Displaying items by tag: China

China: Austria’s Semperit has closed its Sempertrans Best (Shandong) Belting plant in Shandong. The decision was made as part of review of the group’s production footprint. The plant had a higher margin than other sites. The closure is also expected to reduce the complexity of operations at the group level. 120 employees will be affected and the shutdown is expected to burden the group’s earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) by Euro10m in 2018.

The groups subsidiary in Shandong was founded by Semperit as a joint venture with the state-owned energy company Wang Chao Coal & Electricity Group in 2010. The Chinese partner currently holds a 16.1% stake. The production site manufactures textile and steel cord belts and has served the export markets and the Chinese market so far.

China: Anhui Conch has suspended production at three of its production lines at the cement plant run by its Tongling Conch subsidiary at Gusheng in Anhui province. The suspension has followed the temporary closure of a pier used by the plant in late May 2018 in accordance with new government regulations on drinking water supply and pollution.

Use of the pier has been suspended as it is close to the Tongling Water Treatment Plant. The pier is used to export cement and clinker products from the unit and bring in raw materials such as coal. The temporary suspension of the plant’s production lines will reduce its clinker production capacity by 58% to just under 9Mt/yr from 15Mt/yr.

The cement producer has defended its environmental record, pointing out that the pier was approved with all the necessary licences and environmental approvals in 1987. Construction of the water treatment plant started in 1992.

Clinker products produced by Tongling Conch are mainly sold to Anhui Conch’s subsidiaries, including cement grinding plants along the Yangtze River and on the coast. The company plans to source clinker from other plants to continue supporting the affected grinding plants.

China: China Resources Cement (CRC) has said that it expects its profit attributable to the owners for the six months ending 30 June 2018 to significantly increase compared to the corresponding period of 2017. The expected growth was primarily attributable to the higher selling prices of cement products during the period, which rose by 33.4% year-on-year.

Germany/China: Siemens has signed 10 agreements with Chinese companies, including China Resources Cement, to support the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Other companies it has struck deals with include China Gezhouba Group Corporation International Engineering, Guangdong Yuedian Group, China National Chemical Engineering Group, China Railway Construction and China Civil Engineering Construction.

"As a long-term and well-established partner of China and its industries, we support the call of the Belt and Road Initiative and take another solid step forward on a larger scale and a wider scope", said Joe Kaeser, President and chief executive officer (CEO) of Siemens, witnessing the signing taking place during the BRI Summit in Beijing. He added that the BRI was a ‘wise and powerful’ for force for accelerating infrastructure development already in participating countries.

Cambodia: The Battambang Conch Cement Company has officially inaugurated its US$230m plant in Rattanak district, Battambang province. The unit has a production capacity of 5000t/day, according to the Phnom Penh Post newspaper. The company intends to supply cement to Pursat, Pailin, Banteay Meanchey and Siem Reap provinces. The plant is a joint venture between China’s Conch International Holdings and local cement firm Battambang KT Cement.

Following the opening of the new unit Cambodia has a cement production capacity of 7Mt/yr from four plants. The country has six licenced cement plants including Kampot Cement, Cambodia Cement Chakrey Ting, Mong Insee Cement Corporation, Thai Boon Rong Cement, and Southern Cement Cambodia. Thai Boon Rong Cement, and Southern Cement Cambodia are projects that are currently being built.

Ukraine: China’s Anhui Conch has discussed building a cement plant in Odessa with Anatoliy Urbansky, the chairman of the Odessa Regional Council. Delegates from the General Consulate of China in Odessa and the Ukrainian branch of China Metallurgical Construction Engineering Group attended the meeting as well, according to Interfax. Anhui Conch is also considering building a construction materials park and investing in tourism in the region.

Nepal: Hongshi-Shivam Cement has started trial production at its new plant near Dumkibaas in Nawalparasi district. The joint venture between Nepal’s Shivam Holdings and Hong Kong Red Lion Cement No 3, a subsidiary of China’s Hongshi Group, plans to start commercial production by the end of June 2018, according to the Kathmandu Post. The Chinese company owns a 70% stake in the joint venture. The unit has a production capacity of 6000t/day.

In September 2017, the Investment Board of Nepal had signed a US$359m project investment agreement with Hongshi-Shivam Cement to build the plant. A 10km road was built to connect the site to the main local highway and another 22km road was built to link up a limestone quarry at Palpa. The company plans to double the unit’s production capacity to 12,000t/day by 2020.

China: Song Zhiping will step down as the director and the chairman of the board of directors of China National Building Material (CNBM). He will leave the posts at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) in mid-June 2018. He will remain as chairman, and secretary of the Party Committee, of China National Building Material Group, the major shareholder of CNBM. Song Zhiping was appointed as chairman of the board of directors in 2005. Since then the company has become one of the largest building materials manufacturers in the world.

Other personnel changes include the departure of Guo Chaomin as director of the company and Xu Weibing will leave as supervisor and the chairman of the supervisory committee. Guo Chaomin has originally appointed as a non-executive director in 2011.

Proposed staff to be elected at the AGM include Peng Jianxin as executive director of the company, Xu Weibing, Shen Yungang and Fan Xiaoyan as non-executive directors and Li Xinhua and Guo Yanming as supervisors of the company.

UK: The UK Quality Ash Association (UKQAA) has appointed Tarmac’s Allan Everett as the association’s new chair, taking over from Power Minerals’ Ivan Skidmore. Everett will be joined by Richard Boult, who has also been announced as the UKQAA’s new Technical Committee Chair. Boult is Commercial Technical Manager at Cemex UK. He will work with UKQAA’s Technical Committee members to develop and assess technical projects exploring new sources and uses for quality ash.

The UKQAA is an industry association for the use of quality ash in construction and engineering applications and represents a range of members from across the construction supply chain.

Russia: An investment deal has been signed between the Government of Bashkortostan, the Sichuan-Sibay Industrial Park and Jiunghe Sichuan Environmental Protection Company to build a 1.8Mt/yr cement plant in Sibay. The project has a cost of Euro168m, according to the RBC News Agency. Once operational the unit is expected to create around 200 jobs. The project as orignally scheduled to open in 2018 but construction work at the site has not started yet. Further repoting by the Russian Construction trade magazine says that the general contractor for the project will be Sinoma.