Displaying items by tag: China

China: China National Building Material (CNBM) says that its profit will rise ‘substantially’ in 2018. It has attributed this to rising cement prices.

Nigeria/Senegal: Aumund Group will supply equipment for projects managed by China’s Sinoma for Dangote Cement projects in Nigeria and Senegal.

For Dangote’s Obajana Line 5 and Okpella 6000t/day plants, Aumund will supply three belt bucket elevators with a capacity of 660t/hr to convey raw meal and to feed raw meal to the preheater towers at 520t/hr. Three further Aumund belt bucket elevators with a capacity of 480t/hr will convey cement to the silos. An Aumund pan conveyor with a weighing scale mechanism and a capacity of 500t/hr, running from the coolers to the clinker silos, and three further Aumund pan conveyors under the clinker silo, round off this machinery package.

Schade Lagertechnik, a subsidiary of Aumund, will also supply equipment for these plants. This includes a stacker with a capacity of 3500t/hr for Obajana and another at 2160t/hr for Okpella, as well as a portal reclaimer to operate at 800t/hr in the limestone storage of each plant. Additional stockyard equipment completes the supply package.

For Dangote’s Apapa and Onne terminal projects, Aumund Beijing will supply a double bucket elevator to convey clinker to the silos at a capacity of 1200t/hr, and several other chain bucket elevators. Elevators to convey gypsum to the bunkers will have a capacity of 720t/hr at Apapa and 480t/hr at Onne. Two 1600 Series Samson material feeders with a handling capacity of 400t/hr of clinker, two Aumund telescopic chutes and two truck loaders for clinker will also be supplied to each terminal.

Aumund has also received an order to supply a belt bucket elevator with a capacity of 300t/hr to convey cement to the new silo at the Dangote Cement Senegal Expansion Project.

China: China Resources Cement (CRC) says that its profit will rise ‘significantly’ in 2018. It has attributed this to a 29% rise year-on-year in the average price of cement in the first 11 months of 2018.

China: Miao Wei, the minister of industry and information technology, says that the government will ‘strictly prohibit’ the production capacity of new cement plants. The ban will also apply to the iron, steel and glass industries, according to Reuters and Xinhua. This latest ban will add to capacity restrictions already imposed upon the cement industry in 2018.

China: BBMG has agreed to sell its stake in seven cement companies to Jidong Cement for US$227m. It has also arranged with Jidong Cement to contribute nearly US$150m into BBMG Jidong Cement (Tangshan), a joint venture owned by the two companies. Both companies will also inject capital into each other’s subsidiaries. BBMG owns a 7% stake in Jidong Cement. Both agreements have been set up to resolve the issues of competing business between BBMG and Jidong Cement.

The seven companies that BBMG is selling to Jidong Cement are Zhuoquan BBMG Cement, Lingchuan BBMG Cement, Baoding Taihang Heyi Cement, Handan Shexian BBMG Cement, Qinyang BBMG Cement, Lanxian BBMG Cement and Xuanhua BBMG Cement. BBMG owns a 100% or majority stake in each of these companies.

China: Anhui Conch expects its net profit to rise by nearly 100% year-on-year to US$2.3bn in 2018. It has attributed the growth in profit to rising cement prices, growing operating income and effects from structural reform in the industry.

Peru’s been the place over the last week with news reports of new production capacity and its targeting as a key export market by Vietnam.

Local press reported this week that three new cement grinding plants are planned to start production in 2019. Cemento Inka plans to build a 0.6Mt/yr grinding plant at Ica near Pisco. It also plans to upgrade the kilns at its plant at Cajamarquilla near Lima. Then Mixercon, a ready-mix concrete firm, wants to spend US$20m towards building two new plants in northern Lima, also in 2019. It also has plans to open distribution centres around the capital too.

For a local industry generally dominated by local often family-controlled producers this is quite a change. The larger companies – Pacasmayo, UNACEM and Yura – normally dominate the headlines and the market here. Unsurprisingly then that Pacasmayo and Yura also have upgrades planned for their plants in 2019 too.

Changes to capacity started in late May 2018 when Salaverry-based importer Invecem was said to be buying equipment for a 0.25Mt/yr grinding plant. Then things really started moving when Unacem bought Cementos Portland (Cempor), a joint venture between Chile's Cementos Bío Bío and Brazil’s Votorantim Cimentos. The foreign companies were planning to build a plant near Lima but the project was delayed by a legal battle over environmental issues intitiated by Unacem. This was followed by Cal & Cemento Sur (Calcesur), a subsidiary of Grupo Gloria, announcing that it was going to add a new production line to its cement and lime plant in Puno.

With this level of interest in grinding plants going on it’s unsurprising that Vietnam, a major exporter of cement, has taken an interest. Imports of cement to Peru rose by 65% year-on-year to 0.94Mt in the 12 months from December 2017 to November 2018 from 0.57Mt in the same period previously. Imports of clinker rose by 37% to 0.78Mt from 0.57Mt. This compares to a rise of 21% to 0.61Mt in cement imports in 2017 and a fall of 1.2% to 0.51Mt in 2016. In the 12 months to the end of November 2018 most of that imported cement (81%) came from Vietnam followed by 14% from China and 3% from Mexico. Clinker imports have been more varied with 39% from South Korea, 31% from Vietnam, 19% from Ecuador and 11% from Japan. The general situation for the clinker producers has been a slight increase in cement production to 10Mt for the 12 months to the end of November 2018 and slightly higher increases in despatches.

So, it looks like an apparent cement demand is up in Peru and the importers are rushing to meeting demand. The question, then, is why haven’t the clinker producers announced projects to squeeze out the grinders? As mentioned above Pacasmayo and Yura have upgrades planned but nothing really large seems to be coming yet. Also, given the tough time Cempor was given by the local companies what kind of opposition are the new projects by Cemento Inka, Mixercon and Invecem likely to face? The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate is below the glory days of the 2000s when it topped 6% but it is still one of the strongest in South America with 3.8% forecast for 2019 by the World Bank. This is the country in the region to watch in 2019.

Argentina: China’s Sinoma International says that it has successfully lifted the first steel column of the pre-heater tower on a 5800t/day production line it is building at Loma Negra’s L'Amalí cement plant. The work in late December 2018 marked the start of the installation phase of the project. It is the subsidiary of China National Building Material’s (CNBM) first engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) project in South America. When the project was first announced in late 2017 it had a completion date of early 2020.

Algeria: Germany’s Aumund has received two clinker conveying equipment orders for cement plants at Zahana and Bechar. The two orders comprise 26 belt and chain bucket elevators, two bucket apron conveyors, ten pan conveyors and ten drag chain conveyors. No value for the deals has been disclosed.

The first order is for the 4500t/day Société des Ciments de Zahana (SCIZ) plant near Oran. Here three chain bucket elevators with centre distances ranging from 22.5 - 34.9m and capacities from 50 - 220t/hr will be used to convey cement and clinker. 11 belt bucket elevators (22.5 -116.1m) will convey raw meal, cement and clinker with capacities between 190 - 680t/hr. The Aumund bucket apron conveyor, with a centre distance of 61.1m and a capacity of 360t/hr, will join the five Aumund pan conveyors (18.3 - 106.8m, capacity 300 - 360t/hr) in conveying clinker. The ten Aumund drag chain conveyors with centre distances between 6.1 - 33.8m will be used in clinker dust extraction and are designed for conveying capacities from 15 - 80t/hr.

The second order is for the 3200t/day Bechar cement plant. This order was placed by China’s CBMI to Aumund Beijing with support from Aumund France. This plant will operate 15 Aumund belt and chain bucket elevators, five Aumund pan conveyors and an Aumund bucket apron conveyor for its bulk materials handling. The bucket elevators, with centre distances ranging from 11 - 102.9m, will convey raw meal, cement and clinker with capacities from 70 – 480t/hr. The five pan conveyors, with centre distances from 22.2 - 89.8m, will convey their loads at up to 480t/hr. The Aumund bucket apron conveyor in Bechar (centre distance 88.5m, capacity 200t/hr) will also convey clinker.

China: West China Cement says that it is expecting its net profit to record a ‘substantial’ increase year-on-year in 2018. It has attributed this to a rise in average cement prices. Subsequently, its sales revenue rose by 28% year-on-year for the first eleven months of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017.