Displaying items by tag: Grinding

India: Gebr. Pfeiffer has received an order to supply a cement grinding plant for JSW Cement in Nagaur, Rajasthan. The plant will use an MVR 3750 C-4 vertical roller mill equipped with a latest-generation SLS 4000 BC classifier. The system is designed to grind 132t/hr of ordinary Portland cement to a fineness of ≤8% R45µm or 155t/hr of pozzolanic Portland cement to a fineness of ≤8% R45µm.

India: Nuvoco Vistas will invest US$24m to expand its grinding capacity in eastern India by 4Mt/yr, according to local press. A new mill will be installed at the Arasmeta plant in Chhattisgarh, with upgrades, process improvements and debottlenecking at Jojobera (Jharkhand), Panagarh (West Bengal) and Odisha plants.

Phase one will add 1Mt/yr by the third quarter of the 2026 financial year, 2Mt/yr by the end of 2025, and 1Mt/yr by the 2027 financial year. The company said that the work at Jojobera, Panagarh and Odisha will be achieved with limited capital expenditure.

Following the acquisition of Vadraj Cements, Nuvoco Vista’s total capacity stands at 31Mt/yr, with eastern capacity set to rise by over 20% to 23Mt/yr within 18 months. Capacity utilisation was 78% as of March 2025.

Cameroon: Cement producer Entreprise Générale Industrielle (EGIN) has obtained US$10.3m in financing from the Central African Development Bank (BDEAC) to expand production and storage capacity at its Douala grinding plant, according to News du Camer. Managing director Kaiafas Georges Kyriakos and BDEAC president Dieudonné Evou Mekou signed the agreement in Douala.

In its 2023 annual report, BDEAC announced that it had provided initial financing for the implementation of this project, estimated at a total of US$33.7m. EGIN entered the cement business in 2017 under the Lion brand.

BDEAC said the new support is part of its wider US$56.4m financing package for projects across the sectors of cement, reinforcing steel, hospitality and logistics.

Ivory Coast: Gebr. Pfeiffer will supply an MVR 3070 R-2 vertical roller mill to Ciments de Côte d'Ivoire (CIMCI) for clay grinding at its cement plant. The mill will produce 62t/hr of clay at ≤10% R 0.090mm for use in calcined clay cement. The order was placed by China-based contractor CBMI, which is managing the engineering, procurement and construction contract and will also supply the suspension calcination plant. The mill is scheduled to begin operation at the end of 2026.

India: Ambuja Cements subsidiary ACC has commissioned a 1.5Mt/yr brownfield grinding unit at its Sindri plant in Jharkhand. The project takes the total installed cement production capacity across Ambuja and ACC to 104.45Mt/yr.

Mozambique: Moçambique Dugongo Cimentos will invest US$35m in a third cement plant in Ancuabe, Cabo Delgado province, according to local press. The plant is presumed to be a grinding facility due to the value of the investment. Project coordinator Anselmo Amurane said that the plant’s design is under development, with community consultations completed and environmental assessments pending. The start date for construction was not disclosed.

Amurane said “We hope to contribute to increasing the overall cement supply and production capacity,” adding that the project would employ 900 construction workers and 135 operational workers.

Moçambique Dugongo Cimentos is a joint venture between Mozambique-based SPI Gestão and China-based West International Holding. The plant operates two plants in the cities of Maputo and Nacala.

Brazil: Votorantim Cimentos has received and begun installing a new cement mill at its Salto de Pirapora plant near São Paulo as part of its US$878m national expansion programme.

The 210t mill took six months to arrive from China via ship, and was then transported by a truck convoy from the Port of Santos to the plant. The mill will increase the plant’s capacity by 1Mt/yr. The unit is part of the Salto-Santa Helena complex, which will see its capacity grow by 20% when the expansion completes in the second half of 2025. Construction began in the first half of 2024.

General manager Rafael Frederico said “We are celebrating a new phase in the expansion project of the Salto de Pirapora plant with the arrival of the mill and all the equipment for assembling the new mill. The operation to transport the equipment from China to our unit was complex and executed with great operational excellence by our multidisciplinary teams and partners.”

Demand for heavy building materials in the UK dropped in the first quarter of 2025, with ready-mix concrete sales reaching a new 60-year low.¹ In an update last week, the UK’s Mineral Products Association (MPA) attributed the decline to existing economic headwinds, compounded by global trade disruptions, reduced investor confidence and renewed inflationary pressures.

Major infrastructure projects – including the HS2 high-speed railway in the English Midlands, the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset and the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk – failed to offset delays and cancellations by cash-strapped local councils to roadwork projects. Residential construction, meanwhile, is ‘slowly but steadily’ recovering from historical lows, amid continuing high mortgage rates since late 2024.

The most interesting part of the MPA’s market appraisal was its warning of ‘new risks emerging in the global economy.’ These concern the new tariffs raised by the US against its import partners. The possible consequences, the MPA says, imperil the UK’s supply chains, construction sector and growth.

Of particular immediacy is the threat of imports into the UK from countries that previously focussed on the US market. The MPA said that the industry ‘cannot compete’ against increased low-cost, CO₂-intensive imports. It named Türkiye, which sends around 6.9Mt/yr of cement and clinker to the US, as a key threat. Türkiye became subject to the blanket 10% ‘baseline’ tariff on 2 April 2025.

The MPA probably didn’t have a particular company in mind when it said this. However, it bears noting that Turkish interests gained a share of UK cement capacity in October 2024, when Çimsa acquired 95% of Northern Ireland-based Mannok. Besides the Derrylin cement plant (situated on the border between Fermanagh, UK, and Cavan, Ireland), Mannok operates the Rochester cement storage and distribution facility in Kent, 50km from London. The facility currently supplies cement from Derrylin to Southern England and the Midlands. It could easily serve as a base of operations for processing and distributing imported cement and clinker from further afield.

Meanwhile in South West England, Portugal-based Cimpor is building a €20 – 25m cement import terminal in the Port of Bristol. The company is subject to 20% tariffs on shipments to the US from its home country. Its parent company, Taiwan Cement Corporation, is subject to 32% US tariffs from Taiwan.

But the plot thickens… On 8 May 2025, the UK became the first country to conclude a trade agreement with the US after the erection of the new tariff regime, under which the US$73bn/yr-worth of British goods sold in the US became subject to a 10% tariff.² The latest agreement brought partial relief for an allied sector of UK cement: steel. 180,000t flowed into the US from the UK in 2024.³ In 2024, the UK exported 7120t of cement and clinker to the US, up by a factor of 10 decade-on-decade from just 714t in 2014, all of it into two US customs districts, Philadelphia and New York City.⁴

In what may be one of the first true ‘Brexit benefits,’ UK cement exporters now ‘enjoy’ a US tariff rate half that of their EU competitors, notably those in Greece. Like the UK’s more modest volumes, Greece’s 1.82Mt/yr-worth of cement and clinker exports stateside also enter via the US’ eastern seaports, at New York City, Tampa and Norfolk. Given the overlaps in ownership between the Greek and UK cement sectors, it is conceivable that optimisation of cement export flows across Europe may already be under discussion.

On 6 May 2025, the UK and Indian governments announced a trade deal that will lift customs duties on almost all current Indian exports to the UK. UK MPs are still seeking clarifications as to whether this will include industrial products that might be dumped.⁵ Theoretically, the threat from an oversupplied and fast-growing cement industry like India’s could be existential to the UK cement industry.

As the UK invests heavily in its future, including with the HyNet Consortium, imports pose a major threat. Given enough time, the UK could develop a leading position in the decarbonisation space. Will it have enough time? Existential threats certainly add a sense of jeopardy.

References
1. Mineral Products Association, ‘Weak start to 2025 for building materials sales amid growing economic headwinds,’ 6 May 2025, www.mineralproducts.org/News/2025/release16.aspx

2. HM Government, ‘UK overseas trade in goods statistics November 2024,’ 16 January 2025, www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-overseas-trade-in-goods-statistics-november-2024/uk-overseas-trade-in-goods-statistics-november-2024-commentary

3. UK Steel, ‘US 25% tariffs on UK steel imports come into effect,’ 12 March 2025, www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2025/us-25-tariffs-on-uk-steel-imports-come-into-effect

4. United States Geological Survey, ‘Cement in December 2024,’ January 2025, https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/media/files/mis-202412-cemen.pdf

5. Welsh Liberal Democrats, ‘UK-Indian Trade Deal: Government Refuses to Answer Whether it Has Conceded on Cheap Indian Steel Imports,’ 6 May 2025, www.libdems.wales/news/article/uk-indian-trade-deal-government-refuses-to-answer-whether-it-has-conceded-on-cheap-indian-steel-imports

India: UltraTech Cement has increased its production capacity by 1.4Mt/yr through debottlenecking and ‘efficiency improvements’ at multiple sites across India.

It added 0.6Mt/yr of grinding capacity at Nagpur in Maharashtra and 0.8Mt/yr across Panipat and Jhajjar in Haryana. The company’s total domestic grey cement capacity now stands at 184.8Mt/yr, while its global capacity has reached 190.2Mt/yr.

India: Nuvoco Vistas will build a 2Mt/yr grinding unit in Kutch as part of its plan to refurbish and put into operation the recently acquired assets of Vadraj Cement. The project adds US$35m to the US$141m originally allocated to restart Vadraj’s cement assets in Kutch and Surat, bringing the total planned investment to US$177m, phased over 2025 to 2027. Nuvoco aims to commission the grinding unit and start up the existing Vadraj assets by December 2027. These include a 3.5Mt/yr clinker unit in Kutch, a 6Mt/yr grinding unit in Surat and limestone reserves.

Nuvoco’s total production capacity will increase to around 31Mt/yr. The company currently sells 1Mt/yr of cement in Gujarat from its facilities in Rajasthan, but post-commissioning, the Kutch and Surat sites will serve Gujarat and northern Maharashtra and release Rajasthan capacity for northern markets.