Displaying items by tag: Florida

US: Cemex has increased production of Portland limestone cement (PLC) at its Lyons plant in Colorado. PLC is expected to become the plant’s primary product by the summer of 2022. The blended cement has been produced at the site for over 15 years. However, Cemex says it is growing production to meet the company’s carbon reduction goals and meet increased demand for lower carbon materials.

Cemex USA has also increased PLC production at its plants in Brooksville, Florida, and Demopolis, Alabama. The start of PLC production or further increases is planned for other cement plants later in 2022.

US: Cementos Argos subsidiary Argos Florida Cement has won the Slag Cement Association (SCA)’s Durability and Infrastructure awards at its 2022 Sustainable Concrete Project of the Year Awards. The producer won the awards for its supply of slag cement to two projects in Florida in 2021. Its involvement in the American Bridge Company’s SR 679 Pinellas Bayway Bridge – Structure E replacement won it the Durability award, while its involvement in Superior Paving’s State Road 52 realignment. Argos Florida Cement congratulated its customers, who also received the awards.

US: Argos USA has agreed to sell a total of 23 US ready-mix concrete batching plants to Smyrna Ready Mix Concrete for US$93m. 18of the plants are situated in North Carolina and the remainder in Southwest Florida. The El Colombiano newspaper has reported that the deal includes a five-year cement supply agreement for all 23 plants. Cementos Argos said that the divestment is part of its plan to divest assets in suburban markets or that are not already integrated into its production and logistics chain.

US: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded its Energy Star certification to cement plants belonging to two Titan America subsidiaries. Titan Florida’s Pennsuco, Florida, cement plant has secured its 14th consecutive Energy Star, while Roanoke Cement’s Troutville, Virginia, cement has secured its 15th consecutive Energy Star.

Other cement plants to receive Energy Stars in 2022 included two Argos USA plants (Calera, Alabama, and Harleyville, South Carolina), two GCC plants (Pueblo, Colorado, and Rapid City, South Dakota), Buzzi Unicem’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant and three plants in Arizona: CalPortland’s Rillito plant, Drake Cement’s Paulden plant and Salt River Materials Group’s Clarkdale plant.

US: Ash Grove Cement has re-opened its Port Manatee terminal in Florida following the installation of a new Kovako type ship unloader supplied by FLSmidth. The machine was custom built for Ash Grove by the Denmark-based company to meet its specific needs. The cement producer says it is the largest mobile pneumatic ship unloader built, has twin 800hp blowers, 37m suction arm and can offload a dry bulk vessel at a high rate while maintaining maximum efficiency and minimising environmental impact by eliminating dust emissions.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the event was held on 7 February 2022 as a shipment of fly ash was processed at the site. This maiden shipment completes the Phase 1 transformation project at Port Manatee, which began in early 2021. The project is intended to improve the subsidiary of CRH’s capacity to import cement, slag and fly ash for customers in Florida and South Georgia. It is also planning to use the terminal’s existing silo capacity to complement the capabilities of Ash Grove’s cement plants in Sumterville and Branford.

US: Cement companies in the US produced 57.8Mt of clinker in the first nine months of 2021, in line with production in the corresponding period of 2020. Cement shipments including imports rose by 4.2% year-on-year to 79.9Mt from 76.7Mt, according to the United States Geological Service (USGS). The lead cement consuming states by total shipments were Texas, California and Florida. Texas received 11.4Mt of cement (14% of the national total), down by 8.5% from 12.4Mt, California received 8.19Mt (10%), up by 7.8% from 7.6Mt and Florida received 5.4Mt (6.8%), up by 5.6% from 5.11Mt.

Cementos Argos announced this week that it is starting the process for an initial public offering (IPO) for its US business. It said that this had followed several months of consideration by its board of directors. Getting listed on the New York Stock Exchange is expected to help the company ‘optimise’ its capital structure and promote growth, due in part to the recent approval of the US$1Tn Infrastructure Bill in the US and a general positive cycle expected for the local construction materials sector over the next decade.

Argos’ decision to go public in the US comes hot on the heels of several recent attempts in Colombia to buy stakes in two of the major shareholders of Grupo Argos, the parent company of Cementos Argos and Argos USA. First, Grupo Gilinski tried to buy a majority stake in Grupo Nutresa in early November 2021. Then, at the end of November 2021, Grupo Gilinski put in an offer for a large minority share, up to 32%, of Grupo SURA.

Argos, Nutresa and SURA are all part of a highly interconnected group of companies known as the Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño (GEA), which each own stakes in each other. In part this structure helps to prevent hostile takeover attempts. However, Grupo Gilinski appears to be trying to challenge this, in the eyes of some market observers. Grupo Argos is the next obvious target for such an attempt after Nutresa and SURA. In response Grupo Argos has said that it won’t take part in Grupo Gilinski’s public acquisition offer to buy shares in Nutresa (it owns around 10% itself). Instead it has accelerated its plans for Argos USA and also wants to consolidate its interests in road and airport concessions, energy and real estate into a single entity, also to be listed in New York. All of this can be seen as action intended to make any further moves by Grupo Gilinski on GEA harder. Corporate tussles between Grupo Gilinski and GEA also hark back to a long-running legal dispute from the late 1990s over the formation of Bancolombia.

It is reasonable for the US subsidiary of Cementos Argos to want to raise funds from an IPO. The business has gradually been expanding over the last 15 years or so. First it acquired ready-mix concrete operations in the southern US from 2005. Then it purchased two integrated cement plants from Lafarge in 2011, at Roberta in Alabama and Harleyville in South Carolina respectively. This was followed by the integrated Newberry plant in Florida from Vulcan Materials in 2014, along with two grinding units in Florida. Finally, it picked up the integrated Martinsburg plant in West Virginia from HeidelbergCement in 2016. More recently it has been divesting some of its concrete plants in the US. At present Argos USA is the ninth largest cement producer in the country by cement production capacity.

Its cement sales volumes have grown by 4.5% year-on-year to 4.6Mt in the first nine months of 2021 and earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBIDA) rose by 25% to US$239m although sales revenue dipped very slightly to US$1.09bn. Ready-mixed concrete sales volumes have also fallen, by 12% to 3.98Mm³. The growth has been attributed to both residential and commercial markets and the Infrastructure Bill is expected to keep demand brisk for the next few years. Looking at the wider picture, cement generated about 64% of Grupo Argos’ revenue in 2020, its biggest share after energy generation and a concessions business. A third of Cementos Argos’ revenue so far in 2021 came from the US.

It’s fascinating to glimpse what may be some of the inner corporate workings of Grupo Argos and the various things it has to consider for its US cement business. The US subsidiary is clearly a major earner for it with a buoyant future. The Portland Cement Association (PCA) was forecasting cement consumption growth of nearly 8% in 2021 and 2% in 2022 in its summer summary and that was before the infrastructure bill made it into law. Further expansion in the US by Argos is to be expected and the planned IPO underlines this. Meanwhile whether this and other actions are enough to stymie Grupo Gilinski remain to be seen.

US: The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded Cemex USA's Miami cement plant its 11th consecutive Energy Star or its on-going energy efficiency and sustainability efforts.

President Jaime Muguiro said "Sustainability and conservation are ingrained in our operations and our business, so we constantly seek opportunities to decrease our energy use and reduce environmental impacts." He added "Our team at our Miami cement plant is helping to set the standard for our industry, demonstrating what can be possible, and we are proud of their ongoing environmental performance and commitment."

US: Colombia-based Cementos Argos subsidiary Argos USA’s Newberry, Florida cement plant produced 140,000t of cement in June 2021. The plant shipped 129,000t of cement. The company says that the production figure beats its previous production record of 128,000t in June 2019 by 9%. The figure for shipments beats the previous shipment record, also from June 2019, of 121,000t by 7%.

Plant production manager Daniel Ball said, “Everyone at the Newberry Plant is excited and proud to see these records being set. With the current sales climate, we are able to show the untapped potential Newberry has. This sustained sales commitment would not be possible if it wasn’t for all the hard work and dedication of everyone at the plant as well as from Argos plant support staff and Argos Corporate. But with the new record set, we strive to set new records going forward.”

US: The US Green Building Council (USGBC) has granted its Regional Leadership Award to Titan America’s Pennsuco, Florida, and Roanoke, North Carolina, cement plants. The award recognises green building and sustainable practices. The Pennsuco plant implemented 16 zero waste and sustainability programmes. At the Roanoke plant, Titan America subsidiary Roanoke Cement Company (RCC) achieved TRUE Gold Zero Waste certification in 2020 and implemented environmental product declarations (EPDs).

RCC cement manufacturing vice president Zaklina Stamboliska said, "Through our zero waste programs we have implemented native landscaping and other biodiversity advances to our local ecosystems. We have entered into outreach with local universities to educate students and shared our knowledge among our industry, concrete producers and others through work with EPDs. We are building and spreading the word."