Mexico: Holcim Mexico has won an award from the National Chamber of Cement (CANACEM) for reporting no accidents at its cement plants in 2018. The award was presented at CANACEM‘s XXXVI National Congress of Occupational Health and Safety in Chihuahua.

Ivory Coast: Dangote Cement is building a 3Mt/yr cement plant with two production lines from an investment of around US$260m in the Ivory Coast. In an audience with Souleymane Diarrassouba, Minister of Commerce, Industry and Promotion of SMEs, the company said that the project is 70% complete, according to the Agence Ivoirienne de Presse. The new plant will create 800 jobs. It is scheduled to start production in early 2020.

Brazil: Investors have started legal action over in Cimento Tupi’s defaulted debts and attempts to merge with its parent company Cimento Santo Estevão. The cement producer defaulted in mid-2018 on payments to foreign investors that hold around US$30m in it, according to the Valor Econômico newspaper. It also stopped paying interest on the debts in 2015.

Other creditors are also working to stop Cimento Tupi’s plans to merge with Cimento Santo Estevão because it would raise the company’s debts rather than cut costs. A court in Rio de Janerio rejected one case although others are on-going elsewhere. Separately, the Agricultural Bank of China is also challenging the cement producer over arrears in a loan worth US$18m.

Cimento Tupi operates one integrated plant at Pedra do Sino in Minas Gerais and a grinding plant in Modi das Cruzes in São Paulo. It has a combined cement production capacity of 2.5Mt/yr but it has been producing half of this since around 2015. Its operating revenue remained stable at US$43m for the first nine months of 2018. However, its loss more than trippled year-on-year to US$76m.

Trinidad & Tobago: Trinidad Cement has asked the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to make its competitor Rock Hard Cement pay more than a 5% tariff on imports. It follows a ruling by the council of trade ministers in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in March 2019 that agreed to a classification of Rock Hard Cement’s products in Trinidad leading to duties of up to 5%, according to the Nation newspaper. The case has been referred to the CCJ for final arbitration in June 2019.

China: Sinoma International Engineering has won a prize in the National Quality Engineering Awards organised by the China Construction Enterprise Management Association for its work on the Biskria Cement plant in Algeria. Sinoma supplied a second production line for the plant. It was commissioned in 2018.

Serbia: Elektroprivreda Srbije, a government-owned power company, has completed a Euro14m terminal on the River Danube for its Kostolac B coal-fired power plant. The unit will be use to transport 105,000t/yr of synthetic gypsum and 157,000/yr of fly ash. It will also process limestone. The terminal was built as part of the first phase of a credit arrangement between Serbia and China.

UK: The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) has expanded its membership to 36 companies with its number of affiliates organisations rising to 15. The new members include Corporacion Moctezuma in Mexico, Unión Andina de Cementos (UNACEM) in Peru, JSW Cement in India and West China Cement in China.

The new affiliates include Oficemen (the Spanish Cement Association), the Cement Manufacturers Association of India, the Japan Cement Association, the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association in the US, the European Concrete Platform and the Federacion Iboamericana del Hormigon Premezclado (FIHP) which covers Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula

“The continuing and rapid growth of the association’s membership is very encouraging. With a strong work program now underway it’s important that our authoritative voice represents the growing list of cement and concrete manufacturers committed to our principles of enhancing industry sustainability efforts and driving innovation.” said GCCA chief executive officer (CEO) Benjamin Sporton.

The GCCA was launched in 2018. It aims to represent at least 50% of global cement production capacity.

Italy: Buzzi Unicem has purchased the Testi integrated cement plant at Greve and the Borgo San Dalmazzo and Arquata Scrivia grinding plants in Piedmont from HeidelbergCement’s subsidiaries. The enforceable agreement is expected to be completed by the end of July 2019. No value for the deal has been disclosed. Buzzi Unicem said it was making the acquisitions as part of its plan to strengthen its position in the national market.

Germany: Holcim Deutschland’s Kollenbach cement plant in Beckum has commissioned a Zeppelin Cat 6030 FS hydraulic excavator. The machine is 15m long, 7.5m high and it has an engine power of 1500HP. It will mine at least 470t/hr of limestone from the plant’s quarry. The excavator was purchased due to the height and thickness of the marl layers in the deposit. Material from the quarry will then be transported 2.5km by truck to a stationary primary crusher before use at the cement plant.

Syria: Russian companies have met with representatives of the Syrian Ministry of Industry to discuss restoring and upgrading the Al Arabiya cement plant in Aleppo. During the visit to Syria representatives of the company also held talks about building a new cement plant, Muslimiya, according to the Prime News Agency. Negotiations were also held about renovating a steel plant in Hama province.