Displaying items by tag: GCW324

Germany: Thomas Gruppe has purchased Portland-Zementwerke Gebr. Seibel’s cement plant at Erwitte in North Rhine-Westphalia. The deal also includes the plant’s limestone deposits. It will take over the plant on 1 January 2018. Gebr. Seibel has operated the unit since 1927.

Thomas Gruppe operates in the construction and building material sectors. It runs the Dornburger cement grinding plant in Thuringia.

Vietnam: Cong Thanh Cement has defended its decision to build a grinding plant at Cam Ranh in Khanh Hoa province despite high debts, a domestic cement surplus and poor market conditions. A spokesperson said that the company’s loan liabilities have reached US$606m, according to the Việt Nam News newspaper. It has declared a revenue target of US$19.4m for 2017 with a loss of US$1.93m expected. A cement surplus and high fuel prices adding to transportation costs have contributed to the problems the company faces. The cement producer operates a two-line 6Mt/yr plant at the Nghi Son Economic Zone in Thanh Hoa Province.

Egypt: Loesche is supplying three vertical roller mills for the Egyptian Cement plant at Sohag. The scope of delivery includes a raw material mill with a capacity of 540t/hr of cement raw meal, a cement mill with an output of 350t/hr as well as a coal mill with an output of 45t/hr. The cement mill is equipped with a COPE (Compact Planetary Electric Drive) drive.

Sinoma subsidiary, the Chinese Chengdu Design & Research Institute (CDI), is the general contractor for the project. Loesche and CDI have worked together previously on projects in Egypt including ones for El Arish Cement and Beni Suef Cement.

Argentina/US: Loma Negra aims to generate up to US$800m in an initial public offering in Argentina and the US. Around US$700m of the money raised will go to its parent company Brazil’s InterCement, according to Reuters. InterCement is selling a 32% stake in the company to pay its debts. Subsequently it will hold a 57% stake in the Argentine cement producer. No schedule for the transaction has been disclosed.

China: Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People's Bank of China, has described government targets for cutting excess capacity in the steel and cement industries as ‘optimistic.’ The Chinese government says it wants to cut steel and cement production capacity by around 10% but Zhou said he thought that might be difficult, given continued investment in urban housing and infrastructure, according to the Wall Street Journal. He made the comments at a seminar held by the Group of Thirty in Washington, US.

India: A worker has been found dead at a 2Mt/yr cement grinding plant that Emami Cement is building at Jajpur in Odisha. A fellow worker was also found injured next to the deceased, according to the New Indian Express newspaper. No cause for the accident has been reported. Both men were working as casual labourers at the site.

South Africa: Ireland’s CRH is considering making a bid for PPC according to unnamed sources quoted by Bloomberg. However, no final decision has been made and neither CRH nor PPC have commented on the matter. Following an offer made by Fairfax Financial Holdings in September 2017, PPC said that it had received two other offers. Nigeria’s Dangote Cement publicly admitted that it was in talks with PPC but it later withdrew from the bidding process.

UK: Tarmac has acquired full ownership of ScotAsh by purchasing the remaining 50% share of the company from Scottish Power. Tarmac will now take full ownership of ScotAsh, which it has operated since 1999, and will continue to operate the company under the ScotAsh name. ScotAsh manufactures products using recycled pulverised fuel ash (PFA) from power stations, which is used in the cement, aggregate and grout industries.

“Each year, ScotAsh supplies its range of sustainable, technologically advanced products to customers within the UK and global construction industry, including to Tarmac’s Dunbar cement plant for production of its Phoenix cement,” said Allan Everett, Ash business manager at Tarmac. He added that further integrating the company into Tarmac would help it to enhance expertise at both businesses, leverage the national supply and import capabilities for PFA and strengthening its product portfolio.

Brazil: Sales of cement have fallen by 7.6% year-on-year to 40.5Mt in the first nine months of 2017 from 43.8Mt in the same period of 2016. The data from the Brazilian cement association SNIC showed that cement sales had fallen in all regions of the country with particular decreases in the North and North-East areas. SNIC president Paulo Camillo Penna commented that the rate of decline was slowing compared to 2016 and that further progress was expected in 2018. He added that fruther government infrastructure investment was necessary to encourage this trend.

Turkey: YD Madencilik, a subsidiary of Agoaglu, has signed a contract with Claudius Peters for the delivery of three new silos. The silos will be operated by YD Madencilik in Düzce, Turkey. Commissioning is scheduled for 2018.

The scope of supply comprises a multi storage tricell silo MS-IC/EC for cement, a cement storage duocell silo MS-IC/EC as well as a raw meal MC silo. Both cement silos have a volume of nearly 16,800m³ with an inner diameter of 24m and a filling height of 75m. The raw meal silo has a volume of nearly 16,700m³ and an inner diameter of 20m.