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Morocco’s Directorate of Financial Studies and Forecasting has reported that cement sales rose by 8.4% year-on-year in October 2016. It's good news for a local cement industry that saw its sales fall from 16.1Mt in 2011 to a low of 14.1Mt in 2014. Sales picked up slightly in 2015 and it looks like the same is going to happen again in 2016. Data from the Moroccan Cement Association (APC) support this with consumption of cement very slightly higher for the first nine month for 2016. Good sales figures in October can only help.

Graph 1: Cement consumption for the first nine months of the year, 2013 – 2016. Source: L’Association Professionnelle des Cimentiers du Maroc.

2016 has also been an interesting time for the Moroccan cement industry due to consequences of the merger and acquisition activity by the multinational producers that operate there. In March 2016, amidst a slew of divestments, LafargeHolcim made a point of announcing that it was holding on to its cement businesses under Lafarge Maroc and Holcim Maroc and enlarging them with its local partner SNI to form LaafrgeHolcim Maroc. The deconsolidation of Holcim Maroc picked up a net gain before taxes of Euro219m for a total consideration of Euro463m, which should considerably add to the group’s cash proceeds.

It managed to avoid being forced to sell off assets by the local competition body when it merged in 2014 due to its relatively low stakes in its companies. Today it has a production capacity of 13.2Mt/yr from seven integrated cement plants or over half the country’s production capacity. In its annual report for 2015 LafargeHolcim said that its cement business saw its results improve, mitigating problems in its aggregate and ready-mix concrete markets. This was followed by good results in the first half of 2016. New projects in the pipeline include plans to build a cement plant in Agadir and a grinding plant in Laâyoune in Western Sahara.

2016 has also seen the acquisition of Morocco’s second largest cement producer, Ciments du Maroc, by HeidelbergCement as part of its purchase of Italcementi. It’s too soon for HeidelbergCement to have reported upon the territory in its first integrated quarterly financial report following the takeover but it did describe Morocco as a having a ‘high growth potential.’ How these assets fit into the wide portfolio of HeidelbergCement’s new production base will be interesting. Ciments de l’Atlas’ (CIMAT), the country’s third largest and local producer, saw its sales fall slightly to Euro124m in the first half of 2016. However, its net profit rose by 13% year-on-year to Euro30m.

The other story of note in recent months in Morocco has been the public outcry against a shipment of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) from Italy in June 2016 destined for a cement plant in Casablanca. The subsequent protests saw waste imports to be suspended, leading Hakima al-Haiti, the government minister at the heart of the affair, to describe the furore as causing damage to the country’s economy in the aftermath. However her opponents rallied under the phrase “Nous ne sommes pas une poubelle” or ‘We are not a trash can.’ Despite this setback for the secondary fuels market, LafargeHolcim highlighted the work its Ecoval waste processing subsidiary has been conducting producing RDF at its Oum Azza site ahead of the Climate Change Conference of the Parties held in Marrakech in mid-November 2016. Although the key difference here is that Ecoval is generating RDF from local waste streams not importing them.

Perhaps as a sign of the growth potential Morocco may hold, this week, a non-cement producer was revealed to be planning to build a cement plant at Tarfaya. Previously the company, Global Oil Shale, had intended to develop shale oil resources at the site but it has switched its plan to constructing a 1.6Mt/yr cement plant instead and hired Luis Verde, a former technical director at Cemex who has also worked for Dangote. Together with the Lafarge project in Laâyoune and the Ciement Sud (CIMSUD) plant also in Western Sahara due to open in mid-2017 it suggest that the investors smell opportunity.

Canada: McInnis Cement has appointed Hervé Mallet as its president and chief executive officer. Other new appointments include the assignment of Gaétan Vézina as Vice-President, Cement and Sustainable Development and Alexandre Rail as Vice-President, Operations – Port-Daniel–Gascons.

Previously Mallet was the Executive Vice-President – North America for Dynacast. He is a graduate of the University of Wolverhampton and Brunel University in the UK.

UK: Tarmac’s Aberthaw Cement Plant has opened a rail facility to despatch bulk cement. The rail depot will mean that trains will be used to transport cement in Wales for the first time in over 20 years. The yard is expected to replace 2500 annual truck movements on the local roads. Jane Hutt, the Welsh Assembly Member for Vale of Glamorgan, officially opened the facility.

“Reducing our road movements by 25% is a significant achievement and it puts us in an even better position to supply materials to our customers across Wales and the south west of England in a more sustainable way. The plant has been in operation for over 100 years and we employ 109 people, the majority of whom live within 10 miles of the site, so this development demonstrates our commitment to the Vale of Glamorgan,” said Aberthaw Cement Plant manager, Chris Bradbury.

Colombia: Cemex Latam, the Latin American subsidiary of Cemex, intends to enter dialogue with the Regional Autonomous Corporation of Antioquia (Corantioquia) to revoke its environmental permit for Maceo cement plant project. Corantioquia has requested that the permit from Central de Mezclas, a subsidiary of CHL, be returned to the CI Calizas y Minerales, according to the El Colombiano newspaper. The government agency has removed the clearance on procedural grounds and over the mining rights in the area.

Tanzania: Dangote Cement has clarified that a temporary production shutdown at its Mtwara plant has been made due to technical problems. Country chief executive officer Harpreet Duggal made the announcement in response to claims that the stoppage was due to high production costs in the country, according to the Tanzania Daily News newspaper. The plant is expected to resume production in a few days.

Duggal described operating costs in Tanzania as ‘high’ due to the producer’s dependence on diesel generators. He also cited high transport costs due to the plant’s distance from its key markets.

Nigeria: Loesche has released details on its order for the United Cement Company of Nigeria (Unicem) cement plant at Mfamosing, near Calabar in Cross River State, which was commissioned in September 2016. The order was for two vertical roller mills (VRM): one type LM 60.4 for grinding cement raw material and one LM 70.4+4 CS, the biggest Loesche VRM built for grinding cement clinker.

Loesche worked with Renk to develop the Compact Planetary Electrical (COPE) drive due to the high power requirements of the LM 70.4+4 CS mill. This mill was designed for a capacity of more than 370t/hr to a fineness of 4700 Blaine that required a drive system that could power it up to 8800kW. So the COPE system was designed for mill drive powers ranging from 4000 – 15,000kW. The COPE gearbox is also equipped with eight individual drive units, which are each designed for a capacity of 8800kW, allowing for redundancy in case of unit failure.

Other notable highlights of the installation that Loesche have highlighted include the equal size as standard drive units for VRMs that allow for the exchange of conventional gearboxes with the setup. The installation is also the first usage of an eight-drive unit in a VRM gearbox and the first time a multiple drive in a VRM can operate with or without a variable frequency drive.

Delivery of the order started in October 2015. First production of cement on the new production line began in September 2016. The new line increased the plant’s cement production capacity to over 5.5Mt/yr from 2.5Mt/yr. It was built by China’s CBMI Construction.

Austria: A Tec has commissioned a Rocket Mill RM 2.50 for ASA at its waste treatment plant in Wiener Neustadt. The mill has a capacity of 7 – 40t/hr and is equipped with two grinding chambers, which can be independently loaded. Each one has a main drive with 315kW. Due to the grinding technology, it also has an additional drying effect of approximately 10%. The mill is designed to produce refuse-derived fuels (RDF) with an output size of 5 - 80mm from pre-sorted and shredded household and commercial waste. It was principally built at A Tec’s plant in Eberstein.

Pakistan: DG Khan Cement plans to build a new 9000t/day cement plant at Hub in Balochistan. It has contracted Izhar Construction to conduct all civil work on the project, according to the Nation newspaper. The plant is being built to benefit from demand generated from infrastructure built via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Turkey: Korfez Eng. has signed an order with a cement producer to supply a new shell lining system. The scope of the order is a complete replacement of a wear shell lining for a single-compartment mill with an effective grinding length of 4m and 14.5m, the mill discharge and complete new manhole covers in modified execution. The complete lining is of a wave profile type WAVE 35/50 in a highly wear-resistant steel castings with 27% chromium content. The complete contract scope will be completed and delivered within a month and a half.

Tanzania: Lake Cement plans to invest US$150m towards building a new 1.4Mt/yr cement plant in Bagamoyo. Construction will start in the middle of 2017 and commissioning is planned for mid-2018, according to the Citizen newspaper. The Indian-owned cement company has operated a 0.5Mt/yr at Kimbiji since 2014. Its Nyati Cement brand is sold locally and exported to Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.