Displaying items by tag: FLSmidth

Denmark: FLSmidth has predicted a 55% year-on-year decline in earnings before interest, taxation and amortisation (EBITA) in the first half of 2020 to Euro48.2m from Euro107m. Sales are Euro1.12bn, down by 15% from Euro1.33bn, and order intake was Euro1.33bn, down by 7% from1.42bn. Net debt is expected to have declined by 15% to Euro309m from Euro363m.

The company said, “Across all regions, the mining industry and especially the cement industry have been negatively affected by the pandemic. Even in the regions with easing of lockdowns and mobility restrictions, it is yet unclear how our customers’ spending patterns will advance. Visibility remains low and our guidance remains suspended.”

Rwanda’s newest cement grinding plant is set to start commissioning at a great time. Last week Milbridge Group subsidiary Prime Cement said that its 0.6Mt/yr grinding plant in Musanze, Northern Province was preparing to start up in August 2020. This week the main local producer, Cimerwa, announced that it was setting standardised cement prices in an attempt to control speculation in the market following a shortage. According to local press, spikes in prices have been caused by an urgent supply tender from the Ministry of Education, which has started a large-scale project to build over 20,000 classrooms. Prime Cement is unlikely to make a difference to this particular shortage but its timing is spot on.

Graph 1: Cement production capacity/population of East African countries. Source: Global Cement Magazine & Global Cement Directory 2020.

Cement price surges in land-locked African countries crying out for construction materials are not new but it’s always illuminating to review how the situation is changing. Rwanda’s sole 0.6Mt/yr integrated plant is run by Cimerwa, a subsidiary of South Africa-based PPC, near Bugarama in the south-west of the country, close to the borders with Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Burundi. The new grinding plant is located in the north-west near the borders with DRC and Uganda. It will join another grinding plant run by Kenya’s ARM Cement at Kigali.

PPC’s operation in Rwanda has performed well in comparison to a poor market back home in South Africa. For its financial half year to September 2019 Cimerwa reported revenue growth of 28% year-on-year to US$31.2m due to a 20% increase in sales volumes. Earnings rose even more in percentage terms due to higher volumes and an improved cost per tonne performance, likely due to a debottlenecking project. More recently, PPC said that its operations in Rwanda were disrupted in April 2020 due to a coronavirus lockdown that started in late March 2020. It partially resumed operations in the second half of April 2020 with cement sales volumes for the month expected to be 15 - 20% of those in April 2019. The other point of note is that the Rwandan government was trying to sell its minority share in Cimerwa in mid-2019 but nothing has been publicly announced since then. However, Cimerwa was reported as being in the process of listing on the Rwanda Stock Exchange in May 2020.

Rwanda’s other grinding plant at Kigali has had problems with its parent company in Kenya. ARM Cement went into administration in mid-2018 and its assets have gradually been sold off since then amidst legal wrangling. It has also had ongoing operational issues with interrupted production due to clinker and coal shortages caused by import issues with Tanzania. An attempt to sell the 0.1Mt/yr grinding plant in September 2018 failed when an auction didn’t even reach one tenth of the estimated market value of US$1.4m. The plant was still reportedly on sale in May 2020.

The new Prime Cement grinding plant will have a production capacity of 0.6Mt/yr. It has been supplied by Denmark-based FLSmidth. At the time that the order was announced in 2017, the supplier said it was the first OK vertical roller mill to be supplied in East Africa and the first full-scope grinding plant in Rwanda. The project had a cost of US$65m. A second phase was also mentioned at the time of the initial announcement that might include upgrading the grinding plant to a fully-integrated one at a later stage. Time will tell. In the meantime though it will be interesting to see whether the new plant has the same raw material issues that ARM’s Kigali Cement has had. One potential source of clinker is the integrated Hima Cement at Kasese in Uganda. Bamburi Cement reported in May 2020 that its Hima Cement subsidiary in Uganda was unable to ‘access’ the market in Rwanda in 2019 due to ongoing trade problems across the Rwanda-Uganda border.

Rwanda’s cement consumption has been reported to be 0.7Mt/yr so a new combined national production capacity of 1.4Mt/yr seems likely to create significant exports. Other countries in the region have also noticed what’s going on in Rwanda and want to do likewise. In June 2020 DRC’s Industry Minister Julien Paluku talked up plans of reviving the 0.3Mt/yr state-owned National Cement Plant (CINAT) in Kimpese. He noted that DRC has been partly reliant on cement produced by Cimerwa in Rwanda, which has been serving a combined demand of 900,000t/yr in DRC and Burundi.

A statistic that received a fresh airing this week was one from the World Bank in 2016 that worked out that the price of cement in Africa was on average 183% higher than the global average. It popped up in a news article about the expanding Nigerian cement industry but it applies to the whole continent. While it continues to hold true, exports will boom and plants will keep being built in the places that exports can’t reach.

Pakistan: Power Cement says it has started commercial operation of its new 7700t/day clinker production line at its Nooriabad plant. It completed the procurement and installation of machinery for the new line in mid-2019. It was supplied by Denmark’s FLSmdith.

Denmark: FLSmidth has said that, following the appointment of Mikko Tepponen as its chief digital officer (CDO), it is embarking on an acceleration of digitisation projects and an expansion to its portfolio based on ‘direct collaboration and co-creation’ with customers. FLSmidth said that this aims at ‘increasing productivity in the cement industry through optimisation and efficiency, including by reduction of fuel and raw material consumption and of process heat, time and emissions, security enhancement and many other areas’ that would benefit from a digitally integrated approach.

Tepponen said, “Digitisation and sustainability go hand in hand. When you succeed in digitising key processes in any large-scale industry, you tend to see clear benefits in areas such as energy consumption, waste reduction and resource use. Without a serious focus on digitisation, it will be impossible for us at FLSmidth to reach our MissionZero sustainability ambitions.”

Nigeria: Denmark-based FLSmidth has secured a contract with Dangote Cement for the supply of hot kiln alignment services for 16 kiln lines across Africa. 10 of the lines are installed across three plants in Nigeria, with the remaining six situated in Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. The contract will endure until 2026.

Dangote Cement said that it chose FLSmidth to help it achieve ‘uninterrupted cement production and dispatch around the clock. Dangote Group deputy managing director Arvind Pathak said, “The equipment health audits, services, and support extended by FLSmidth have helped us maintain our pyro process equipment with good reliability. Hot kiln alignment is an excellent preventative maintenance strategy.”

FLSmidth says that it conducts 250 hot kiln alignments worldwide annually.

US: CalPortland has awarded a supply contract to FLSmidth for a new raw mill at its integrated Mojave plant in California. The scope of supply includes engineering, equipment and installation of a new OK 48-4 Raw Mill with a Condition Monitoring System and an ECS/ProcessExpert system. The mill is scheduled to be in operation in late 2021. No value for the current order has been disclosed.

“The new OK Raw Mill from FLSmidth will increase reliability and efficiency at our Mojave plant," said Bruce E Shafer, Senior Vice President for Cement Operations at CalPortland. It follows the purchase of a FLSmidth OK Cement Mill at the same plant in 2004. FLSmidth added that as both OK mills at the plant will share the same gearbox design, the unit will be able to streamline maintenance and manage inventory costs by sharing the one spare FLSmidth MAAG WPU-200 assembly.

The headline from the cement section of FLSmidth’s first quarter results summed up what may be the current situation for many companies supplying the sector: “service relatively stable – cautious on capex.” The general picture across both its mining and cement businesses was ‘significantly’ increased demand for local resources, remote support and digital products. On the mining side FLSmidth pointed out that it was impossible to assess the impact of coronavirus on its business because of the difference between government policies. Some places continue lockdowns or impose additional restrictions but others are starting to ease them. This point has ramifications for multinational cement producers and other suppliers too. It seems likely to continue during the coming months as lockdowns ease at different rates in different countries.

On cement specifically, FLSmidth provided a good global view of what the pandemic and government responses are actually doing to the industry. It reports that around 80% of the world's cement plants (excluding China) are currently in operation with some operating at reduced capacity. It described the market for services as ‘relatively stable’ in the first quarter but that cement consumption was being reduced by lower construction activity, plant shutdowns and restricted access to sites leading to reduced demand for technical services and commissioning. By region it identified the biggest impact to its business from coronavirus in India and the Middle East. Generally, it says that cement producers are suspending capital investments until the impact of coronavirus on economies is clearer. There has been some good news though, with the supplier noting that several of its customers have been looking for services that can reduce their operational costs.

The European Commission tackled this pervading sense of uncertainty in its roadmap towards lifting coronavirus containment measures that was published on 15 April 2020. The Committee for European Construction Equipment (CECE) was keen to share this with its members this week, pointing out how the European Union (EU) plans to lift border controls and re-start economic activity.

The plan is to ease travel restrictions between border regions for cross-border and seasonal workers, and then between European areas with low coronavirus infection rates. External borders can later be reopened with access by non-EU residents to the EU scheduled for a second stage. To re-start economic activity the EU recommends, again, a phased approach focusing on sectors that are ‘essential’ to facilitate economic activity such as transport. The commission says it will also create a rapid alert function to identify supply and value chain disruptions, relying on existing networks such as Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), clusters, chambers of commerce and trade associations, small and medium enterprise (SME) envoys and more. Whether the EU can actually coordinate a return to normality following its poor response in aiding Italy at the start of the European outbreak of coronavirus remains to be seen. Yet, its historical roots as an economic community dating back to the Treaty of Rome in 1957 suggests it may be more successful when coordinating technical aspects of trade.

Detailed above are the views and plans of just one supplier and one continental organisation, although they are both prominent. The takeaway from this is that uncertainty is a major problem so far for the cement industry in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Companies have faced a cash crunch in the short term as economies slowed down and they are reluctant to release cash until the future becomes clearer. Large parts of the cement industry and its suppliers are very international, which exposes it to even more uncertainty. Different countries enforcing different restrictions and different easing strategies at different times create a major headache for everyone and a block to investment. Making cement is undeniably an essential industry and this realisation by legislators can be seen in some countries that at first shut down their plants before understanding that they needed them open after all! Suppliers should benefit from this too, although at reduced activity levels. We don’t know what kind of recovery will come – hopefully one releasing plenty of pent up demand. Yet one thing is certain. The work of the regional cement associations and those representing suppliers is going to be crucial in the coming months.

Denmark: FLSmidth’s revenue in the first three months of 2020 was Euro607m, up by 2.5% year-on-year from Euro592m in the corresponding period of 2019. FLSmidth’s cement division’s sales were Euro240m (40% of total revenue), down by 2.6% from Euro246m. The company said that the coronavirus outbreak impacted results, especially in March 2020, when ‘customer hesitation on large investments intensified, particularly in cement,’ and customers increasingly deferred large investments. It added, “Demand for spare and wear parts is relatively stable, whereas technical services are challenged by restricted access to sites.”

FLSmidth says that it aims to ‘carry out business as usual’ throughout the coronavirus outbreak, with an increased reliance on ‘remote monitoring, maintenance and support.’

FLSmidth’s 2020 financial guidance remains suspended.

Saudi Arabia: Denmark-based FLSmidth has announced that it has secured an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Yanbu Cement for a ‘massive’ efficiency-increasing upgrade to reduce the heat and power consumption of the 5.9Mt/yr integrated Yanbu cement plant in Al Madinah Province.

FLSmidth previously supplied the Yanbu cement plant with an automation upgrade and burner system retrofit in 2018. It concluded a service agreement with Yanbu Cement in 2019.

Russia: Denmark-based FLSmidth has held an equipment installation and maintenance workshop for Vostokcement employees at Vostokcement subsidiary Spasskcement’s 3.2Mt/yr integrated plant in Primorsky Krai. Employees of Spasskcement, Teploozerskcement and Yakutcement were in attendance, along with employees of Vostokcement partner company Betonych JSC. The workshop focussed on the use of FLSmidth equipment in material handling equipment monitoring and breakdown response, including kiln shell repair optimisation, vibration diagnostics and flaw detection and pneumatic conveying applications.