcement and Nevyansk cement plants. Upon the completion of the latest program the company is targeting a power capacty of over 400MW.
Russia: HeidelbergCement Russia has held an opening ceremony for a new despatch system at its Slantsev ‘Cesla’ plant in the Leningrad region. Mihail Polendakov, General Director of HeidelbergCement in Russia, Anton Hadjiiski, General Director of the plant, Mikhail Moskvin, Deputy Chairman of the Leningrad Region Government for Construction, and Deputy Prime Minister Leningrad Region - Chairman of the Committee for Economic Development and Investment Activities Dmitry Yalov attended the opening.
Following the upgrade the plant now uses an automated loading system for its trucks. The investment for the project was around Euro13m. The unit has a cement production capacity of 0.8Mt/yr.
Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies pilot plant to start commercial production in 2019
03 October 2018France: Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies’ pilot plant at Bournezeau, Vendée is set to start commercial production of low-carbon cement products in January 2019. Construction of the 50,000t/yr unit is due to be completed in October 2018 with its inauguration scheduled for late November 2018, according to Batiactu. The plant will employ 10 workers initially and this will rise to 15 – 20 as production ramps up.
The producer intends to make cement products using metakaolin and blast-furnace slag. If the pilot plant is a success it then intends to raise funds to build a 0.5Mt/yr plant.
GI Ciment doubles production capacity to 1.4Mt/yr
03 October 2018Guinea: La Société Guinée Industries (GI) Ciment has doubled the production capacity of its plant at Kagbélen near Dubréka to 1.4Mt/yr. The upgrade is intended to support cement consumption in the country, according to Mosaique Guinee. The work has originally scheduled for completion in July 2018. The capacity boost has increased the unit’s workforce by 17% to 450 direct employees and over 1500 indirect jobs.
Guinée has four cement plants, including grinding plants, operated by Cemenco, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement, in Conakry and Ciments de l’Afrique (CIMAF) in Dubréka. LafargeHolcim Guinée also runs a unit locally. GI Ciment says it operates the largest plant in the country.
Tanzania: Energy minister Medard Kalemani has inaugurated a new natural gas connection project to Dangote Cement’s plant at Mtwara. The project is being implemented to two phases with a new power plant planned that will generate up to 45MW, according to the Tanzanian Guardian newspaper. The upgrade will cost around US$875,000. Phase two of the project will see the construction of a 2.7km pipeline to the cement plant as well as supporting infrastructure. This is expected to be completed by the end of October 2018. Using natural gas is expected to significantly reduce the running costs of making the cement, which has been using diesel generators.
China: Lubao Cement has ordered three vertical roller mills from Germany’s Loesche for a new 4500t/day plant that is being built at Bei Liu in Guang Xi. The project is being handled by Sinoma (Suzhou) Construction, part of Sinoma International Engineering and China National Building Material Group (CNBM) in turn.
Loesche is supplying three mills for the project, one each for raw material, coal and clinker/slag. One four-roller mill with a capacity of 450t/hr will be used for grinding cement raw material to a fineness of 12% with a sieving residue of R 80μm. Another mill with a throughput of 200t/hr will be used for the subsequent grinding of cement clinker to a fineness of 3400 - 3600 Blaine. A large three-roller mill with a capacity of 42t/hr will be used for grinding fuel coal to a fineness of 2% and a sieving residue of R 80μm.
No value for the order has been disclosed.
Cementos Portland Valderrivas’ Alcalá de Guadaíra plant updates environmental standard
28 September 2018Spain: Cementos Portland Valderrivas’ (CPV) Alcalá de Guadaíra plant near Seville has updated its environmental standard. It uses an integrated environmental management system, based on the UNE-EN ISO 14001: 2015 standard and the European regulation on eco-management and eco-auditing (EMAS) CE No. 1221/2009, modified according to regulation (EU) 2017 / 1505. The plant has been certified since 2004 but this was updated to the new version of the standard in mid-2018.
The plant also uses a health and safety management system certified since 2009 according to 18.001: 2007 OHSAS. The unit reported that it had no accidents to the end of August 2018.
FLSmidth moves ahead with cement plant contracts in Central America
27 September 2018Central America: Denmark’s FLSmidth says it is moving ahead with two contracts for cement plants worth over Euro250m following the receipt of the agreed downpayment. One contract is for a new cement plant and the other is for an extension to an existing plant.
The cement plant engineering company has not released many details on the projects. However, both plans will be located in Central America and will supply cement mainly to their local markets. The expected commissioning is within 24 to 36 months and once operational, the cement plants will have a capacity of 2000t/day and 3500t/day respectively.
Minimising risk in the UK cement industry
26 September 2018More positive news emerged from the UK cement industry this week with the news that Cemex is planning to restart the second kiln at its South Ferriby plant later in 2018. This marks the full recovery of the plant after a disastrous flood in late 2013 and it is an all round good news story. Around the same time the local government in Scotland approved the planning application for an upgrade to Tarmac’s Dunbar cement plant. That project involves installing a new cement grinding mill, a new cement storage silo and a rail loading facility.
Graph 1: Domestic cement, imported cement and other cementitious sales in the UK, 2001 - 2017. Source: Mineral Products Association.
The timing is interesting given the general uncertainty in the UK economy ahead of the UK exit from the European Union (EU). However, data from the Mineral Products Association (MPA) shows that total cementitious material sales (cement plus products made from fly ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS)) reached 15.3Mt in 2017 from a low of 10.3Mt in 2009 following the financial crash. This isn’t as high as the 15.8Mt figures recorded in 2007 but it does mark a recovery. This masks to an extent the change in the market since 2007. Cement sales in 2017 at 10.2Mt were still below a high of 11.9Mt in 2008. The recovery has been driven by higher imports, 1.9Mt in 2017, and higher use of fly ash and GGBS products, which reached 3.2Mt in 2017.
Cemex and Tarmac are not alone in announcing projects. HeidelbergCement’s local subsidiary Hanson is upgrading its Padeswood plant with a new Euro22m mill. Irish slag cement grinding company Ecocem opened its import terminal at Sheerness in mid-2017 and French grinding firm, Cem'In'Eu, has also expressed interest in building a plant, in this case in London.
As discussed earlier in the year, new upgrade projects in the UK appear to carry an element of risk given the unknown status of its departure from the EU. Supply chains may be affected, companies are delaying investment and the value of Pound Sterling is falling. The collapse of construction services company Carillion also had a knock-on effect in the industry and, with major work on the Crossrail infrastructure project finishing, the industry has no major infrastructure projects in support. A quarterly graph of UK construction industry output volume by Arcadis shows almost uniform growth since mid-2012 although this started to flatten in 2017. A badly-handled Brexit (UK exit from the EU) could undo this growth.
All of this presents a picture of risk-adverse capital projects in the UK. The MPA figures help to explain the focus on grinding at Padeswood and Dunbar. The market has changed since 2007, with a growing focus on imports and secondary cementitious materials. Hence spending money on equipment to process these inputs makes sense. The decision to increase production at South Ferriby meanwhile depends on reviving existing equipment. Regional cement sales figures to 2016 from the MPA appear to indicate static demand in counties close to the plant (Yorkshire and Humberside) but sales have increased in the East Midlands and the East of England.
Just compare the current UK approach to the situation in Egypt. This week the head of the cement division of the Chamber of Building Materials described the decision to build the Beni Suef cement plant to local media as “not based on precise information” and that it had harmed local production. In case you had forgotten, that plant is one of the biggest in the world with six lines. The commentator may well have been representing smaller local producers but opening a 12Mt/yr plant in Egypt in these turbulent economic times marks a different approach to risk than the modest plant upgrades in the UK. Let’s wait and see who has the best approach.
PSK to build cement plant in Tambov region
20 September 2018Russia: Pervaya Stroitelnaya Kompaniya (PSK) plans to build a 1.2Mt/yr cement plant in the Petrovsky district of the Tambov region. The project has an investment of Euro126m, according to the Kommersant newspaper. The unit will use the Borisovsky deposit for its raw materials. PSK previously purchased the licence to develop the mine from Tambov-Cement company. The project is scheduled to be built from 2019 to 2025 in several stages.