Displaying items by tag: Bulgaria

Europe: Holcim's cement and clinker sales fell by 10.5% in Croatia and by 5.4% in Serbia in 2014. In Croatia, sales prices rose by 0.5%, while in Serbia, they rose by 0.3%. In contrast, Holcim's cement and clinker sales rose by 7.8% in Romania and by 2.4% in Bulgaria. In Romania domestic prices fell by 1.2%, while they rose by 1.1% in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria: Italcementi has launched its upgraded cement plant in Bulgaria, which is operated by its subsidiary, Devnya Cement. The upgrades will allow Italcementi to meet domestic demand and export demand from Eastern Europe.

"The new plant will enable us to respond to demand from the domestic market and from the neighbouring areas in Eastern Europe," said Italcementi Group chief executive officer Carlo Pesenti in a statement.

The revamp of the cement plant, located near the port of Varna in eastern Bulgaria, began in April 2012 and invovled an overall investment of more than Euro160m. Once the current test and commissioning stage has been completed on all the systems, the cement plant will be fully operational in early 2015. The new facility can produce around 4000t/day of clinker and about 1.5Mt/yr of cement.

The completion of the project will allow the group to consolidate its operations in Bulgaria, where it also runs the Vulkan grinding center in Dimitrovgrad, and boost its export capacity thanks to its proximity to the port of Varna West, which gives access to all the countries on the Black Sea and on the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Italcementi Group entered the Bulgarian market in 1998 with the acquisition of Devnya Cement, followed in 1999 by the acquisition of Vulkan Cement. In 2013, the Group reported revenue of Euro59m in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria: Bulgarian cement producer Devnya Cement plans to launch a new Euro160m production line with a cement production capacity of 1.5Mt/yr in September 2014. The plant, which is near the Black Sea port city of Varna, currently has a cement production capacity of 2.5Mt/yr. Devnya Cement was acquired by Italcementi in 1998.

Bulgaria: Italian cement group Italcimenti will install a new 4000t/day cement production line at its Bulgarian subsidiary Denya Cement. The company is investing Euro160m and the completion date is scheduled to be 2015.

Bulgaria: The Bulgarian unit of Swiss building materials maker Holcim has announced the construction of a new waste recycling installation worth Euro6.5m at its cement production site in the village of Beli Izvor, in the country's northwest. Some Euro1.6m the total investment costs were covered by the EU-funded operational programme Competitiveness, according to Holcim Bulgaria.

The recycling plant for sorted solid household waste will increase the volume of recovered combustible waste by more than 35,000t/yr, which Global Cement infers may be included in the plant's cement kiln as an alternative fuel. With the launch of the waste recycling installation, Holcim Bulgaria completed a six-year investment programme worth Euro80m that targeted technological upgrades, an increase in production capacity and the mitigation of environmental risks.

Bulgaria: Devnya Cement has announced that it has officially launched the construction phase of a Euro160m project to upgrade its production facilities. The company has signed up Chinese turnkey cement plant builder CBMI, a subsidiary of Sinoma International Engineering, as a general contractor for a new 1.5Mt/yr cement production line, which is set to begin operation in early 2015.

The upgrade represents a significant step up for the company, a subsidiary of Italy's Italcementi, which currently has a capacity of just 2Mt/yr.

Bulgaria: Bulgarian cement maker Vulkan Cement has announced that it will temporarily shut down its kilns from the beginning of 2012 due to flagging demand and imports from neighbouring countries that are flooding the market. The move has been prompted by a continuous drop observed in the cement market during the last three years.

Vulkan Cement also cited Bulgaria's obligations as an EU member state stemming from CO₂ emissions regulations and from REACH, the European Community Regulation on chemicals and their safe use, as key factors that directly affect cement production costs. It said that the temporary work stoppage would allow the company to cope with the economic downturn and properly secure its chances of a solid recovery.

The Vulkan Cement plant will continue operating as a grinding centre during the shutdown of its kilns and will receive clinker from its sister plant, Devnya Cement.