Displaying items by tag: Plant
Azerbaijan: Holcim Azerbaijan, part of Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim, has launched its participation in the Azerbaijan Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources’ National Green Marathon with the planting of 1000 trees at its Garadagh cement plant. Turan Information Agency News has reported that the initiative aims to plant 1 million trees nationally in 2021.
Technical director Ali Huseynov said, "We have a common goal and value - sustainable development. We should apply principles of sustainability in each work and in every step. We are ready to demonstrate our best practices in environmental protection.” He added, “Our work is not over. We should also care for these trees and install an irrigation system. For this purpose, the work necessary for treatment and use of the wastewater in the irrigation system has started, and with this we can save clean water, contributing to the environmental protection."
Poland: Lafarge Poland, part of Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim, has begun the demolition of part of its 2.0Mt/yr Małogoszcz cement plant in Świętokrzyskie voivodeship. The work proceeded with the company taking down one of the plant’s 120m-high chimneys.
Industrial director Stanislaw Sobczyk said that the new Małogoszcz cement plant would “rise like a Phoenix from the ashes” of the old. The plant’s two chimneys were a local landmark and appeared on the logo of the former Małogoszcz Cement Company.
Update on China: March 2021
31 March 2021Financial results for 2020 from the major Chinese cement companies are now out, making it time for a recap. Firstly, information from the China Cement Association (CCA) is worth looking at. The country had a cement production capacity of 1.83Bnt/yr in 2020. For an idea of the current pace of industry growth, 26 new integrated production lines were built in 2020 with a clinker production capacity of just under 40Mt/yr.
This is as one might expect from the world’s biggest cement market. However, the CCA also revealed that the country has over 3400 domestic cement companies, of which two thirds are independent cement grinding companies. Most of these were reportedly created during the late 2000s as dry kilns started to predominate. The CCA is concerned with the quality of the cement some of these companies produce and the lack of order in this part of the market such as regional imbalances. This suggests that the government’s attempts to consolidate the cement industry as a whole had led to the independent companies heading down the supply chain. It also raises the possibility that the government-led consolidation drive may move to grinding next. One news story to remember here is that in February 2021 the CCA called for its industry to respect competition laws following a government investigation. Later in the month it emerged that eight cement companies in Shandong Province had been fined US$35m for price fixing in a sophisticated cartel whereby the perpetrators went as far arranging a formal price management committee to regulate the market.
The CCA described 2020 as a year of sudden decline, rapid recovery and stability. Coronavirus hit cement output in the first quarter of 2020 leading to unprecedented monthly year-on-year declines before it bounced right back in a classic ‘V’ shaped recovery pattern. Despite the pandemic and bad weather later in the year, annual output rose by 2% year-on-year to 2.37Bnt in 2020 from 2.32Bnt in 2019. This has carried on into 2021 with a 61% increase in January and February 2021 to 241Mt from 150Mt in the same period in 2020. That’s not surprising given that China was suffering from the pandemic in these months in 2020 but the growth also suggests that the industry may have gone past stability and is growing beyond simply compensating for lost ground.
Graph 1: Year-on-year change in cement output in China, January 2010 - February 2021. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China. Note that accumulated data is issued for January and February each year so these months show a mean figure.
Chart 2: Annual cement production growth by Province in 2020. Source: China Cement Association.
Chart 2 above shows cement production in 2020 from a provincial perspective. Note the sharp decline, more than 10% year-on-year, in Hubei Province (shown in dark green). Its capital Wuhan is where the first documented outbreak of coronavirus took place followed by a severe lockdown. Zooming further out, China’s clinker imports grew by 47% year-on-year to 33.4Mt in 2020. This is the third consecutive year of import growth, according to the CCA. The leading sources were Vietnam (59%), Indonesia (10%), Thailand (10%) and Japan (8%). China has become the main export destination for South East Asian cement producers and Chinese imports are expected to continue growing in 2021.
Graph 2: Revenue of large Chinese cement producers in 2020 and 2019. Source: Company reports.
Moving to the financial figures from the larger Chinese cement producers, CNBM and Anhui Conch remain the world’s two largest cement producing companies by revenue, beating multinational peers such as CRH, LafargeHolcim and HeidelbergCement. Anhui Conch appeared to be one of the winners in 2020 and Huaxin Cement appeared to be one of the losers. This is misleading from a cement perspective because Anhui Conch’s increased revenue actually arose from its businesses selling materials other than clinker and cement products. Its cement sales and cement trading revenue remained stable. On the other hand, Huaxin Cement was based, as it describes, in the epicentre of the epidemic and it then had to contend with flooding along the Yangtze River later in the year. Under these conditions, it is unsurprising that its revenue fell.
CNBM’s cement sales revenue fell by 3% year-on-year to US$19.5bn in 2020 with sales from its new materials and engineering compensating. Anhui Conch noted falling product prices in 2020 to varying degrees in most of the different regions of China except for the south. CNBM broadly agreed with this assessment in its financial results. Anhui Conch also reported that its export sales volumes and revenue fell by 51% and 45% year-on-year respectively due to the effects of coronavirus in overseas markets. The last point is interesting given that China increasingly appears in lists of major cement and clinker exporters to different countries. This seems to be more through the sheer size of the domestic sector rather than any concerted efforts at targeting exports.
One major story on CNBM over the last 15 months has been its drive to further consolidate its subsidiaries. In early March 2021 it said it was intending to increase its stake in Tianshan Cement to 88% from 46% and other related transactions. This followed the announcement of restructuring plans in mid-2020 whereby subsidiary Tianshan Cement would take control of China United Cement, North Cement, Sinoma Cement, South Cement, Southwest Cement and CNBM Investment. The move was expected to significantly increase operational efficiency of its constituent cement companies as they would be able to start acting in a more coordinated manner and address ‘fundamental’ issues with production overcapacity nationally.
In summary, the Chinese cement market appears to have more than compensated for the shocks it faced in 2020 with growth in January and February 2021 surpassing the depression in early 2020. Market consolidation is continuing, notably with CNBM’s efforts to better control the world’s largest cement producing company. Alongside this the CCA may be starting to suggest that rationalisation efforts previously focused on integrated plants should perhaps be now looking at the more independent grinding sector. The government continues to tighten regulations on new production capacity and is in the process of introducing new rules increasing the ratio of old lines that have to be shut down before new ones can be built. Finally, China introduced its interim national emissions trading scheme in February 2021, which has large implications for the cement sector in the future, even if the current price lags well behind Europe at present.
Prism Johnson commissions waste heat recovery plant and solar power plant at Prism cement plant
31 March 2021India: Prism Cement has established a 12MW waste heat recovery (WHR) plant and 10MW solar power plant at its 6.1Mt/yr-capacity integrated Prism cement plant in Satna, Madhya Pradesh. The plant’s total WHR capacity now totals 22MW, with a total of 23MW solar power capacity. The measures are part of the producer’s sustainability initiatives, by which it aims to reduce its reliance on non-renewables.
France: Hoffmann Green Cement’s consolidated net revenue fell by 19% year-on-year to Euro504,000 in 2020 from Euro620,000 in 2019. Net loss was Euro6.12m, up by 41% from Euro4.34m. Loss in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) more than doubled to Euro4.13m from Euro1.85m. During the year, the group began construction of its second cement plant, in Vendée, France.
Co-chairs Julien Blanchard and David Hoffman said, “We are happy with what we achieved at Hoffmann Green in 2020, in spite of the pandemic. We signed numerous technical and commercial collaboration contracts with key players in the construction sector such as Groupe GCC, KP1, Cemex and Eiffage Génie Civil, taking our order book to over 190,000t to date.” They reconfirmed the target of a 3% French cement market share by 2025/2026, adding, “The commercial dynamic continues at the beginning of 2021 with the signing of contracts with Ouest Réalisations for the construction of housing, and EdyCem to develop low carbon footprint concretes.”
Blanchard and Hoffmann called 2020 ‘the year of increasing production volumes,’ adding that the group expects on-going and future environmental legislation in all its regions to bolster demand.
Australia: Calix has reported the completion of a pre-front-end engineering and design (FEED) study of its Leilac-2 carbon capture and storage (CCS) study. Germany-based HeidelbergCement, Mexico-based Cemex and Portugal-based Cimpor assessed the study. The milestone clears the technology for industrial scale implementation at HeidelbergCement’s Hannover integrated cement plant in Germany. The installation aims to capture 100,000t/yr of CO2 at an installation cost of Euro23m (+/-30%). The final investment decision will follow after the completion of FEED in early 2022.
Mohir Cement launches 0.6Mt/yr Khatlon cement plant
29 March 2021Tajikistan: Mohir Cement has commenced operations following an official opening ceremony at its new 0.6Mt/yr integrated cement plant in Jalolidinni-Balkhi district. Local press has reported that the plant will produce M400 and M500 grades of Portland cement for export to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.
Russia: SibCem subsidiary Angarskcement has replaced air ducts with local air blowers in its raw materials and clinker grinding units. The producer made the modification to the units’ three horizontal slurry tanks.
Managing director Dmitry Kireev said, “The programme to reduce the consumption of compressed air in the slurry section of the raw materials and clinker grinding facility will continue.” He added, “It is important for us to reduce the costs of energy resources consumed by slurry basins, since they directly affect the cost of the products manufactured by the plant.”
Spain: The Málaga government has approved adjustments to HeidelbergCement subsidiary FYM’s special plan for its La Araña cement plant. The La Opinión de Málaga newspaper has reported that the plan incorporates the findings of new environmental and landscape studies enabling an enlargement of the area of operations. The approval’s effect will depend on the outcome of an on-going court case by a local interest group against the plan.
India: Dalmia Bharat subsidiary Dalmia Cement has commenced commercial production of cement at the new 2.3Mt/yr production line of its Bengal Cement Works cement plant in Midnapore, West Bengal. The new line brings the plant’s total capacity to 4Mt/yr.
Chief operating officer Ujjwal Batria said, “To ensure that demand is met in a sustainable manner, we have deployed the latest machinery and technology at our Bengal Cement Works unit and will be aiming to produce 100% blended cement. This step is also in line with our commitment to become carbon negative by 2040.” He added, “Post the lockdown-led demand disruption, the cement sector has been continuously witnessing buoyancy across the country. This is largely led by revival in demand from the infrastructure and urban housing sectors, along with the demand from individual homebuilders and the government's rural housing schemes especially from east and central regions. Hence, the onset of commercial production at the Bengal Cement Works unit will enhance our ability to contribute towards nation building and Atmanirbhar Bharat, while also catering to the growing demand from the eastern and north-eastern states of the country.”