Displaying items by tag: Bolivia

Bolivia: Soboce (Sociedad Boliviana de Cemento) has inaugurated a new vertical grinding mill at its Viache integrated plant. Together with its other integrated plants at Oruro and Tarija and a grinding plant at Santa Cruz the company now has a cement production capacity of 2.9Mt/yr, according to the Diario Pagina Siete newspaper. The upgrade cost US$85m. Soboce ordered an OK 36-4 vertical roller mill from Denmark’s FLSmidth for the project. To coincide with the new mill the company will also launch ‘Viacha LP12 Insuperable,’ a new cement product.

Bolivia: Empresa Publica Productiva Cementos de Bolivia’s (ECEBOL) new 1.3Mt/yr plant at Caracollo in Oruro is scheduled to start operations in the first half of 2019. A consortium of Sacyr, Imasa and Polysius are working on the US$244m project, according to the La Patria newspaper. A US$2m electrical sub-station is also being built to support the plant.

Bolivia: Fábrica Nacional de Cemento (Fancesa) has increased its monthly sales target following local strikes in Chuquisaca. The company estimates that it lost US$6.95m in sales during the unrest, according to the Correo del Sur newspaper. It doesn’t intend to cut the cost of cement in Santa Cruz but it will give away a limited amount of free cement bags. Fancesa also plans to start selling bulk cement through concrete firms in the city.

Bolivia: Residents near the Potosí cement plant being built by Empresa Publica Productiva Cementos de Bolivia (ECEBOL) are querying the project. They say that they never signed the paperwork to transfer land to accommodate the facility, according to the El Potosí newspaper. However, they say they are not opposing the project. They merely want preferential treatment such as compensation for old people that will be affected by the project and agreements for transport and jobs for local people.

Bolivia/Paraguay: Bolivia’s Fábrica Nacional de Cemento (Fancesa) is planning to build a new cement grinding plant and terminal near the border with Paraguay. The project is budgeted at US$16m and it may be built as a joint venture, according to the Correo del Sur newspaper. The cement producer is also about to deliver its first consignment to Paraguay.

Bolivia: Itacamba plans exports of 119,000t of cement to Paraguay and Argentina in 2018. It will send over 60,000t to Argentina alone. It will also begin exports to Paraguay. Itacamba exported 4000t to Argentina and 158,000t of clinker to Paraguay in 2017.

Bolivia: Empresa Publica Productiva Cementos de Bolivia’s (Ecebol) new plant at Caracollo in Oruro is set to open by the end of 2018. Government minister Eugenio Rojas said that the 1.3Mt/yr plant would start testing in September 2018, according to La Jornada newspaper. The project had a budget of US$244m.

FLSmidth revealed this week that Cooperativa Boliviana de Cemento, Industrias y Servicios (COBOCE) has ordered a cement mill for its Irpa Irpa plant near Cochabamba. The Danish engineering firm was pleased to note that with the sale it has now delivered mills to three of the country’s five producers. Other recent orders include supplying an OK 36-4 mill to Sociedad Boliviana de Cemento’s (SOBOCE) Viacha cement plant, announced in early 2016, and a sale of a complete integrated production line at Sucre to Fábrica Nacional de Cemento (FANCESA) in late 2016.

These order reveal slow but steady growth in the local industry in recent years. However, a slowdown so far in 2017 suggests that the market is changing. National Institute of Statistics of Bolivia (INE) data shows that sales in the local market broke down in 2016 into a 42% sales share for SOBOCE, 25% for FANCESA, 19% for COBOCE, 8% for Yura and 6% for Itacamba. This changed somewhat in the first quarter of 2017 with a reduction in the sales of SOBOCE and Yura. Sales in the country are concentrated in the departments of Chuquisca, La Paz and Cochabamba, which held 70% of cement sales in 2016.

Graph 1: Cement production and sales in Bolivia, 2012 – 2017. Source: National Institute of Statistics of Bolivia.

Annual cement sales in Bolivia have been growing consistently since 2001. Financial services company Pacific Credit Rating placed average annual sales growth at 7.72% from 1998 to 2016. In 2016 sales reached 3.7Mt. Graph 1 shows a continuation of this trend although the first half of 2017 has been weaker than 2016. COBOCE blamed the reverse in 2017 on reduced local government spending on infrastructure projects and poor weather. The producer was expecting sales to grow by 6 – 8% as a whole for 2017. However, on the basis of the figures for July and August 2017 this is not looking likely. Sales for the two months dropped by 2.5% year-on-year to 0.64Mt. A representative of FANCESA later blamed the market change on a reduction in sales supporting the construction of tall buildings in the country’s key markets as customers switched to buying ‘random’ volumes.

Sure enough local producers have started to complain about foreign exporters damaging their trade. A union head in Chuquisaca called for cement and clinker imports by Yura from Peru to be banned and concerns have been raised about concessions offered to Itacamba, a joint venture between Spain’s Cementos Molins, Brazil’s Votorantim Cement and Camba Cement. President Evo Morales inaugurated this company’s new plant in Yacuses, Santa Cruz in early 2017. The niggles about foreign exports to Bolivia seem counter-intuitive given that the country is landlocked and it has the world’s highest capital city above sea level. Usually, markets with nearby ports are most at risk from clinker and cement imports. Yet, Itacamba was planning exports to Argentina in November so the import and export markets via road and river links can’t be discounted.

Cement sales may be down so far in 2017 but overall the wider economy appears to be in rude health. After a strong decade of growth the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate has fallen each year since 2014, but it was still 4.3% in 2016, one of the highest in South America. If that kind of growth persists it seems unlikely that the cement industry will have trouble for long.

Bolivia: Cooperativa Boliviana de Cemento, Industrias y Servicios (COBOCE) has ordered an OK 43-4 vertical cement mill from FLSmidth for its Irpa Irpa plant near Cochabamba. The unit will have a production capacity of 130t/hr. The order includes a complete range of equipment from mill feeding bins, grinding and cement transport. FLSmidth will also supply equipment from its product brands, such as planetary gear units from FLSmidth MAAG Gear, fabric filters from FLSmidth Airtech, a control system and plant automation from FLSmidth Automation.

“We are proud to deliver the first cement vertical roller mill to COBOCE making it the third out of five Bolivian suppliers choosing our cement vertical roller mill technology. This order underlines FLSmidth’s strong position in Bolivia,” said Per Mejnert Kristensen, Group Executive Vice President, Cement Division.

Argentina/Bolivia: Bolivia’s Itacamba is preparing to send a second batch of cement to Argentina. It sent 4000t earlier in the year and now intends to send the same amount again, according to the El Día newspaper. The company expects to export 0.16Mt of clinker with a value of US$9m in 2017. Cement exports are expected to reach a value of US$2m. Itacamba already dispatches clinker to Argentina and it has been sending both clinker and cement to Paraguay.