Displaying items by tag: Upgrade
Cemex plans US$925m in investments in 2021 - 2023
25 June 2021Mexico: Cemex says that it will invest US$925m in 2021 – 2023 in production capacity expansions and upgrades, as well as in other projects to improve financial margins. Chief executive officer Fernando González said at its Cemex Day 2021 business update that the group is planning a 10Mt/yr cement capacity expansion consisting of an extra 7.5Mt/yr in the Americas, 1.5Mt/yr in the Philippines and 1.0Mt/yr in Europe. It expects a total increase in 2023 full-year profit of US$520m as result of the investments. Around US$425m will be spent on the cement capacity additions and the remainder will go towards projects on urbanisation and its other business lines.
Strategic planning and business development executive vice president José González said “We focus on high-growth metropolitan areas, where our products and solutions nurture the urbanisation needs of these markets. These areas represent around 70% of the population and around 80% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of construction.”
NCL Industries plans Mattapalli cement plant expansion to 3.6Mt/yr and establishment of new grinding plant
24 June 2021India: NCL Industries is planning to expand its 2.7Mt/yr Mattapalli plant in Suryapet district, Telangana, to 3.6Mt/yr capacity at a cost of US$13.5m. The work includes the installation of vertical roller mills to replace the plant’s ball mills. Times of India newspaper has reported that the company says that it will complete the expansion by 2022.
Its plan also involves the establishment of a new 660,000t/yr grinding plant at nearby Anakapalle, at a cost of US$26.9m. The producer will invest a further US$810,000 in setting up three new ready-mix concrete plants in Hyderabad and Vizag, bringing its total number of concrete plants in the state to eight.
Update on Argentina
23 June 2021Two news stories merit a closer look at Argentina this week. Firstly, Loma Negra fired up the kiln on its new 2.7Mt/yr production line at the L’Amalí cement plant in Olavarría. Work on the US$350m started in 2017 but was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Notably, engineers from China-based Sinoma International Engineering, who built the plant, caused a stir when they arrived in Argentina in full personal protective equipment in late 2020 to continue work on the project. Full commissioning of the second line at the plant is scheduled for July or August 2021.
Almost at the same time, the Argentine government announced it had persuaded local building materials producers to stick to reference prices for construction materials, including cement, in order to control inflation. Loma Negra, Cemento Avellaneda and Petroquímica Comodoro Rivadavia (PCR) were said to be on board with the ‘voluntary’ plan. Building materials prices generally were reported to have risen 85% year-on-year in May 2021 compared to a national inflation rate of 49%. The new arrangement is planned to last until the end of 2021 with revisions to the reference prices every two months.
Graph 1: Cement sales in Argentina including imports and exports, 2016 – 2021. Note that the 2021 figure is an estimate. Source: Asociación de Fabricantes de Cemento Portland (AFCP).
Data from the Asociación de Fabricantes de Cemento Portland (AFCP) doesn’t show any obvious signs of disruption from inflation so far in 2021. Cement sales grew by 50.5% year-on-year to 4.55Mt in the five months to May 2021 from 3.02Mt in the same period in 2020. The cement market in Argentina didn’t shut down but it hit a low of 0.41Mt in April 2020 before compensating with a strong second half of the year, most likely due to pent-up demand as the economy reopened following local coronavirus-related lockdowns. At the time of writing the AFCP has forecast that cement sales will reach 11.3Mt in 2021, a slight rise over the 11.1Mt reported in 2019, when the market was more stable. However, cumulative sales to May 2021 are slightly behind similar sales in 2019.
Loma Negra’s upgrade at its L’Amalí plant follows Holcim Argentina’s inauguration of a new 0.5Mt/yr clinker production line at its Malagueño cement plant in Cordoba in May 2021. This project also added a 0.63Mt/yr cement grinding unit at the site as well as a new 120,000 bag/day despatch unit. Altogether it had a price of US$120m. This followed the announcement in late April 2021 that the subsidiary of LafargeHolcim was planning to open 1000 new branches of its Disensa retail chain in the country by 2024.
Loma Negra reported a 13% drop in sales to US$436m in 2020 from US$500m in 2019. However, its adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 3% to US$139m from US$136m. This was partly aided by the sales of its Paraguayan operations during 2020. At face value, Cemento Avellaneda had a tougher time of its in 2020 with its sales down by 22% to Euro111m and EBITDA down by 9% to Euro37m. However, once adjusted on a like-for-like basis with constant currencies and without a hyperinflation adjustment, its sales and earnings actually rose by 22% and 45% respectively.
Holcim Argentina’s director Christian Dedeu was interviewed by national news agency Télam in May 2021 around the time of the upgrade at the Malagueño cement plant was officially completed. When asked by the company had made the investment he said that the country had potential for both the residential and infrastructure sectors. He also pointed out that the subsidiary of Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim had been forced to import clinker at times of high demand previously. The announcements for both the Loma Negra and Holcim Argentina new lines were made at the end of 2017 when the market hit a high in sales volumes. Since then the country has faced rocketing inflation, further delays to it debt repayment programme to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the coronavirus pandemic. Producing more commodities, such as clinker, domestically certainly seems enticing with high inflation and unfavourable foreign currency exchange rates. So, the new production lines from Loma Negra and Holcim Argentina are well timed in this sense unless they get hit by any mounting input costs, from imported raw materials for example. On the other hand the government’s measures to curb inflation such as reference prices for cement may constrain the cement producers’ flexibility. As the local construction industry slowly recovers after 2020, continued uncertainty lies ahead.
Argentina: Loma Negra has ignited its new 2.7Mt/yr kiln line at the L’Amalí cement plant in Olavarría. The Clarín newspaper has reported that the new second line expands the plant’s capacity by 40%. The cost of its construction was US$350m.
Chief executive officer Sergio Faifman called the project’s completion a ‘milestone’ in the company’s history. He said, “I would like to thank everyone who was working on the site: Loma Negra employees, Sinoma and contracting companies. We have had and gone through economic and social difficulties and it is thanks to the efforts of all that we are here today. With effort and commitment, dedication and teamwork, you can go a long way.”
Croatia: Building materials producer Nexe Grupa invested a total of Euro15.3m in upgrades to its plants in 2020. This included subsidiary Našicecement’s capacity expansion at its Našice integrated cement plant. The producer also implemented alternative fuels substitution in the plant’s kiln line.
US: Colombia-based Cementos Argos is planning to export 0.4Mt of cement to the US in 2021. The cement producer’s exports to the country grew by 419% year-on-year to 135,000t in the first five months of 2021 from 26,000t in the same period in 2020. It says that it expects the US cement market to grow by 2.2% year-on-year in 2021.
The company is currently upgrading its integrated plant in Cartagena, Colombia and improving the associated port terminal. The US$40m project is scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2021. It is intended to support the export market to the US and elsewhere.
Turkmen Enjam orders new 3000t/day kiln line at Lepab cement plant from Thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions
14 June 2021Turkmenistan: Germany-based Thyssenkrupp has received an order for a new 3000t/day line for the Lebap cement plant from Turkmen Enjam. The Arab Times newspaper has reported that the line will include a raw materials crushing and preparation plant and storage facilities.
Cemex to install supercritical CO2 waste heat recovery plant at Prachovice cement plant in the Czech Republic
09 June 2021Czech Republic: Mexico-based Cemex plans to install a 2MW waste heat recovery (WHR) plant using supercritical CO2 (sCO2) at its Prachovice cement plant. The unit is intended to provide up to 8% of the plant’s electricity requirements.
The producer is part of a consortium studying new sCO2 WHR systems. The EU Horizon 2020 Industrial Heat to Power fund awarded Euro14m in financial backing to the consortium. The project is intended to demonstrate a cheaper and more flexible method of waste heat valorisation compared to the steam or organic rankine cycle approaches conventionally used in WHR.
Plant director Karol Czubara said, “The new sCO2 technology has a smaller footprint and higher operational flexibility than conventional power plant cycles, which produce power from turbines using water or steam.”
Bangladesh: MI Cement, also known as Crown Cement, has revived plans worth US$90m to add a sixth production line at its cement grinding plant in Munshiganj. The upgrade will bring the unit’s production capacity to 19,280t/day from 11,000t/day. The initiative was originally announced in early 2019.
Saudi Arabia: Southern Province Cement Company plans to upgrade its Jizan cement plant in Abha with a new 10,000t/day clinker production line to replace the plant’s existing clinker lines. The producer plans to launch the project in mid-late 2021.