Displaying items by tag: GCW397

Poland: Germany’s Bilfinger is installing refractory linings at Cemex Polska’s Rudniki cement plant. It is also carrying out assembly work at various parts of the unit. The industrial services company is installing the refractory linings for parts of the plant, which entails using around 2000t of refractory material within a five-month period. It is part of the installation of a new cement clinker production line at the site.

The contract comes under Bilfinger’s Engineering & Maintenance Continental Europe division. Companies for which Bilfinger has worked on past contracts in Poland include cement producers CRH and Dyckerhoff.

UK: Aggregate Industries, a subsidiary of LafargeHolcim, has achieved recommendation for ISO 44001 certification for Collaborative Business Relationship Management Systems, awarded by the British Standards Institute. The certification was awarded company-wide to Aggregate Industries for demonstrating relationship management across a variety of projects, which include a multitude of internal business areas and external partners.

“I am incredibly proud of achieving this certification. ISO 44001 is quickly becoming a prerequisite for highways, infrastructure and major projects which specify requirements for the effective identification, development and management of collaborative business relationships,” said Paddy Murphy, Managing Director of Contracting at Aggregate Industries.

Spain: Turkey’s Çimsa Çimento has purchased Cemex’s white cement business in Spain, including its Buñol plant, for around US$180m. Cemex expects to sign the final agreement in April 2019 and close this divestment during the second half of 2019. The proposed divestment does not include Cemex’s white cement business in Mexico, nor its interest in Lehigh Cement in the US.

“With the purchase of the Buñol white cement plant in Spain, we are upgrading our game in the white cement sector, the highest value-added business in the global cement market. With the integration of the Buñol white cement plant to our production and distribution networks, we will increase our white cement production capacity by 40%, translating into Çimsa becoming the world's largest white cement company,” said Tamer Saka, the president of Sabancı Holding Cement Group and chairman of Çimsa. He added that Çimsa is among Turkey’s leading exporters. In 2018 it generated over 50% of its operational profit from overseas operations.

Once a final agreement is reached the transaction is subject to standard regulatory approval.

Greece: Titan Group’s profit growth in 2018 due to by its US operations. However, negative currency exchange rate effects have dragged on its financial results. Overall, its turnover fell by 1% year-on-year to Euro1.49bn in 2018 from Euro1.51bn. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) decreased by 5% to Euro260m from Euro273m. However, its net profit rose by 26% to Euro53.8m from Euro42.7m.

By region, the US region reported rising turnover and stable EBITDA in US Dollar terms. An improvement in results was recorded in Florida, counterbalanced the lower profitability of the mid-Atlantic region, which was affected by protracted inclement weather and an increase in competition in the broader New York area. The market remained poor in Greece with falling turnover and earnings. Markets in south-eastern Europe recorded increases, although rising energy costs wee a concern. Continued problems were reported in Egypt and Turkey due to additional input costs and market conditions respectively.

Germany: HeidelbergCement expects increasing sales volumes for its cement, aggregate and ready-mix concrete products in 2019. It plans to raise its prices to regain margins it lost in 2018. The building materials producer also intends to continue the cost cutting programme it started in November 2018. It said that energy cost inflation, improvements in Indonesia, Europe and North America, and new state infrastructure projects should result in a ‘solid result improvement.’

“In view of our strong positioning in raw material reserves and production sites in attractive locations, the unique vertical integration, our excellent product portfolio, and our industry-leading margin management, we believe we are well equipped for the opportunities and challenges of 2019,” said Bernd Scheifele, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement. He added that the group will continue the digitalisation process of its entire value chain in order to further improve operational excellence.

Kuwait: Saudi Arabia’s Qassim Cement has signed a contract with the Al-Aradah Building Materials Company to export cement to Kuwait. It has agreed to transport 120,000t of cement until the end of 2019. The financial impact of the deal will be disclosed in the cement producer’s financial results later in the year.

Mexico/US: Cemex has entered into a global agreement with Petuum to implement its Industrial AI Autopilot software products for autonomous cement plant operations at its plants around the world. The products for cement plant operations are being deployed at select Cemex USA and Mexico plants and will continue to be rolled out in 2019.

"We expect our yield improvements and energy savings to be up to 7%, from the connected AI-based autopilots, which is game-changing for our industry,” said Rodrigo Quintero, Operations Digital Technologies Manager at Cemex.

Petuum says that its Industrial AI Autopilot suite of products can deliver real-time forecasts for key process variables, prescriptions for critical control variables and supervised autosteer aligned with business objectives for all cement plant operations including clinker cooler, preheater, rotary kiln, pyro-process, ball mill and vertical mill processes to achieve lowered energy consumption, optimised fuel mix and increased throughput while maintaining stable operation and product quality. The products are integrated with plant control systems and OSIsoft PI data infrastructure for scalable and standardised deployments across multiple lines and plants globally.

The joint Cemex and Petuum teams achieved a cruise-control-like supervised ‘autosteer mode,’ where the AI Autopilot could run operations with full engage-disengage control available to the operator.

To find out more about Pettum visit: https://petuum.com/

Poland: Lafarge Poland delivered over 0.2Mm³ of ready-mix concrete (RMX) in 2018 for use in various infrastructure initiatives including road expansion projects. In 2019 the company plans to produce 0.32Mm² of concrete surfacing for a motorway extension. The subsidiary of LafargeHolcim set up its LH Engineering business in 2017 to help implement infrastructure projects. It offers engineering services and the delivery of building materials, including RMX, aggregates and other products.

Germany: Cemex has received certification from the Concrete Sustainability Council (CSC) certification for five of its ready-mix concrete (RMX) plants in Berlin and Potsdam. The CSC acts as a certification system, grading building materials facilities on environmental, social and governance practices throughout supply chains. The auditing was conducted by Kiwa Deutschland, an independent certification body recognised by the CSC.