Displaying items by tag: digitalisation
Bangladesh: Shun Shing Group subsidiary Seven Circle says that it has successfully migrated its on-premises, business-critical, finance and manufacturing systems to Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure digital services platform. The Bangladesh Monitor newspaper has reported that the company made the transition in order to lower its costs, increase its operational agility and improve productivity. It has since experienced a 30% drop in capital expenditure and almost doubled its uptime as a result. Seven Circle also deployed cloud disaster recovery capabilities for its workloads on the new platform. This can allow the company to serve its customers in a timely manner and reinvest the savings to drive innovation.
Shun Shing Group human resources and digitalisation head Anika Ali Chowdhury said “Running our back-office operations quickly and reliably, 24/7, is critical for success. It helps us to ensure we are sourcing the best raw materials, making the right production investments, and delivering quality products with reliable and fast delivery. This allows us to earn the highest level of customer trust.”
Greece: Titan Cement Group has secured an EU patent for its robotic remote preheater system, previously installed at the company’s Kamari cement plant in Viotia. Titan Cement Group designed the system to maximise operational efficiency and safety.
The company carried out a Euro25m precalciner installation at the Kamari plant in 2021 – 2022.
ACC launches Concrete Direct delivery app
01 April 2022India: ACC has launched its new Concrete Direct app for booking and live tracking concrete deliveries. The producer says that the app reduces operational follow-up calls.
Managing director and CEO Sridhar Balakrishnan said “At ACC, we recognise the need to improve and lead through digitalisation. We are happy to launch Concrete Direct, a premium digital tool that saves time and money for our customers. With such innovations, we want to enhance customer experience and build a strong ecosystem of partners to support them.”
Titan Cement boosts sales in 2021
17 March 2022Greece: Titan Cement recorded Euro1.71bn in net sales in 2021, up by 6.7% year-on-year from Euro1.61bn in 2020. The company attributed the boost to higher demand and ‘supportive pricing’ in all of its regions. Cement sales volumes were 18.3Mt, up by 7% year-on-year from 17.1Mt. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 4.6% to Euro272m from Euro286m, due to an ‘unprecedented’ second-half costs increase. The group’s net profit was Euro89.6m, compared to Euro1.1m in 2020. During the year, Titan Cement increased the digitisation of its cement production and continued its on-going share buyback programme. Its Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions declined by 4% year-on-year, in line with its 2030 target trajectory.
Titan Cement said “Having already achieved the 2025 targets for energy efficiency and zero waste-to-landfill certification, the group’s attention is now focused on empowering business ecosystems to incorporate sustainability considerations in their decision making. To ensure that key suppliers meet the group’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, Titan Cement developed a sustainable supply chain roadmap and published the first Titan Group Procurement Policy.” In the coming year, the group plans to ‘continue to harness the advantages offered by decarbonisation, digital transformation and business model innovation to benefit our customers, employees, suppliers and communities, aspiring to deliver to society carbon-neutral concrete by 2050.’
Boral hires Earlytrade for payments digitalisation
16 February 2022Australia: Boral has selected Earlytrade to digitise its supplier payment and progress claim processes. The supplier says that it will help protect Boral's supply chain against inflation and insolvency trends. It will roll out its early payment technology for 5000 suppliers of Boral products, as well as subcontractors, across Australia.
Thailand: Sales from Siam Cement Group’s (SCG) cement business rose by 6% year-on-year to US$5.61bn in 2021. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 13% to US$145m. The company said that demand for cement improved gradually in the fourth quarter of 2021 following Covid-19 related shutdowns in the third quarter. Overall group sales were US$16.5bn in 2021, up by 33%, and net profit rose by 38% to US$1.4bn, boosted by the company chemicals division performance.
President and chief executive officer Roongrote Rangsiyopash said that its integration of environmental and social governance, along with a digital transformation, during the year contributed towards growth, along with a demand rise in line with the decline in Covid-19’s ongoing impacts.
Vecoplan Group increases new order intake in 2021
11 February 2022Germany: Vecoplan Group has recorded its highest ever new order intake of Euro180m in 2021, up by 60%. The company said that its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the year also set a company record.
CFO Michael Lambert said “Internationalisation is picking up speed. In line with this, we are implementing new sales and service centres throughout the world. Additional locations in various countries and regions are being planned.” He added “In 2022, we will be putting the spotlight on our digitalisation strategy and investing several million euros in software and hardware.”
CEO Werner Berens added a note of caution: “In spite of the good prospects for the new year, supply chains will continue to be disrupted by global factors like supply bottlenecks, raw material shortages and logistics problems. We too must show that we are able to deal with these big challenges.”
Nanjing Kisen and Schneider Electric to develop cement plant digitisation technologies
08 February 2022China: China National Building Material subsidiary Nanjing Kisen has signed a long-term collaboration agreement with France-based Schneider Electric. The partners plan to develop models for increasing operational efficiency, digitisation and sustainability. Alliance News has reported that they will establish a series of joint pilot projects. They plan subsequently to explore plant engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) opportunities outside of China together.
FLSmidth to carry out Shree Cement’s digital transformation
04 February 2022India: Shree Cement has hired Denmark-based FLSmidth to carry out its digital transformation. The supplier will install its ECS/PlantDataManagement monitoring system at Shree Cement’s cement plants. It says that the technology will increase efficiency.
Shree Cement’s joint managing director Prashant Bangur said "We are always looking at ways to optimise production, and the decision to apply FLSmidth's information management system to all our sites is a natural next step." Whole-time managing director Prakash Narayan Chhangani said "FLSmidth is a trusted partner for us, as we demonstrated by the milling and pyro order we announced last year. And we are confident that this next step in our digital transformation will prove to be profitable."
Carbon Re receives Euro1.19m in funding
28 October 2021UK: The Clean Growth Fund has led a Euro1.19m investment in cement industry decarbonisation software developer Carbon Re. Other investors are Blue Impact Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise Fund and UCL Technology Fund. The supplier says that its deep reinforcement learning AI product can reduce cement plants’ operating costs by Euro1.97 – 5.09/yr and eliminate 20% of Scope 1 emissions. Five pilot installations of its Delta Zero platform are installed at cement plants in the EU, India, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.
CEO Sherif Elsayed-Ali said “Our mission is to reduce global emissions at the gigatonne scale, starting with the cement industry, and to become the leading global AI company to deliver industrial decarbonisation. Carbon Re’s AI technology provides heavy industry with an effective solution to address their critical challenges of energy costs and emissions reduction.” He added “The road to a zero-carbon world will be long, but with the support of the Clean Growth Fund and our other investors, our AI-products and solutions will evolve to accelerate the transition of energy intensive industries.”