Displaying items by tag: Bangladesh

Bangladesh/India: India's Star Cement has started exporting clinker to Bangladesh by river. According to a report by the Times of India, the cement producer aims to export over 50,000t/month of clinker to Bangladesh by this route.

"Exporting clinker to Bangladesh by the river will give an edge to the company to encounter the stiff competition it is likely to face from manufacturers of Southeast Asian countries, all of whom cater to 99% clinker requirement of this country," said a Star Cement official.

In a pilot project in 2012 Star Cement had started clinker exports to Bangladesh by road. The company has deals with several leading cement producers in Bangladesh to meet their clinker requirements and is planning more.

Bangladesh: Lafarge Surma Cement Ltd signed an agreement with Madina Cement Industries Ltd at a ceremony organised at the company's headquarters. Under the terms of the deal, Lafarge Surma will supply its high quality clinker to Madina Cement from its integrated plant at Chhatak to produce 
'Powercrete.' This will be subject to strict quality controls by employees of Lafarge Surma to ensure world-class quality that Lafarge Surma promises to deliver to its customers.

Furthermore the production process will follow the highest safety standards. Lafarge will shortly launch Powercrete, with the aim of strengthening its market position in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh: Seven Circle Bangladesh, manufacturer of Seven Rings Cement, is going to establish a 1.3Mt/yr cement factory in Khulna by July 2013.

"We are expecting to enhance our production capacity to 4.4Mt/yr million tonnes by 2015 and the new factory in Khulna will help us a lot to achieve our business expansion target," said Seven Circle Bangladesh's general manager of marketing and sales Asadul Haque Sufyani. The company's current annual production capacity is 1.6Mt/yr

"Since 2008, we are exporting our product in 50kg bags to different states in India. We will be able to allocate more quantity of cement for export after starting production in our new lines. At present we are giving priority to our local buyers," added Sufyani, adding that the company was involved in numerous key building projects and highway developments in the capital Dhaka.

Bangladesh: The largest ever vertical roller mill in Bangladesh's cement industry, owned by Bashundhara Group (BG), was inaugurated on Monday 12 November 2012 at a ceremony in Khulna.

Mayor of Khulna, Talukdar Abdul Khaleque, along with managing director of Bashundhara Group Sayem Sobhan and other guests inaugurated the factory. The VRM was supplied by the German cement mill manufacturer Loesche GmbH.

While addressing the ceremony, mayor Talukder Abdul Khaleque said that BG had opened a door of huge employment opportunities for the people of the region, especially in the Mongla Seaport area of Khulna Division.

The mayor added that other industrial entrepreneurs should come forward to start industrial production by following BG. He warned those yet to start industrial work at the plots allotted to them, that they would run the risk of having their space cancelled if they did not start industrial production in the near future.

Bangladesh: Hong-Kong based Shun Shing Group has announced that it intends to increase the capacity of its Bangladesh brand, Seven Rings Cement, to 4.4Mt/yr by 2015. Seven Circle Bangladesh (SCB), a subsidiary of Shun Shing Group, produces Seven Rings Cement.

SCB is also working on increasing its capacity at another plant in Khulna to 2.9Mt/yr by 2013. SCB was incorporated in Bangladesh in 2000, with an initial capacity of 0.5Mt/yr. Currently the company has a capacity of 1.6Mt/yr in the country.

Bangladesh: Six cement plants in Nowapara, in the western Jessore district of Bangladesh, have closed due to a combined crisis in operating capital, a lack of raw materials and a lack of government patronisation. The plants were part of a group of twelve established in 1997 in the Khulna Division of the country and it is now feared that the remaining six plants will be shut also. The group had a combined capacity of about 3.5t/day.

Questions had previously arisen regarding the quality of cement from the plants. According to local sources the owners of these plants were evading VAT by purchasing contraband clinker. In addition some manufacturers were using excessive amounts of fly ash, forcing them to sell their cement below the cost of production.

Subsequent to the closures local market share is being captured by King Brand, Akij, Scan and Elephant Brand cement.

Bangladesh: HeidelbergCement officially inaugurated a new cement mill at its plant in the seaport of Chittagong on 12 January 2012. The ball mill, which cost approximately US$16m to construct, has a grinding capacity of about 0.8Mt/yr. Test runs of the new mill were conducted successfully at the end of 2011 and production started in the first week of January 2012.

"We are very pleased that we are able to officially inaugurate our state-of-the-art cement mill today," said Dr Bernd Scheifele, Chairman of the Managing Board at HeidelbergCement. "Bangladesh is an interesting market for HeidelbergCement. We expect the need for high quality cement to increase significantly in the coming years, especially due to new government infrastructure projects. With the new mill we are very well prepared for this growth in demand. The investment in Bangladesh is part of our long-term strategy to expand our cement capacities in attractive emerging markets by brownfield or greenfield projects."

The IMF forecasts a GDP growth of 6.1% for Bangladesh in 2012. The country currently has one of the lowest per capita cement consumption ratios in the world, but it is also one of the fastest growing markets.

India/Bangladesh: Khaitan & Co has won Supreme Court (SC) approval for French cement company Lafarge to mine limestone in India's north-eastern region in a landmark ruling that will likely set the tone for future reforms in environmental governance. Khaitan & Co litigation partner Sanjeev Kapoor instructed senior advocates for the company, which had commenced mining activity in Meghalaya as a French-Spanish joint venture Lafarge Umiam Mining.

Lafarge successfully defended allegations of fraud and wilful concealment of the facts while contesting the case after 2010's prohibition from mining in the area. The company's project involved sending limestone across the Indo-Bangladesh border on a conveyor belt as raw material for its cement plant in Bangladesh.

"This is a landmark judgement in the context of the environment and mining, especially for projects involving use of forest land for non-forest purposes. The judgement dwells deep into many areas that were until today untouched by any judicial interpretation," said Khaitan & Co. in a statement.

The SC forest bench has upheld the decision of the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), which had granted revised environmental clearance, site clearance and stage-1 forest clearance to Lafarge. The bench, comprising chief justice S H Kapadia and justices Aftab Alam and K S Radhakrishnan dismissed the petition of 21 tribal activists under Shella Action Committee opposing Lafarge's mining activity in the forest region. The court took into consideration the principles of economic sustainability and environmental viability while laying down significant guidelines such as appointment of a 'National Regulator' to appraise projects, enforce environmental conditions and to impose penalties on polluters.

The court held that, "The word 'development' is a relative term. One cannot assume that the tribals are not aware of principles of conservation of forest. In the present case we are satisfied that limestone mining has been going on for centuries in the area and that it is an activity that is intertwined with the culture and the unique land holding and tenure system of the Nongtrai Village. On the facts of this case, we are satisfied with due diligence exercise undertaken by MoEF in the matter of forest diversion."