Ghana: Morten Gade, the managing director of Ghacem, says that the company plans to make 3Mt of cement in 2019. It also has a target of producing and distributing 60 million bags compared to 56 million bags, according to the Daily Graphic newspaper. The subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement operates two grinding plants in the country.

South Africa: The Competition Tribunal has resumed hearings into allegations of cartel-like behaviour by Natal Portland Cement (NPC), Pretoria Portland Cement Company (PPC), Lafarge Industries South Africa (Lafarge) and AfriSam Consortium (AfriSam). It follows a referral by the Competition Commission following an investigation in 2015 that examined collusive conduct between the cement companies between 2008 and 2012. At the time PPC was granted conditional leniency and AfriSam and Lafarge settled with the Commission.

Papua New Guinea: Australia’s Mayur Resources has completed a feasibility report looking into building an integrated cement plant near Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. The cement and lime plant project has an estimated cost of US$331m. It will produce 1.65Mt/yr of clinker, be able to grind 0.9Mt/yr of cement and produce 0.2Mt/yr of quicklime. The study also found that the project area had reserves of 78Mt of limestone and 14Mt of maiden mineral resource that could support the project for 30 years.

The company is now arranging compensation agreements with the local community and submitting a mining lease application. Award of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) design and engineering contracts, finalise product offtake and project financing arrangements are scheduled for the second half of 2019.

India: UltraTech Cement’s income rose by 17% year-on-year to US$3.73bn in the nine months to the end of 2018 from US$3.18bn in the same period in 2017. Its net profit fell by 21% to US$197m from US$250m. The main causes for this were rising power, energy and logistics costs. Despite this, income and net profit rose in the third quarter of the year. The cement producer also completed its acquisition of Binani Cement in the third quarter.

Fiji: The Tasman Sea, a bulk carrier, has delivered clinker from Japan for the Tengy Cement plant via the port of Lautoka. The vessel carried 26,800t of clinker, according to the Fiji Sun newspaper. It will also deliver clinker for Tengy Cement’s plant in Suva. Madulesh Lakhan, operations manager of Transam Fiji, said that his company arranges clinker imports every three months to the country. Pacific Cement also uses the service.

Russia: Iskitimcement’s sales fell in 2018 due to a poor local market in Siberia and a drop in domestic exports to the Ural Federal District. Its cement sales fell by 2.2% year-on-year to 1Mt in 2018. Clinker production grew by 4.8% to 0.88Mt.

Spain: LafargeHolcim España has restored land at a quarry near its Jerez de la Frontera cement plant in Cadiz. As part of biodiversity improvement project it has recovered 45 hectares of land and planted around 35,000 trees.

Ireland/UK: Quinn Cement has extended its exclusive supply agreement for Master Grade Cement in the UK with National Buying Group (NBG). Quinn Cement’s Master Grade Cement product will continue to be solely available to merchants in the UK via NBG following a deal originally made in 2018.

“Our partnership with NBG has been very successful in 2018 with our Master Grade Cement sales in particular exceeding forecasts since we launched our new cement range. Feedback from NBG merchants has been very positive and demand continues to grow, so we’re delighted to agree an extension to our exclusivity deal with the Group,” said Quinn Cement’s GB Sales and Marketing Director Lee Gillman. He added that 2018 had been a ‘strong’ year for the cement producer.

Kyrgyzstan: Commissioning of the Kemin cement plant in Chuy region has been delayed due to electricity supply issues. Members of parliament have been discussing the delayed opening of the plant, according to the Central Asia News agency. The Chinese-backed plant project held its ground-breaking ceremony in mid-2014. It had an investment of US$120m. The unit has reportedly been built but it cannot be commissioned due to technical issues relating to its electricity supply, despite being situation close to the Datka Kemin power station. A working group was created in December 2018 to work with investors to solve the problems.

Philippines: Republic Cement Services plans to commission two cement grinding mills in 2019 at a cost of US$20m each. Once completed the company will have a cement production capacity of around 9Mt/yr, according to GMA News. President Nabil Francis also said that the company would need more clinker for the mills. This could either be sourced locally or from imports.