Oman: Oman Cement has launched a new brand identity and logo. The changes to its marketing are intended convey its strong brand value proposition that is synonymous with quality, strength and reliability, according to the Muscat Daily newspaper. The new brand identity is hoped to help the company’s sales and market share.

Russia: Lipetskcement, a subsidiary of Eurocement, has added Eurocem 500 Extra to its product portfolio over the current construction season. The CEM II / А-W 42.5Н strength cement uses mineral additives to offer lower production costs, higher strength and higher corrosion resistance and water resistance. The product is offered in bagged and bulk consignments.

Russia: Pervaya Stroitelnaya Kompaniya (PSK) plans to build a 1.2Mt/yr cement plant in the Petrovsky district of the Tambov region. The project has an investment of Euro126m, according to the Kommersant newspaper. The unit will use the Borisovsky deposit for its raw materials. PSK previously purchased the licence to develop the mine from Tambov-Cement company. The project is scheduled to be built from 2019 to 2025 in several stages.

Tajikistan: Average monthly volumes of cement exports have grown by 37% year-on-year to 115,000t in the first eight months of 2018 compared to 84,000t for the whole year in 2017. Data from the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies shows that 920,000t of cement was exported from January to August 2018, according to the Asia Plus agency. 520,000t was exported to neighbouring Uzbekistan, 340,000t to Afghanistan and 60,000t to Kyrgyzstan.

Afghanistan/Iran: The Afghanistan Customs Department has banned imports of cement at the Farah border crossing from Iran’s South Khorasan Province. Mozaffar Alikhani, the Secretary-General of Iran-Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce, said that the ban had been implemented at the border point due to a lack of an online monitoring system, according to Eghtesadonline. The ban also includes oil products, steel products, tiles and ceramics.

Afghan officials have made contradictory statements about a ban of imported commodities from Iran. Ali Shariati, a member of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, told the ILNA news agency that the Afghanistan Customs Department had banned cement imports and those of other materials from 16 September 2018 to bring it into alignment with US sanctions on Iran. However, Alikhani dismissed this and said that the goods in question continue to be exported as usual from Iran to Afghanistan through the border crossings of Dogharoun in Khorasan Razavi Province and Nimrouz in Sistan-Baluchestan Province.

Sakhi Ahmad Peyman, the president of the Afghanistan Industrial Association, has also described the ban as temporary.

Pakistan: DG Khan’s sales rose by 3% year-on-year to US$271m in the year than ended on 30 June 2018 from US$263m in the same period in 2017. Its profit increased by 14% to US$72.4m from US$63.6m.

Oman: Raysut Cement has been added to a list of Sharia-compliant companies for the second quarter of 2018 compiled by the Muscat Securities Market. It joins Oman Cement, which was listed in the first quarter of 2018, according to the Oman Daily Observer newspaper. The list includes 31 publically listed companies that conform to the requirements of Islamic Sharia according to the rules approved by the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, Companies on the list cover a cross-section of industrial sectors.

UK: Cemex is planning to restart commercial production on the second kiln at its South Ferriby cement plant in November 2018. The company says that this investment highlights its confidence in the long-term potential of the UK building materials market.

The kiln has a capacity of 1000t/day and was originally installed in 1973. Since then the cement producer has conducted upgrade work on the production line to comply with environmental legislation and to install new electrical infrastructure, a control system and instrumentation. The second kiln was previously the first Cemex line in the world to achieve a 100% alternative fuel substitution rate in 2011. Once fully operational both kilns at the plant will give it a production capacity of 0.7Mt/yr.

UK: The planning department of East Lothian Council in Scotland has granted planning permission to an upgrade of Tarmac’s Dunbar cement plant. The work will include building a new cement grinding mill, a new cement storage silo and a rail loading facility. The work will also include a shed, belt conveyors pneumatic pipelines and associated works.

In its supporting statement the company said that the new cement mill was necessary to produce new grades of cement required for modern construction and the cement market. The proposed mill will replace two existing mills on the site and is intended to be more energy efficient and quieter than the existing mills. It added that the plant would benefits from rail sidings on both the south and north side of the East Coast Mainline railway line. At present trains are fed only on the south side using adjacent silos where train capacity is already fully used. Additional products are exported by road.

Ukraine: Ukrcement, the Ukrainian cement association, has found in a study that over 80% of cement with the wrong labelling was counterfeit. The research was conducted on 50 cement bags for the consumer market, according to Interfax. 82% of cement proved to be counterfeit, over 50% of the samples were below the declared weight and 56% had weaker strength and did not comply with the В.2.7-46 -2010 national standard for minimum compressive strength.

The association said that the risks of using counterfeit cement vary from loss of time and revenue in smaller projects to a direct threat to human life in larger projects such as high-rise buildings. Local regulations require that cement bags include five items: the name of the producer, the conventional designation of cement, the designation of the normative document, the net weight and a conformity mark.