Displaying items by tag: Coal

US: Rapid City Fire Department crews quickly extinguished a potentially dangerous fire inside a coal hopper at the GCC Dacotah Cement Plant on 21 November 2017.
The plant suffered little damage and no injuries were reported. According to fire department spokesman Jim Bussell, crews attended the plant at 07:40.

The first crew found dark smoke coming from inside a building containing the coal hopper. Due to the inherent volatility of coal dust, the firefighters made a careful entry into the building and quickly dealt with the fires. Bussell said that GCC Dacotah's comprehensive emergency response plan, implemented after a review by both the cement plant and fire department officials in mid 2016, helped to minimise the effects of the fire. "This open dialogue and communication was key to a safe, quick response and resolution of the incident," Bussell said in a release.

Bussell added that GCC Dacotah expected no disruption to plant operations because the fire was in a part of the plant that is in the middle of a US$90m expansion project.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Pakistan: Rising coal prices are presenting a risk to the profit margins of cement manufactures in Pakistan. It is expected that this sustained rise in coal prices will increase the cost of cement production in the short-term.

Major contributory factors to the higher coal prices include China’s imposition to cut production to 276 days to reduce the supply glut since October 2016, while extra safety checks are resulting in tightened domestic coal supplies in the country. Moreover, tropical storms in the Atlantic basin and floods in Australia and Indonesia are giving rise to logistical issues with coal supply. Nuclear outages in France are driving extra competition for coal.
To add to the already worsened supply situation, South Africa`s National Union of Mine workers (NUM), which represents 70% of employees in the coal mining sector, started a strike on 19 November 2017 over unresolved wage disputes.

India: Shree Cement has won a coal linkage auction in Chhattisgarh. The coal will be used at the company's captive power plant at its Raipur cement plant.

India: ACC’s cement sales rose by 18% year-on-year to 5.96Mt in the third quarter of 2017 from 5.07Mt in the same period of 2016 as its Jamul and Sindri plants have come online. Its sales volumes increased by 10% to 19.3Mt in the first nine months of the year. Net sales rose by 16.5% to US$1.46m in the first three quarters and its net profit after tax rose by 27% to US$110m.

Despite its positive result the cement producer warned against rising import costs from higher slag prices and fuel costs. Higher usage of imported and auctioned coal, caused by a limited availability of linkage coal, adversely affected fuel costs. However, the company said that it partly mitigated this through improved raw material mixtures and fuel mix optimisation.

Zambia: Dangote Cement Zambia has contracted Zambia Railways to transport 2000t/month of cement and 500t/month of coal. Zambia Railways is transporting cement from Ndola to Lusaka and coal from Batoka to Ndola on behalf of Dangote Cement, according to the Times of Zambia newspaper. The cement producer operates a 1.5Mt/yr integrated plant in the country with 1200 employees and a fleet of over 500 trucks. It also runs a 30MW coal power plant.

Thailand: Siam Cement Group (SCG) has signed a deal to import 155,000t of coal from the US for its cement plants in Thailand and elsewhere in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Kalin Sarasin, a senior SCG executive and chairman of the Thai Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade, made the announcement following an official visit to the US by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, according to the Nation newspaper.

SCG will buy 100,000t of US coal in the first contract and a second contract will be for 55,000t to test the quality. Subsequently, the cement producer may buy more coal. At present, SCG imports around 6Mt/yr coal from Indonesia and Australia. The US coal will be used to substitute some of the Indonesian supply, which has been imported due to a higher demand for coal for power stations.

Zambia: A contract with LafageHolcim has boosted Zambia Railways freight rate by 28% year-on-year to 318,000t in the first half of 2017 from 247,000t in the same period of 2016. The railway company attributed the increase to a new contract with LafargeHolcim, according to the Zambia Daily Mail newspaper. It also cited rising coal imports from Zimbabwe for ‘booming’ cement production in Zambia, as well as more business in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Turkey: Germany’s Aunde has ordered four vertical roller mills from Loesche for a new cement plant being built in Soma. The order includes one 350t/hr raw material mill, one 30t/hr coal or 27t/hr petcoke mill and two 150t/hr clinker or granulated blast furnace slag mills. The scope of delivery also includes additional components such as water injection, cyclones, slide gates and rotary feeders as well as a spare parts package for the next two years.

Ethiopia: Requests from 20 cement producers have led the Ethiopian Petroleum Supply Enterprise (EPSE) to start a tendering process to procure coal. Four international firms have reached the preliminary technical evaluation stage of the tender to procure 0.7Mt of coal, according to the Addis Fortune newspaper. The majority of the coal, around 0.6Mt, will be imported for the cement producers with the remainder going to steel and ceramics producers. The process excludes Derba Cement, which has its own arrangements to import coal in place. EPSE is expected to award the bid by the end of July 2017.

Ethiopia imports over 0.75Mt/yr of coal, of which more than 75% is for cement production. More than half of the energy consumption of the country’s cement plants is derived from coal.

Zambia: President Edgar Lungu has launched a US$548m cement plant project to be built in Ndola by the government and China’s Sinoconst. The plant will be a joint venture between the government-owned Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Investment Holdings (ZCCM) and Sinoconst, according to Reuters. The project is intended to diversify the country’s industries away from copper mining. The unit will have a cement production capacity of 5000t/day and will use two 20MW captive coal-power plants.