Displaying items by tag: Denmark

Denmark: FLSmidth’s has grown its services activities slightly to Euro997m in the first nine months of 2016. Other than this revenue, profit and order intake have all fallen. Revenue has dropped by 12% year-on-year to Euro1.7bn, profit by 15% to Euro45.7m and order intake by 7% to Euro1.85bn. The engineering company has said it will take corrective actions through site closures, reducing management, optimising its supply chain and making procurement savings.

"The market for new cement capacity continues to be characterised by pricing pressure. That said, the pipeline of potential projects is encouraging, and current tendering activity gives reason to be cautiously optimistic about the mid-term outlook," said Group CEO Thomas Schulz.

Denmark: FLSmidth’s sales revenue from its cement segment has fallen by 39% year-on-year to Euro199m in the first half of 2016 from Euro287m in the same period in 2015. However, its gross order intake increased by 67% to Euro388m from Euro232m although this fell year-on-year by 33% in the second quarter of the year. The industrial engineering supplier cited ‘widespread’ geopolitical crises as hampering incoming investment.

"Mining companies and most cement producers are postponing large investments and spending. They are focussing on equipment and critical spare parts directly linked to operations, as well as on services that can help to solve immediate problems and improve productivity. Our service activities are well positioned to benefit from these market conditions and we will continue enhancing our customer service offerings to maintain our competitive edge. In the light of a weak market outlook, we will continue with internal cost-reduction activities, such as supply chain and procurement optimisation, as well as management delayering. To further strengthen our revenue, we will invest in increasing our sales capacity," said Group CEO Thomas Schulz.

Specifically for the cement industry FLSmidth said that its priorities vary in different locations with cement producers in North America wanting to maximise production, producers in South America wanting to make cost savings, producers in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and southern India wanting to use cost efficiency to combat production overcapacity and producers in Pakistan, Algeria Kenya, northern India and northern Europe wanting to minimise downtime and increase production.

Overall, FLSmidth reported that its revenue fell by 19% to Euro1.06bn from Euro1.31bn. Its order intake remained stable at Euro1.29bn. Profit fell by 65% to Euro22.9m from Euro65.3m.

Denmark: FLSmidth has released ECS/ProcessExpert 8.3, the latest version of its process control system. Following installation and testing at four sites, it is now available for different cement and mineral plant applications, including as a free commercial release to all existing ECS/ProcessExpert version eight customers. The update improves a number of features and benefits including easier transitions for cement recipes.

"Some of the advanced techniques used by the new system include model predictive control and fuzzy logic rules. These allow it to continuously monitor the plant's process and quality parameters and continuously compute new control set points with more speed and accuracy than a human operator," said FLSmidth's Global Product Line Manager for Process Optimisation, King Becerra.

Other benefits offered by the update include a full decision tree on the front page of the system to help operators understand controller actions better and enhanced full plots on the front page to allow operators to see actuator actions and measure responses to a given action from the main page.

Russia: Eurocement Group has said that it is targeting exports of cement at Denmark and the UK. Company chief executive officer Mikhail Skorokhod said that ‘contracts in Denmark and Britain are forthcoming’ in an interview with PricewaterhouseCoopers that was recorded ahead of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Exports by Eurocement to Finland and the Baltic states have been taking place since the end of 2015 with a gradual increase in sales volumes. In Finland the cement producer has a market share of 5%. Skorokhod added that the devaluation of the Russian Ruble has opened up export opportunities for the company. However, the company has not disclosed the volume of its exports, according to Interfax.

The overall volume of cement exports from Russia in January to April 2016 reached 230,000t with production of 13.6Mt, according to data from the Union of Cement Producers.

Denmark/US: FLSmidth and GE (formerly General Electric) have announced a partnership to create digital solutions for increasing productivity in the cement and minerals industries. The new solutions developed on GE's cloud-based Predix platform will use FLSmidth's knowledge of cement and minerals processing along with GE's industrial application of networked physical objects (the internet of things) to increase the productivity of connected equipment units in the cement and mining industry.

FLSmidth will build their solutions on top of the Predix platform with applications for managing process flows. This should allow customers to leverage process data and analytics for monitoring, benchmarking their performance and predicting maintenance of their equipment.

"Cement and mining companies already collect significant volumes of data, but currently, only a fraction of it is used. This will be the first available solution for a full coherent process monitoring to leverage optimisation solutions offered by a full service provider like FLSmidth," said FLSmidth’s head of Global Research & Development Jens Almdal.

Algeria/Denmark: FLSmidth has signed a Euro200m engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with SARL Amouda Engineering for the supply of a greenfield cement plant. The plant will be located in El Beida, Laghouat.

The order includes engineering, equipment supplies, construction, commissioning and training. Once completed, the cement plant will have a capacity of 6000t/day.

"EPC solutions are increasingly requested by the industry and we are very happy that SARL Amouda Engineering chose FLSmidth as the preferred supplier based on a very close collaboration and our extensive knowledge of the region,” said Group Executive Vice President of the Cement Division Per Mejnert Kristensen.

Egypt: Denmark's FLSmidth has signed a contract with Arabian Cement Company (ACC) for operation and maintenance of the production lines at their cement plant near Suez. The contact covers five years of operation and maintenance of two production lines with a capacity of 6000t/day each. FLSmidth has been operating and maintaining the two lines since 2008 and 2010, respectively. Both lines were built by FLSmidth.

The scope of supply includes operation and maintenance of two clinker production lines, one coal mill, two alternative fuel handling and dosing installations, four cement mills and six packing lines. The operation and maintenance of the mills and packing lines is an addition to the current scope.

"Arabian Cement Company was our first operation and maintenance customer and we have supplied operation and maintenance services at their plant since 2008. The demonstrated performance over the past nearly eight years was the main motive for ACC to expand and continue the cooperation with us. The prolongation of the operation and maintenance contract illustrates the strength of our productivity enhancing 'Design-Build-Operate'-model, where we offer to design, build and operate customers' plants," said Group Executive Vice President, Cement Division, Per Mejnert Kristensen.

No value for the deal was disclosed. The contract will contribute beneficially to FLSmidth's earnings until the contract expires in early 2021.

Denmark: FLSmidth has been awarded a contract for process and quality optimisation of 17 cement plants acquired by the CRH Group in 2015. FLSmidth's ability to deliver the large number of systems within 14 months was a factor in the order.

The order is the largest advanced process optimisation project awarded to FLSmidth and includes process optimisation of 12 kilns and 40 grinding mills, as well as quality optimisation of 14 raw mills. In addition, the order includes a service agreement, covering all 66 applications, where FLSmidth will provide support and on-going remote monitoring and optimisation by its process specialists.

The contract uses FLSmidth's ECS/ProcessExpert and QCX/BlendExpert products. The ECS/ProcessExpert system aims to improve plant performance by stabilising the process of the plant, optimising the production, managing and correcting process disruptions and minimising wear on plant equipment.
The QCX/BlendExpert system controls the proportioning of raw material feed to raw mills to obtain the desired chemical product quality with respect to chemical constraints, process constraints and material costs.

CRH is the third largest building materials supplier in the world and has more than doubled its cement production volume due to the recent acquisition of 34 plants (including grinding stations), divested as part of the Lafarge/Holcim merger in 2015. Many of the plants are already using optimisation systems, but CRH chose to standardise on FLSmidth's ECS/ProcessExpert and QCX/BlendExpert solutions.

Iran/Denmark: Denmark's FLSmidth has selected Iranian Ehdas San'at Company as its representative for the implementation of projects and services in Iran.

Managing Director of Ehdas San'at Morteza Hashempour and the Director of FLSmidth, Thomas Schulz, have signed a scientific, technical and economic cooperation memorandum of understanding to cooperate in the cement industry in Tehran. Ehdas San'at has agreed to a close cooperation with FLSmidth in the field of producing related equipment and constructing new projects, as well as the optimisation and reconstruction of existing cement plant.

Following the recent agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) group of powers in Vienna on 14 June 2015, Iran has been inundated with offers from foreign companies. Top Iranian officials have repeatedly said that they accept offers only from foreign applicants that make investments in Iran and share technological know-how with the country.

Earlier in September 2015, Iranian Deputy Energy Minister Alireza Daemi said that companies from several European and Arab countries have declared deep interest in broadening ties with Iran in the water and power industries. "Companies from Austria, Germany, France, Italy, as well as some Arab countries, have voiced readiness to finance projects in various sectors in Iran," said Daemi. "We seek to increase productivity and efficiency in the domestic power sector by exchanging technological experience and knowledge with foreigners."

Denmark: Marius Jacques Kloppers and Rob Smith have accepted to be nominated as new members of the Board of Directors of FLSmidth. They will be nominated at the company's next Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 5 April 2016.

Marius Jacques Kloppers, aged 53 and a joint Australian-South African citizen, is the former CEO of the mining company, BHP Billiton. Rob Smith, aged 50 and a German-American citizen, is Senior Vice President and General Manager, EAME of AGCO.

Current member of the Board of Directors, Martin Ivert, has decided not to stand for re-election at the next AGM.