Displaying items by tag: Angola
Ohorongo Cement opens terminal at Ondangwa
21 August 2017Namibia: Ohorongo Cement has opened a US$0.3m terminal at Ondangwa in the north of the country. Clemens H Kashuupulwa, the governor of Oshana Region, officiated at the event. The depot is intended to target the four northern regions in Namibia as well as export cement to southern Angola. The site follows a Private Public Partnership agreement with TransNamib to lease land at Ondangwa railway station, and is part of the Northern Railway Extension project that extends from Tsumeb to Oshikango. It will distribute various cement types, including CEM II 42.5 N, CEM I 42.5 R, CEM II 32.5 N B-LL for the local market. It will also ship CEM II 42.5 N with Portuguese labelling for Angola.
Update on Angola
19 July 2017The old joke about buses only coming along in pairs might just apply to Angolan cement plants this week with the inauguration of Nova Cimangola’s new 2.4Mt/yr cement plant in Luanda. It follows the announcement of the start of an upgrade project to build a clinker kiln at Cimenfort’s grinding plant in Benguela. In cement industry terms for a country with a production capacity below 10Mt/yr these projects are right on top of each other!
Nova Cimangola’s new plant has been a well-publicised project internationally. Sinoma International Engineering coordinated the line for US$400m in 21 months using components from well-known suppliers. Loesche provided a number of raw material, cement and coal mills for the project, including the country’s first vertical roller mill, as well as other components and parts. Loesche’s Austrian subsidiary A Tec also got involved as an EPCM (Engineering, Procurement & Construction Management) partner.
Cimenfort’s clinker kiln project is the third phase of a process to turn its grinding plant at Catumbela in Benguela into a fully integrated unit since it opened in 2012. Earlier phases saw the grinding plant’s capacity increase to 1.4Mt/yr from 0.7Mt/yr by using a new roller press. Work on the kiln is now scheduled to start in January 2018 with completion scheduled for 2020.
If Cimenfort makes it to clinker production they will join the country’s three main producers: Nova Cimangola, Fabrica de Cimento do Kwanza Sul (FCKS) and the China International Fund. Getting that far is by no means certain as the Palanca Cement plant project demonstrates. That scheme was backed by Brazil’s Camargo Corrêa, the owners of InterCement, and local business group Gema. However, the regulators bailed out Portugal’s Banco Espírito Santo, the financial backer of the project, in 2014 effectively killing it. Another project that has gone on the back burner is Portugal’s Secil’s plan to build a second plant next to its grinding plant in Lobito. Originally approved by the Angolan government in 2007 the project has been kicked around since then through various revisions to the local investment body. It was last reported as being under consideration by the president’s office of Angola in 2016.
Ministry of Industry figures place cement production capacity at 8.3Mt/yr compared to a consumption of 6Mt/yr. In contrast to this Secil’s parent company Semapa reported that the Angolan cement market contracted in 2016 by 25% to 3.9Mt in line with the poor state of the general economy, pushed down by poor oil prices. It blamed the decrease in cement consumption on a halt in public infrastructure spending and the negative effect that local currency devaluations had on clinker imports and other incoming raw materials. With the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasting economic growth to pick up for Angola in 2017, improvements in the construction and cement sector are expected by Semapa but they hadn’t been seen so far during the first quarter of the year.
The government’s keenness to describe its cement industry as ‘self-sufficient in cement’ mimics calls from other African countries like Nigeria. The Angolan government banned cement imports in 2015, with the exception of certain border provinces, and this has continued into 2017. However, the ban hasn’t stopped the country exporting cement to its neighbours. Earlier this year the head of Cimenterie de Lukala in the Democratic Republic of Congo blamed the closure of his company’s integrated plant on imports from Angola.
All of this leaves an enlarged local cement industry waiting for the good times to come again. In the meantime, exporting cement and clinker no doubt seems like a promising proposition. In the middle of this are projects like those from Cimenfort and Secil that are looking decidedly dicey in the current economic environment. These companies may have just missed the bus to make their upgrades happen. Still, if they wait around long enough, their chance may come again when the market revives.
Angola: Nova Cimangola has inaugurated a new 2.4Mt/yr cement plant at Cacuaco in Luanda. China’s Sinoma International Engineering built the US$400m plant in 21 months, according to the Jornal de Angola newspaper. Investment for the project came from Nova Cimangola and Ciminvest, its main shareholder.
The new unit is intended to repalace Nova Cimangola’s existing cement plant at Kikolo near Luanda, which has limited limestone reserves. The new plant occupies an area of 700 hectares with larger mineral reserves. Following the start-up of the plant Nova Cimangola’s production will rise to 3.6Mt/yr from 1.8Mt/yr. The new plant will also create 200 jobs, 85% of which are expected to go to local workers.
Cimenfort inaugurates clinker kiln project
21 June 2017Angola: Cimenfort has inaugurated the start of its clinker kiln project. Industry minister Bernarda Martins presided at the event that marks the second phase of its ongoing upgrade scheme at its cement grinding plant in Benguela, according to the Angola News Agency. The first phase of its upgrades saw its production capacity rise to 0.7Mt/yr through an upgraded grinding system. Equipment for the project is being supplied by Germany’s KHD Humboldt Wedag.
Second line at Nova Cimangola to start in 2018
24 November 2016Angola: The second production line at Nova Cimangola’s plant in Luanda is expected to start production in mid-2018. Cimangola’s administrator Manuel Pacavira Júnior revealed details of the upgrade’s progress to the Jornal de Angola newspaper during a visit to the site by Secretary of State Kiala Gabriel. All the equipment for the clinker production stage of the project has been assembled and tests are scheduled to start in December 2016. The project has cost US$350m. Funding for the second phase of the upgrade project is still being gathered.
Secil Lobito struggling to import raw materials
05 August 2016Angola: Augusto Miragaia, the director of Secil Lobito, has said that he expects his company’s sales volumes of cement to drop by 25% year-on-year to 150,000 in 2016. He attributed the fall in sales to difficulties in obtaining foreign currencies to import raw material, according to the O País newspaper.
The company, which operates a cement grinding plant in Lobito, is unable to import sufficient clinker, other raw materials or hire skilled workers. It also faces mounting fuel and electricity costs. During the past three months the plant has used clinker purchased from the Cuanza Sul Cement plant but this source stopped supplying it in late June 2016.
Angola has five cement plants and an installed capacity of about 8Mt/yr. Demand exceeded production capacity by 2.7Mt/yr in 2015. The Lobito cement plant is majority owned by Secil-Angola. The remaining 49% stake is held by Angola’s state-run company Empresa Nacional de Cimentos.
Democratic Republic of Congo: Banza Ngungu, the CEO of Cimenterie de Lukala, has blamed the closure on the company’s integrated cement plant on imports from Angola. He attributed the increase in imports from the neighbouring country to currency fluctuation, according to Africanews. The Minister of Economy Modeste Bahati Lukwebo added that cement imports crossing the Angolan border were not paying the required import tariffs.
Angola: A TEC has released information regarding its work on the construction of a 2MT/yr greenfield cement plant for Nova Cimangola. As an EPCM (engineering, procurement and construction management) partner, the Austrian engineering and technologies company is coordinating and surpervising the 30 months construction period. The scope of supply for the project includes: tender preparation and contract negotiation; technical services; civil, mechanical and electrical erection supervision; and supplier quality assurance. The cement plant will be finished by the start of 2017.
Loesche mills ordered for Nova Cimangola SA cement plant in Angola
17 November 2015Angola: Sinoma International has ordered Loesche's complete grinding series for the Nova Cimangola SA cement plant in Luanda, Angola. These will be the first Loesche vertical roller mills in the country.
The order includes one cement raw material mill of the type LM 48.4 with a capacity of 400t/hr and two cement mills of the type LM 46.2+2 C/S which are designed to have a capacity of 150t/hr each. Loesche's coal mill of the type LM 24.20 DC completes the order. Further equipment like rotary star feeders, metal detectors, the engineering for the cyclones, classifier motors and the control system are also in Loesche's scope of supply, as well as a two-year operation spare parts contract.
The coal mill and the cement raw material mill are scheduled to start operation in the middle of 2016. The cement mills will follow with a production start by the end of 2016.
China International Fund cement plant provides electricity to the Angolan public grid
16 November 2015Angola: China International Fund's (CIF) cement plant in Luanda will provide 50MW of electricity to the Angolan public grid, under a presidential order authorising the purchase of energy. The order said that the power purchase agreement would be valid for ten years, but gave no figures for the amounts involved in the purchase of electricity by state-owned Rede Nacional de Transporte (National Transmission Grid).
"Given that the studies conducted to assess the supply and demand for electricity in the Luanda region indicate a deficit of 400MW, this contract is authorised until structural projects that are underway start operating," said the order authorising the contract with CIF.
The government of Angola is working on several projects that will increase national electricity production, including the construction of two dams by Brazil's Odebrecht. This is the case of the US$4.3bn Lauca hydroelectric facility in Cambambe, Kwanza Norte financed by a credit line from Brazil. From 2017 it will produce 2,070MW of electricity and serve five million people. Another of the works involves increasing the power of the Cambambe hydroelectric facility, in the same municipality, which will increase from 180MW to 700MW and be put into operation in stages during the second half of 2016.
The future Soyo combined-cycle plant, the construction of which is the responsibility of the China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC) and that will cost the Angolan state more than US$900m, will provide electricity to the capital, Luanda, and north of Angola from 2017 onwards.