August 2025

Spain: Cementos Tudela Veguín has purchased a full stake in Caleras de San Cucao, a lime producer based in Asturias, according to the La Nueva España newspaper. No value for the acquisition has been disclosed. The company operates a lime plant at Llanera and it runs two lime quarries at Agüera and Las Regueras. Cementos Tudela Veguín has a lime production capacity of 0.6Mt/yr from its Tudela Veguín plant in Oviedo.

Russia: Eurocement is planning a second phase of upgrades for its Kavkazcement plant in 2019. These include starting to generate its own electricity, modernising its cement grinding mills, completing a maintenance campaign and moving to solely operating rotary kilns. The first phase of the upgrade project saw the plant build a slurry pipeline, construct the building for a captive power plant and purchasing monitoring equipment.

Ukraine: Data from the State Statistics Service shows that Ukrainian cement production fell slightly, by 1% year-on-year, to 8.93Mt in 2018 from 9.3Mt in 2017. In December 2018 production fell by 19.9% year-on-year to 0.35Mt, according to the Ukrainian News Agency. The country has 15 companies producing cement with a combined production capacity of over 20Mt/yr.

Turkmenistan: A cement plant in Balkan province has started producing sulphate-resistant cement. A first batch of 7000t of the product has been manufactured, according to the Trend News Agency and local media. The Institute of Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan worked on the project with specialists from the Ministry of Industry and Turkmengeologiya State Corporation.

India: Braj Binani, the owner of Binani Industries and the former owner of Binani Cement, has been prevented from travelling to the UK by Indian immigration officials. Punjab National Bank (PNB) issued a so-called lookout notice to prevent debt defaulters leaving the country, according to DNA Money. The notice was issued following Binani’s failure to attend a Kolkata Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on 20 January 2019.

Binani Industries had stood guarantor for a US$42m loan taken out by a subsidiary but then left unpaid. Binani Cement was acquired by UltraTech Cement in late 2018 following a legal battle with Dalmia Bharat.

India: Three contract labourers have died at the ACC Sindri cement plant in Jharkhand. The labourers were working on a conveyor belt when it unexpectedly started running, according to the Pioneer newspaper. Other workers were also injured in the incident. A police investigation is underway.

Germany: E-nizing, a subsidiary of Schenck Process, has launched its E-nizing application. The software product offers to integrate all Internet of Things (IoT) machines collecting data from any machine, analytics or sensor. It is an open system, highly scalable and offers everything in one place, independently of its vendors. Non-IoT machines can also be retrofitted for the product.

The product also offers visualisation, analysis and action tools. Limits for every data point can be set and linked to triggers via telephone, email or application programming interface (API) call. For example, notifications can be set to notify a plant if there is a problem with a machine or to order spare parts or requisition maintenance automatically. E-nizing also says that the product is safe using end-to-end payload encryption, unique encryption keys, two-factor authentication and certified data security.

“On behalf of the team I am delighted to announce the launch of E-nizing. The market showed a need for what E-nizing offers for a long time and we are now providing the answer. E-nizing already supports many Schenck Process machines’ monitoring, with many more coming soon. We do, what everyone’s always talking about. Easy industry 4.0 is now becoming reality,” said Andreas Evertz, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Schenck Process and Managing Director of E-nizing.

Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania: UK-based EvoQuip has appointed Stokker as the authorised EvoQuip Distributor to cover Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for the full EvoQuip portfolio of compact crushing and screening equipment. EvoQuip is a brand owned by Terex Corporation.

Mexico: Cemex is joining the Global Alliance for Youth (All4YOUth), a business alliance of more than 200 companies that seeks to strengthen the capabilities of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 years to enter the professional world. Founded by Nestlé in 2014, All4YOUth is a scheme intended to help young people around the world to acquire business skills. Its aim is to reduce school dropout rates, contribute to young people’s employability, and to help them develop their skills for the workplace of today and tomorrow.

Cemex says that its participation in the alliance will help more than 65,000 young people by 2022. Until now, the company’s social programs have already reached 34,000 youth through the New Employment Opportunities (NEO) alliance, with 60% formal job placement within six months.

US: Ed Sullivan, the Portland Cement Association’s (PCA) Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, forecasts that cement consumption will grow ‘moderately’ in 2019 alongside similar performance in the general US economy. However, he flagged gradual increases in interest rates, the aging recovery and accompanied trade issues as possible factors slowing down the cement market. Sullivan made his comments at the World of Concrete event in Las Vegas, where he revealed details from his forthcoming spring forecast.

“The US economy’s long run of growth should continue in 2019,” said Sullivan. “Since 2011 we have averaged 2 million jobs being created each year and the unemployment rate is below 4%. Despite the headlines, the impact in the near term of the rising interest rates and inflation are relatively benign. Simply put, fundamentals like these take a long time to unwind.”