Displaying items by tag: Electricity

Cameroon: The electricity supply in parts of central and southern Cameroon has been disrupted whilst a substation at Nomayos near Yaoundé is connected to the main network. The disruption is necessary ahead of the commissioning of Cimencam’s Nomayos cement grinding plant, which is scheduled for the first quarter of 2019, according to Business in Cameroon. The new plant will have a production capacity of 0.5Mt/yr. It has an investment of around US$40m.

Nepal: Udayapur Cement’s production is being reduced due to power cuts. The plant has a production capacity of 800t/day of clinker but at times it has been reduced to only just 100t/day, according to the Republica newspaper. The cement producer says that the cuts have cost it over US$0.4m.

The electricity outages have also damaged machinery such as gears in cement-packaging equipment and raised general costs through repeated start-ups. The unit suffered 62 power cuts from 15 January to 2 February 2019 lasting a total of 23 hours. As many as six stoppages in a single day have been reported.

The Nepal Electricity Authority supplies electricity to the plant. It has blamed the ‘incompetence’ of officials at a substation.

Sweden: HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary Cementa has completed a feasibility study into electrifying its cement plant at Slite in Gotland as part of its Cemzero project. A report from the first phase of the project has been submitted to the Swedish Energy Agency.

The study found that using electricity to supply heat during the clinker production process is possible using plasma technology, although this needs to be tested on a larger scale. Using an electrified process was found to be competitive compared to other options for achieving high reductions in carbon emission. The production cost of cement would be doubled approximately but the research suggested that this might only mean a small percentage increase to the end cost of a building or an infrastructure project. Finally, the study reported that any future electrification of the Slite plant would work well with a planned expansion to wind turbine generation at the site. It would improve the energy balance and reduce the maximum power surplus that might occur.

Cementa and energy company Vatenfall will now look at how to build a pilot plant.

Chile: Cementos Polpaico has blamed a loss of US$3.2m in 2018 on changing an electricity supply contract. Changing the contract to move to a new supplier, Colbún, led to a negative financial impact of around US$12.5m. Its sales rose by 23% year-on-year to US$249m in 2018 from US$202m in 2017. Its sales volumes of cement grew by 10% to 1.35Mt from 1.23Mt. Despite the overall loss its earnings before interest taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 51% to US$18.7m from US$12.4m.

Kyrgyzstan: Commissioning of the Kemin cement plant in Chuy region has been delayed due to electricity supply issues. Members of parliament have been discussing the delayed opening of the plant, according to the Central Asia News agency. The Chinese-backed plant project held its ground-breaking ceremony in mid-2014. It had an investment of US$120m. The unit has reportedly been built but it cannot be commissioned due to technical issues relating to its electricity supply, despite being situation close to the Datka Kemin power station. A working group was created in December 2018 to work with investors to solve the problems.

UK: Cemex says that it will use 100% renewable electricity at supplied sites in a partnership with energy, services and regeneration group Engie. Engie has been providing electricity to over 150 Cemex UK sites for over 10 years, also supplying gas to 33 of these sites. The current contract is to be extended for a further 12 months. All of the electricity supplied to the sites will be from 100% renewable energy sources including wind energy.

“Cement manufacture is inherently energy-intensive and we work hard to minimise energy consumption within the process constraints. The switch to electricity from renewable sources is playing a key role in our carbon reduction strategy,” said Martin Hills, Head of Energy and Carbon at Cemex in the UK.

Cemex is also using Engie’s demand side services, such as load management to avoid peak tariffs and rapid frequency response, which generates extra revenue for Cemex UK. Engie manages all contractual requirements with National Grid on Cemex UK’s behalf.

Turkey: Nihat Özdemir, the chair of Limak Holding and president of the Turkish Cement Manufacturers’ Association (TÇMB), has reassured the construction industry that the price of cement will not rise too sharply in 2019. He denied that the price would rise by up to 40%, according to the Hürriyet Daily News newspaper. However, he did confirm that prices would increase due to growing input costs and negative foreign currency exchange effects. Özdemir said that electricity costs had risen by 76%, coal by 182% and petroleum coke by 170%.

In late December 2018 the Construction Contractors Confederation (İMKON) complained about an expected 40% price rise in cement products and it called on the government to intervene. The Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (MÜSİAD) has also issued a similar warning.

Spain: Jesús Ortiz, the president of Oficemen the Spanish cement association, forecasts that exports of cement will drop by 20% year-on-year in 2019. He has blamed the situation on high electricity prices, according to the El Economista newspaper. He predicts that the local industry will have a capacity utilisation rate of 53% in 2019. He added that residential house construction was growing, but that the share of non-residential building had fallen.

Sweden: Cementa says it is has supply problems delivering its Bascement product. The delivery issues have been caused by frequent power cuts to its Slite plant, weather-related delays to its shipping schedule and high cement demand. The subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement said that it was keeping its customers regularly updated.

Uzbekistan: Cement production has fallen by 4.7% year-on-year to 5.6Mt in the first nine months of 2018 from 5.9Mt in the same period in 2017. The decline has been blamed on rising gas and electricity prices, according to the Trend News Agency. Energy prices have risen by at least 60% so far in 2018. 4.5Mt of production, or over 80%, was sold through the Uzbek Commodity Exchange.