Displaying items by tag: FLSmidth

Chile: FLSmidth has inaugurated a new manufacturing plant for mill liners and related products in Casablanca. The Denmark-based company has invested €21m in the 11,250m² unit. It has a capacity of 6500t/yr of coatings. FLSmidth said that LEED-certified mill liner manufacturing facility reduces carbon emissions by up to 56% in the manufacturing process and recycles and reuses all water used during the manufacturing process as well. The site will also create up to 250 new jobs in the Valparaìso region

Mikko Keto, CEO of FLSmidth commented, “Our new Casablanca mill liner manufacturing facility, which joins FLSmidth’s extensive service network in Chile, is much more than manufacturing infrastructure - it is a statement of our commitment to responsible mining, our mill lining portfolio and the communities of South America."

FLSmidth said in early 2024 that it was planning to sell its cement equipment division, FLSmidth Cement. This decision was made so the company could focus on its mining business.

US: FLSmidth has held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new 11,000m² manufacturing and distribution facility near its main office in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The company is consolidating its US operations following the full separation of its mining and cement businesses. The facility will primarily serve as a distribution warehouse for replacement parts and a production site for pneumatic transfer lines, according to local media.

Head of manufacturing Leyla Mohamed-Folk said “We are bringing our cement products that started in the Lehigh Valley back here.”

UK: Breedon has replaced the Traylor primary gyratory crusher at its Hope Cement Works after 72 years of operation. According to a post on Facebook by Breedon, the original crusher had been in service since 1952, crushing over 110Mt of minerals during its 72-year lifespan. FLSmidth supplied the new 1250t/hr primary gyratory crusher, which was successfully commissioned in October 2024.

Denmark: FLSmidth's cement revenues fell by 26% year-on-year to US$616m in 2024.
Cement gross profit fell by 3% to US$204m. The producer attributed the decline to divestments and withdrawal from project-orientated business.

Group revenues, including both the Mining and Cement businesses, fell by 16% year-on-year to US$2.8bn. Group gross profit rose by 8% year-on-year to US$905m.

The company said that it expects the short-term outlook for the cement industry to remain impacted by ‘macroeconomic uncertainty’.

India: FLSmidth has won an order for the delivery of its core grinding technology. The order includes two high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) (3m diameter × 2m width), installation, commissioning, start-up support and a service agreement. The equipment is expected to be installed and commissioned during 2026. With this new order in India, FLSmidth has won a total of 15 HPGR orders or commitments in 2024. The value of the order has not been disclosed.

Germany: FLSmidth has signed an agreement to acquire Tipco Tudeshki Industrial Process Control (Tipco), an Aachen-based technology firm. Tipco develops sensor technology for measuring particle size distribution of different mass flows, which will be integrated into FLSmidth's hydrocyclones portfolio. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed, and the acquisition does not affect FLSmidth's financial guidance for 2024.

PCV business line president at FLSmidth, Pat Turner, said “This acquisition marks an important addition to our PCV offerings and highlights our strategic focus on digital solutions across the Mining flowsheet. The optimisation of the grinding circuit plays a crucial part in maximising productivity and operational efficiency of the overall processing plant, and the addition of Tipco’s groundbreaking sensor technology will further strengthen our offerings within this area.”

One surprise at the end of August 2024 was that Türkiye-based Çimsa has agreed to buy a majority stake in Ireland-based Mannok. The subsidiary of Sabancı Holding signed a deal to acquire just under a 95% stake in Mannok Holdings based on an enterprise value of Euro330m for 100% of the shares. The final purchase price will be determined later in the process, as will a potential completion date subject to the usual regulatory approvals.

Çimsa has described the deal as its “third major global initiative in the past three years” following expansions in the US and Spain. Çimsa started production at its 0.3Mt/yr white cement grinding plant in Houston, Texas in 2019. It is currently planning to set-up a 0.6Mt/yr grey cement grinding plant, also in Houston, with operation expected to start by the end of 2024. Its Spain-based business received a boost in mid-2021 when it purchased the Buñol white cement plant in Valencia from Cemex. Outside of Türkiye the company also operates a few terminals in Germany and Italy. Of interest to this article it established a subsidiary for sales in the UK in mid-2023.

Mannok was previously known as Quinn Group before it was rebranded in 2020. In addition to cement the company sells a range of construction products including PIR (polyisocyanurate) insulation, aircrete thermal blocks, roof tiles and precast concrete. The company is headquartered at Derrylin in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland in the UK but it operates in both Ireland and the UK. It runs a 1.4Mt/yr integrated plant at Ballyconnell, County Cavan in Ireland, just across the border from Derrylin. With the 17th Global CemFuels Conference scheduled to take place next week in Dublin, it is worth noting that this cement plant had a recent upgrade of interest to the alternative fuels sector. In 2023 the company said that it had installed the world’s first FLSmidth Fuelflex Pyrolyzer at a cement plant following an earlier pilot of the system back in 2018. It is used to replace coal with solid recovered fuels (SRF) in the pre-calcination stage of cement production. Later in 2023 Mannok said that the equipment was reducing its CO₂ emissions by 58,000t/yr.

As reported in the October 2023 issue of Global Cement Magazine, cement from the Ballyconnell plant is sold in both Ireland and the UK. In 2022, 35% of its sales were in Ireland, 30% in Northern Ireland and the remaining 35% in the rest of the UK. The company uses a storage unit at Warrenport in Northern Ireland to despatch cement to a 8400t cement storage and distribution at Rochester in Southern England.

Çimsa said that the acquisition is intended to help it to increase the share of its revenue in foreign currencies to over 70%. It is not a revelation that Çimsa might want to do this given the parlous state of the economy in Türkiye since 2018. Interest rates are high and the Turkish Lira has lost value. Çimsa raised the issues this has caused in its 2023 annual report. These include higher costs for imported goods and services such as energy, equipment and engineering services. In 2023 the company reported that 57% of its sales consisted of foreign currency-based revenue. The same year exports represented just under 40% of the company’s total revenue. Overall, Çimsa’s revenue fell slightly year-on-year in 2023, in part due to the divestment of a cement plant and other assets, but earnings rose significantly.

Buying Mannok gives Çimsa another route into the European Union (EU), via Ireland, and the UK. Crucially, this gives its first integrated grey cement production site outside of Türkiye. Both of these things are especially useful for an export-focused company facing increasing hurdles to sales in the guise of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. It also helps the business to further hedge against negative currency exchange effects back home in Türkiye. So ‘Sláinte’ to Çimsa and Mannok, and good luck.

The 17th Global CemFuels Conference & Exhibition takes place in Dublin, Ireland on 18 - 19 September 2024

US: GCC Pueblo has upgraded its OK™ 36-4 Cement mill with a new separator from FLSmidth, incorporating the addition of ECS/ProcessExpert's vertical mill application. This upgrades the plant's existing ROKS separator to the latest ROKSH technology.

Denmark: FLSmidth has reported a 23% decline in group revenue for the second quarter of 2024. Despite the decline, gross profit rose by 5% to US$233m from US$221m in the same period in 2023. The cement division experienced a revenue decrease of 32%, though it achieved an adjusted earnings before interest, tax and amortisation (EBITA) margin of 9.6%.

Group CEO Mikko Keto said "Our performance in the first half of 2024 is testament to our continued strong progression across all our key transformation activities, with additional improvements in profitability. The largely stable cement market continues to provide good opportunities for our service business. Looking ahead, the resilience of our service-oriented business model, our continued focus on business simplification to ensure a cost-efficient operating model and our dedicated focus on strategy execution gives us great confidence that we are well on track to meet our long-term financial ambitions."

India: Gebr. Pfeiffer India has appointed Sridhar Shanmugha Sundaram as Senior Vice President, Head of Sales & Marketing.

Sundaram previously worked for FLSmidth for over 30 years. He started in the early 1990s as an Engineer – Plant Engineering and later became Manager - Cement Project Sales in India in the mid-2000s. Amongst other roles he was the Head of Project Sales in India in the mid-2010s and his last position with FLSmidth was as Vice President, Head of Global Product Line - Grinding and Gears from early 2023. Sundaram holds an undergraduate degree in Engineering from the College of Engineering Guindy in Chennai and an Executive Masters of Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School in Denmark.