Displaying items by tag: Plant
Planning department approves upgrade to Tarmac Dunbar cement plant
19 September 2018UK: The planning department of East Lothian Council in Scotland has granted planning permission to an upgrade of Tarmac’s Dunbar cement plant. The work will include building a new cement grinding mill, a new cement storage silo and a rail loading facility. The work will also include a shed, belt conveyors pneumatic pipelines and associated works.
In its supporting statement the company said that the new cement mill was necessary to produce new grades of cement required for modern construction and the cement market. The proposed mill will replace two existing mills on the site and is intended to be more energy efficient and quieter than the existing mills. It added that the plant would benefits from rail sidings on both the south and north side of the East Coast Mainline railway line. At present trains are fed only on the south side using adjacent silos where train capacity is already fully used. Additional products are exported by road.
Ssangyong Cement launches world’s largest waste heat recovery unit at a cement plant
19 September 2018South Korea: Ssangyong Cement has launched what it says is the world’s largest waste heat recovery unit at its Donghae plant in Gangwon. The 43.5MWh unit had a budget of US$889m and was originally planned to 2016, according to the
Maeil Business Newspaper. 11 boilers plus turbines and cooling towers have been installed on six cement kilns at the site. The new system will also work in conjunction with an energy storage system (ESS) that was installed in April 2017.
San Miguel Northern Cement order two mills from Loesche
18 September 2018Philippines: San Miguel Northern Cement has ordered two mills from Germany’s Loesche for a new 5000t/day production line at its Sison plant in Pangasinan. The scope of supply includes two complete grinding plants: a type LM 56.4 mill for cement raw material and a type LM 35.3 D for sub-bituminous coal.
Loesche will supply a majority of the electro-technical components for the line and the automation systems including its LM Master product. It will be responsible for the plant engineering and the supply of filters and blowers. The new line will use also A-Tec’s Hurriclon technology for de-dusting the raw mills.
Delivery of the order is scheduled for the start of 2019.
Kyrgyzstan: Member of parliament Karamat Orozova has proposed setting up a commission to examine building a new cement plant in the Batken region. She has proposed allocating land and loans for local businesses to build a new unit, according to the Central Asia News Service. The politician has criticised the decision to place the South-Kyrgyz Cement (SKC) plant in the Osh region of the country given the neighbouring problems in Batken. The 1Mt/yr SKC plant was built in 2010 with Italcementi.
Spain: FYM-HeidelbergCement has reached a record two years without an accident at its Malaga cement plant. The milestone also includes no accidents for subcontractors working at the site. The company has operated a ‘Zero Accident’ program since 2000 that has focused on improving the safety culture for all staff.
Buzzi bags a Brazilian bargain… and beyond
12 September 2018The Federación Interamericana del Cemento (FICEM) held its 2018 technical congress in Panama City last week and was attended by Global Cement. We’ll run a full write-up of the event in the October 2018 issue of Global Cement Magazine. The short version is that the conference was technically good but, from our perspective, it could have done with more regional analysis. Given that the event is for the local industry this is not a big issue as most of the delegates will know their own markets inside out and many were happy to discuss just this when asked. Likewise, FICEM’s in-house publication also included plenty of local data.
The nearest the presentations came to this was a global overview of the cement industry by Arnaud Pinatel of On Field Investment Research ahead of a market report the analysts are about to release. Although it covered the global cement industry the key local news was that the Latin American sector’s production capacity had grown by 3% from 2010 to 2018 but that prices had fallen in this time. The forecast suggested that cement sales volumes were expected to grow by 3% in 2019 - supported by Brazil, Peru and Bolivia - but that prices were also expected to fall by 1%, mainly due to issues in Argentina.
That last point is especially interesting over the last week because the Argentine cement body, the Asociación de Fabricantes de Cemento Portland (AFCP), released its figures last week to reveal that cement despatches rose by 4.2% year-on-year for the first eight months of 2018. However, at the same time the general news broke that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was providing an emergency loan to support the country’s economy. The government was keen to shore up confidence in the economy and attributed the growth in the cement sector to the ‘most ambitious infrastructure plan in history.’
Only last year in 2017 the industry was riding a construction boom with cement shortages, new production capacity announced and the initial public offering of Loma Negra. Bailouts from the IMF don’t fit this picture of the poster boy for the South American construction industry. And, if a financial correction is pending, the new capacity that has been ordered may arrive at a bad time. This is a pretty worrying situation.
Meanwhile, across the Uruguay River into Brazil something long expected and hopefully more encouraging has occurred: the acquisition of cement plants. Italy’s Buzzi Unicem revealed that it had struck a deal to buy a 50% stake in the Brazilian company BCPAR from Grupo Ricardo Brennand for Euro150m. The arrangements cover two integrated plants: one 2.4Mt/yr unit at Sete Lagoas in Minas Gerais and a 1.7Mt/yr unit at Pitimbu in Paraíba. Buzzi has also added an option to buy the other half of the business until 2025.
It’s hard to place a value on the sale, but it looks as if Buzzi has picked up the capacity for just under US$100/t, subject to future variation on how well the company does. At that price though this a low figure and a bargain for Buzzi. Given the pain the Brazilian cement industry had been through in recent years some form of traction is welcome. Unfortunately, Grupo Ricardo Brennand has surely lost money on the deal given that the two plants were commissioned in 2011 and 2015 respectively. The complexity of the financial arrangements suggest that Ricardo Brennand is fighting to stay in the game if and when the recovery comes. If Buzzi has moved in then this suggests that it thinks it will make their money back and that it reckons that the bottom of the construction industry trough has been reached. A Brazilian take on this situation would be fascinating.
With these kinds of events happening the same week as the FICEM technical congress it really shows how vibrant and varied the region’s cement industry is. Next year’s conference will surely be even more interesting as market events in Brazil, Argentina and other countries develop.
Helwan Cement to sell white cement plant to Emmar Industries
12 September 2018Egypt: Helwan Cement has agreed to sell its white cement plant in Minya Governorate to Emmar Industries. The transaction is planned to take place following the de-merger of the white cement unit from the rest of the company. The subsidiary of HeidelbergCement and Suez Cement said that the sale was part of its plan to restructure the business and improve its financial position. The company previously said it had received bid for the white cement plant in June 2018.
Japan: Taiheiyo Cement says that an earthquake that took place in early September 2018 in Hokkaido has had a limited effect upon its business. No injuries to employees were reported. Cement production at its Kamiiso plant is continuing using in-house power generation although the unit is working on saving energy. The 6.7 magnitude earthquake has caused widespread disruption on the island, including knocking out local power generation.
Gabon: Morocco’s Ciments de l’Afrique (CIMAF) says it plans to start a new production line at its Cimgabon integrated plant by November 2018. The measure has been announced to meet a sudden surge in demand, according to the L’union newspaper. Cement prices have reportedly nearly doubled in the high construction season.
The cement producer first announced the new clinker production line in mid-2017. It will increase the plant’s production capacity to 0.85Mt/yr from 0.5Mt/yr at present. In addition the company has launched a Euro10m project for an admixture unit for completion by mid-2019.
BUA announces plant for Ebonyi State
06 September 2018Nigeria: BUA Group has announced that it will commence core drilling in Ebonyi State, prior to establishing a greenfield cement plant there. Speaking in the state capital Abakalik on 5 September 2018, BUA’s Managing Director Kabiru Rabiu said that he was surprised there was no cement plant already in the state, despite there being enormous limestone deposits. Ibeto Cement is in the process of setting up two integrated cement plants in the state.
"We are here because the state is blessed,” said Rabiu. “It has a huge deposit of limestone that is very high in quality. The state also has coal, which is necessary for cement production. The state is strategically located; it is close to Enugu, close to Cross River State and close to the Middle Belt.”