Displaying items by tag: France

France: Intercem has won an order to supply Cem’In’Eu with a cement grinding plant. Intercem will supply a Ø 3.20m x 10.00m EGL closed circuit ball mill with a IVS 62 vertical air separator. The groundbreaking ceremony for the unit will be held in October 2017 and the start of production is scheduled for April 2018.

The first compartment of the mill will be equipped with lifting liners to aid coarse grinding. The second compartment will be equipped with a three-step classifying liner system to provide ball sorting with a fine grinding action. An intermediate diaphragm will allow the adjustment of material flow levels to optimise material level in both compartments. The mill will be powered by a 1300kW side drive. Product collection will be arranged by direct separation using a 70,000m³/hr air jet filter.

Intercem will be responsible for plant engineering and documentation, including mechanical, civil and electrical engineering, programming works and documentation, mechanical assembly works and their supervision as well as mechanical and process commissioning and the training for operators. No value for the order has been disclosed.

Cem’In’Eu is a new cement producer with projects planned for sites at Tonneins in Lot et Garonne, at Port Fluvial de Chalon-sur-Saône in Saône et Loire and at Port d’Ottmarsheim in Haut-Rhin. The company plans to invest around Euro20m at each site. It also has development projects in Poland and in the UK.

France: Fives Group has revealed its membership of the Centre for Technologies, Minerals and Recycled Materials of the Future, a new association that aims to develop industrial recycling of minerals for the construction and public works sectors. Fives’ Innovation Department and its subsidiary Fives FCB joined Team² to found the associate in May 2017.

The centre plans to set up a base to coordinate and test by-product valorisation, as well as the use of raw materials recovered from recycling, at a former cement plant owned by EQIOM group in Dannes, Pas-de-Calais. Fives contribution to the research will include its technologies in crushing, grinding, classifying and pyro processing in the minerals industry.

France: Vicat’s earnings have been negatively affected by the devaluation of the Egyptian Pound and performance issues in Turkey. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 8.7% year-on-year to Euro188m in the first half to 2017 from Euro206m in the same period in 2016. Its sales fell by 0.8% to Euro1.25bn from Euro1.24bn. By business line its cement sales fell by 4.2% to Euro612m and its cement sales volumes declined by 2.6% to 10.8Mt.

“The Vicat Group’s first-half performance was affected by very unfavourable weather conditions in Europe, the US and Turkey, especially at the beginning of the year, and by a difficult macro-economic and industrial environment in Egypt. Other key regions such as India, the US and France recorded improvements. In a year that should be characterised by a very strong seasonality effect, Vicat now expects to benefit from a marked progression in its activities in the second semester,” said the group’s chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) Guy Sidos.

France: Hazemag has completed the installation of Primary Sizer HCS 1020 at Lhoist Group’s Dugny lime plant. The project was a retrofit replacing a jaw crusher. The new unit is expected to increase production by 20% and to improve grain shape.

France: LafargeHolcim has launched a Euro100m upgrade to build a new clinker production line at its Martres cement plant in Tolosane. Construction work on the new line will start in the third quarter of 2018 and will be completed in mid-2020. A key feature of the upgrade will be a focus on using alternative fuels in the new kiln, particularly tyres. Following the project’s completion the plant will have a substitution rate of 80% from 30% at present.

The project, the largest investment made by the group in France for 40 years, is part of a wider package of Euro300m for France that the company announced in 2016. Tenders for the project at Martres will be issued in early 2018. LafargeHolcim has also made a point of saying that priority will be given to local, French and European companies. Previously the French media published concerns that the project might be awarded to a Chinese contractor.

France: LafargeHolcim has appointed Heike Faulhammer as Group Head of Research & Development with effect from 1 July 2017. She will be based at the group’s global research and development (R&D) centre near Lyon, France.

Faulhammer, aged 50 years, joins LafargeHolcim from Arkema, a French chemicals producer, where she has spent 20 years in research, production, product innovation-related functions and sustainable development. In particular, she acted as a Director at Arkema’s global R&D centre in Lacq. Faulhammer graduated from the University of Freiburg (Germany) and holds a PhD in Chemistry.

Plenty to mull over this week in Cembureau’s newly published Activity Report for 2016. The association pulls together data from a variety of places including its own sources, Eurostat and Euroconstruct. For competition reasons much of it stops in 2015 but it paints a compelling picture of a continental cement industry starting to find its feet again.

Graph 1: Cement intensity of the construction sector in Europe, 2000 – 2015. Source: Cembureau calculation based on Eurostat and Euroconstruct in Activity Report for 2016.

The really interesting data concerns so-called cement intensity. This is the quantity of cement consumed per billion Euro invested in construction. Figures calculated by Cembureau from data from Eurostat and Eurocontruct show that cement intensity has remained stable in Germany, France and the UK but that it fell sharply in Spain and Italy from 2000 to 2015. In other words the pattern of construction changed in these countries. One suggestion for this that Cembureau offers is that construction moved from new projects to renovation and maintenance. These types of construction projects require less cement than new builds. Seen in this context the huge production over capacities seen in Italy and Spain in recent years makes sense as the local cement industries have coped with both the economic crash and a step change in their national construction markets.

Further data in the report falls in line with the impression given by the multinational cement producers in their quarterly and annual financial reports. Cement production picked up in the Cembureau member states from 2012 and in the European Union members (EU28) from 2013. Meanwhile, import and export figures disentangled from a close relationship at the time of the financial crash in 2008 with imports of cement declining and exports increasing markedly. Much of it will have originated from Italy and Spain as their industries coped with the changes. Cembureau then forecasts that cement consumption will rise in 2017 by 2.4% and 3.5% in 2018 in the 19 countries than form the Euroconstruct network. A key point to note here is that most of the larger European economies will see consumption consistently grow in 2017 and 2018 with the exception of France where it growth will remain positive but it will slow somewhat in 2018. This fits with last week’s column about France with the early reports from LafargeHolcim, HeidelbergCement and Vicat reporting slight declines in sales volumes so far in 2017.

Cembureau’s country-by-country analysis also provides a good overview of its member industries. Looking at the larger economies, residential construction was the main driver for cement consumption in France and Germany in 2016. In Germany further growth is hoped for from an increased infrastructure budget set by the Federal Government. Italian cement consumption fell in 2016 and further decreases are anticipated for 2017, particularly from the public sector. By contrast though the story in Spain is still one of declining cement consumption but one heavily mitigated by exports. Spain is the described by Cembureau as the leading EU export country. Finally, there’s little recent on the UK other than uncertainty concerns about the Brexit process and an anticipated rise in infrastructure spending by 2019. The sparse detail here is probably for the best given the current political deadlock in the UK following the continued fallout from the general election in early June 2017.

In summary, Cembureau’s data shows that modest growth is happening in the cement industries of its member countries. It’s not uniform and some nations such as Spain and Italy are coping with changes in the composition of their industries. Cembureau also highlights the unpredictable consequences of the UK’s departure from the EU as one of the biggest risks in 2017. Check out the report for more information.

France: The French judiciary has launched an inquiry into the Syrian conduct of LafargeHolcim. Three judges, one dealing with anti-terrorism matters and two financial judges, will handle the probe that opened on 9 June 2017, according to Agence France Presse. The prosecutors will examine the ‘financing of a terrorist enterprise’ and whether the actions of the building materials producer had endangered lives.

LafargeHolcim admitted in March 2017 that its staff at a cement plant in Syria in 2013 and 2014 had struck deals with armed groups, following an investigation by the French newspaper La Monde in mid-2016. It is also alleged that Lafarge, one of the companies that merged to become LafargeHolcim in 2015, purchased oil in Syria in violation of international sanctions. The group’s chief executive officer Eric Olsen then resigned after the completion of a review into the affair in April 2017 despite not being found personally culpable or even aware of the situation. However, the review found that selected members of group management had been aware of the situation at the time.

2017 is an anniversary year for the French cement industry as it marks the bicentenary of Louis Vicat’s pioneering work into the creation of ‘artificial’ cement. The company that bears his name, Vicat, is a major force in the global cement industry to this day. However, the French industry has suffered since the global financial crash in 2007, with steadily declining production volumes, despite a bounce in 2011. Lafarge was only able to maintain its international status through a merger with Switzerland’s Holcim in 2015 and the arguments surrounding that ‘merger of equals’ are still playing out now with the resignation of the group’s chief executive officer in April 2017.

Graph 1: Cement consumption in France, 2012 – 2016. Source: Syndicat Français de l’Industrie Cimentière & Vicat.

Thankfully, the industry started to recover in 2016 and the signs are positive that this will continue into 2017 with the presidential elections concluded. Graph 1 shows the situation since 2012.

Sensing the rebound in 2016 the head of the French building federation (FFB) placed growth in construction materials volumes at 1.9% in December 2016 with a forecast of 3.4% in 2017 based on new residential housing. Naturally he used his position to lobby the politicians in the run-up to the election and the FFB have carried on in this vein haranguing the new administration with 112 (!) proposals to ‘rebuild’ France.

The major cement producers broadly agreed with the outlook in 2016 with LafargeHolcim describing the local construction sector as growing ‘slightly’ despite subdued public spending on infrastructure and HeidelbergCement concurring. Vicat was more effusive pointing to its 6% rise in sales volumes to 2.9Mt in the domestic and export markets. It pinned the recovery down to the last quarter of 2015. However, it noted that the rise in volumes had compensated for a fall in prices due in part to the increased exports. On this point, although it’s outside the scope of this column, it would be fascinating to know how much the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme is stoking the French cement indsutry’s recovery through exports (see GCW290).

Investment has been returning to the market though with Ecocem France’s order of a Loesche mill for a slag cement mill it is building Dunkirk, the inauguration of a new tyre recycling unit at Lafarge France’s Martres plant and the start of a gasifier project at Vicat’s Crechy plant in 2016. More recently Lafarge France reported to the French press in May 2017 that it was starting to consider contractors for a new production line at the Martres plant, leading to fears that it might choose a Chinese provider.

So far in 2017 the situation is on a knife-edge with LafargeHolcim, HeidelbergCement and Vicat all reporting slight declines in sale volumes or earnings that they have blamed on the weather. However, LafargeHolcim did mention growing momentum towards the end of the period offering some hope. As seen above the fundamentals for the French cement industry are all ready and present for growth. Now with the pro-business Euro-centric new president installed in office the industry should be about to flower in time for Louis Vicat’s anniversary.

France: The Syndicat Français de l'industrie Cimentière (SFIC) forecasts that cement consumption will grow faster in the second half of 2017 due to an increase in domestic house building. Association president Raoul de Parisot, said that he expected growth of 3 – 4% in the second half of the year, according to La Croix newspaper. Cement sales grew by 1 – 2% in the first quarter of 2017. The association expects cement consumption to reach 17.9 – 18.1Mt in 2017.