Displaying items by tag: US

US: Martin Marietta Materials has appointed James AJ Nickolas as its new chief financial officer (CFO) with effect from mid-August 2017. He will also become a Senior Vice President and will report to C Howard Nye, chairman, president and chief executive officer (CEO). He replaces Anne H Lloyd who is set to retire in September 2017.

Nickolas, aged 46 years, joins Martin Marietta from Caterpillar where he currently serves as the head of Corporate Development. Previously, as Group Chief Financial Officer of Caterpillar’s Resources Industries segment, he was responsible for financial planning and reporting, internal controls, compliance and M&A activity. Before joining Caterpillar in 2008, Nickolas was Executive Director at JP Morgan Securities where he worked on originating and executing debt and equity capital raising and mergers and acquisitions. He began his professional career as a Certified Public Accountant at Coopers & Lybrand where he was a senior tax associate. He holds a BS degree in Accounting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and both an MBA in Finance and a JD degree from the University of Chicago.

Lloyd, aged 56 years, joined Martin Marietta in 1998 as Vice President and Controller. She was named Chief Accounting Officer in 1999 and was promoted to CFO in 2005. She was named Executive Vice President in 2009. As CFO, she has led the financial areas of Martin Marietta, including financial reporting, accounting, internal audit, investor relations, tax and treasury.

US: Two CalPortland cement plants have earned the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Energy Star certification for 2017. The Rillito plant in Arizona has achieved certification for the sixth time and the Oro Grande plant in California has earned its first certification since recently being acquired by CalPortland in 2015.

“CalPortland is proud to accept EPA’s Energy Star certification in recognition of our energy efficiency efforts,” said Allen Hamblen, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of CalPortland. “CalPortland takes great pride in our partnership with Energy Star which is proven through the dedication of our employees who are proud to participate in programs that improve our energy efficiency, reduce emissions and contribute to protecting our environment.”

US: Four Cemex USA cement plants have achieved the US Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star certification for 2017. The Clinchfield plant in Georgia has achieved certification for the 11th consecutive year, the Miami plant in Florida for the 7th consecutive year, the Victorville plant in California for the 6th consecutive year and the Brooksville plant in Florida for the 5th time.

"These plants follow initiatives each day to ensure they operate with sustainability in mind and lead the way in our industry. They serve as models for others to follow with their repeated recognition for their efforts. We are very proud of the work they've done to achieve Energy Star certification this year by maintaining these high standards," said Hugo Bolio, Executive Vice President, Cement Operations and Technology for Cemex USA.

US: Three Mondi Industrial Bags plants in North America have won awards for plant safety from the Paper Shipping Sack Manufacturers’ Association (PSSMA). The winning plants were Louisville in Kentucky, Arcadia in Louisiana and Salt Lake City in Utah. The Arcadia and Louisiana plants also achieved zero incidents rates in 2016. The awards were presented at the organisation’s seminar in Vancouver, Washington in April 2017.

US: Rockwell Automation has elected Patricia Watson to its board of directors with effect from 1 July 2017. Watson is senior executive vice president and chief information officer at Total System Services (TSYS), a leading global payments provider, responsible for setting the company’s enterprise technology strategy to enable future global growth.

Watson joined TSYS with 17 years of financial services industry experience and has served in a variety of technology-related roles. These positions include vice president and global chief information officer for the Brinks Company and senior technology executive for Bank of America’s treasury, payments and credit functions. She currently serves as a board director for Texas Capital Bancshares.

Watson holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from St Mary’s College at Notre Dame, and an MBA from the University of Dayton. She also served in the United States Air Force for 10 years as executive staff officer, flight commander and director of operations. She served as a member of the Texas Governor’s Committee for People with Disabilities, and as a member of Lime Connect, a premier resource for placing people with disabilities.

US: HarbisonWalker International has broken ground on its new monolithic refractory plant at the Point Industrial Park in South Point, Lawrence County, Ohio. The US$30m plant was first announced in February 2017 and will be operational by early 2018. It will have a production capacity of 80,000t/yr.

US: Two Cemex USA terminals in California have achieved the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Energy Star Challenge for Industry status by reducing their energy consumption by more than 10% each. The San Diego terminal achieved a 12.2% reduction in 2016, compared to the prior year. The La Mirada terminal achieved a 23.2% reduction year-on-year. The Energy Star Challenge for Industry is a national call-to-action to improve energy efficiency by 10% within five years.

The La Mirada and San Diego terminals reduced their energy consumption by completing projects and executing strategies to improve their onsite energy intensity. Workers were educated on energy-management practices and procedures for the proper operation of plant equipment. Out-dated light bulbs at the terminals were replaced with more energy-efficient LED lighting. The process of enhancing lighting at the terminals continues in 2017, and workers at the terminals are focused on looking for more ways to save energy in the future. Cemex also plans to roll out programme to all of its logistics operations.

Ed Sullivan, the Portland Cement Association’s (PCA) chief economist was in tub-thumbing mood last week at the IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Conference in Calgary, Canada. The headline figures that the PCA put out in a press release was a forecast of a 3.5% rise in cement consumption in 2018 and 2019. Yet behind this in a stirring speech given to a cement industry crowd craving growth was a tale of riches ahead. The audience lapped it up. There was only one problem: nothing has really happened yet to make any if this happen. It always seems to be riches ahead. As Sullivan freely put it, “Trump policies will impact cement… But we don’t know what they are!”

Sullivan broke down his forecast into three sections that hinged around President Trump’s desired policy changes kicking in from about the third quarter of 2019. At this point, owing to lack of information about what the Trump administration actually wants to do, Sullivan freely broke open the assumptions. These covered issues such as a tax reform, infrastructure budgeting, immigration reforms and more. As he explained it all of these issues interact, so that reducing taxes potentially pushes national debt up making infrastructure spending harder. Owing to the lack of specifics from the current administration though Sullivan was forced to resort to the more solid plans of Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and even Bernie Saunders for nuggets of information of how ‘a government’ might act. For example, he used a breakdown of Saunders’s intended infrastructure spend to try and predict how Trump’s policies could play out. Increases in highway building from the overall infrastructure spend in this context being good news for the cement industry. And as for Sullivan’s view on the impact of the Trump border wall: ‘overrated’.

The new forecasts for 2018 and 2019 appear to be retrenchment given that the PCA was predicting growth of 4% for 2016 in the middle of that year. It subsequently reduced its estimate to 2.7% for 2016 by December 2016 after the presidential election. However its figures for 2017 and 2018 have increased since the December forecast. Sullivan predicted that growth will start to surpass 5% in 2020 once Trump’s policies have time to make waves. The crescendo of his presentation at the IEEE-IAS/PCA was a prognostication of an extra requirement of 14Mt of cement in 2021 and 2022. Sullivan topped this off by saying that, “We have the supply infrastructure in place right now.” However, some delegates informally questioned afterwards where that cement might actually come from with mass international clinker capacity waiting in the wings from places like Vietnam and new cement plants such as the McInnis Cement plant in Quebec expressively targeted at the US import market about to come on line.

Sullivan has a tricky job trying to predict what will happen next in the US cement industry and sometimes his forecasts seems to change as much as the weather that cement company financial reports often blame their poor returns on. This column knows a little bit how he feels. As Sullivan’s biography points out he’s been cited by the Chicago Federal Reserve as the most accurate forecaster regarding economic growth among 30 top economists. In short he’s the best we’ve got. But Donald Trump’s approach to government so far has made his job exponentially harder. As we’ve said more than a few times when describing the US cement market, the basis are there for growth but something is holding back faster growth. Will Trump be the catalyst to break the 5% growth barrier? Looks like we’ll have to wait until late 2019 to find out.

Elsewhere, the conference brought together a large cross-section of the North American industry. Surprisingly perhaps given the change in leadership at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) several parts of the speaker and discussion programme focused on coping with National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), carbon tax schemes in Canada and California and practical carbon capture methods at the plant level. The key here seemed to be a piecemeal approach that may not necessarily be at odds with less government environmental legislation. Next year’s outing in Nashville, Tennessee looks set to be an even more important event, especially if more on Trump's infrastructure plans become known.

Brazil: Votorantim’s net revenue from its cement business fell by 14% year-on-year to US$731m in first quarter of 2017 from US$848m in the same period in 2016. The cement and steel producer blamed the continuing decline on an 8% drop in cement consumption which triggered lower sales volumes and prices. Negative currency exchange effects also contributed to the situation as the country continued to suffer from the on going political crisis and the resulting negative effects on the local economy. The company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for its cement division decreased by 49% to US$60.9m from US$119m.

Outside of Brazil the group started up a 1.2Mt/yr expansion project in Turkey in April 2017. In North America its good performance driven by strong demand and cost optimisation helped to offset the group’s overall performance. In China the group sold ‘non-core’ assets worth Euro30m in May 2017.

US: Eagle Materials’ sales revenue rose by 6% year-on-year to US$1.21bn in its financial year to 31 March 2017 from US$1.14bn in the same period in 2016. The building materials producer completed its acquisition of Cemex’s Fairborn cement plant in Ohio with associated assets in February 2017 and this contributed to its cash flow in the period. Its cement sales volumes rose by 2% to 4.87Mt from 4.78Mt.