Displaying items by tag: GCW90
Loesche to supply five mills in China
06 March 2013China: German cement industry supplier Loesche GmbH has signed a contract to provide five mills to Shanxi Biological Cement Co. in China. The Shanghai division of Loesche has taken an order for two raw material mills and three clinker mills with complete mill key parts, housings and frames. The components are scheduled for delivery in 2013 with commissioning planned for mid-2013.
Shanxi Biological Cement is the daughter company of Shanxi Coal and Chemical Industry Group Co. It has merged two local cement companies with just under 1Mt/yr cement production capacity. It is building two 4500t/day clinker production lines in FuPing and a 1.8Mt/yr ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) production line in Gaoling. Another 1Mt/yr clinker grinding station plant in HuangLing is being planned. Following all of this production, Shanxi Biological Cement Co intends to become the top cement producer in Western China with a capacity of 10Mt/yr.
Struggling Boral to merge divisions
05 March 2013Australia: Struggling cement and construction materials giant Boral has announced that it will merge its construction materials and cement divisions. The building materials group recently axed 700 jobs but a spokeswoman for Boral said that the only worker to lose their job out of the merger would be the current, long-serving construction materials manager Murray Read, who has been made redundant. Joseph Goss, a senior executive in the cement division of Lafarge North America, has been appointed to manage the newly merged division.
A week after announcing the 700 job cuts in January 2013, Boral upgraded its underlying first-half profit forecast to US$53.2m from US$35.8m. However after restructuring costs, the company suffered a first half net loss of US$25.9m. It said that it expected conditions to remain challenging in the building products market. The result was dragged down by US$78.8m worth of significant items, including impairment charges relating to the suspension of clinker production at Waurn Ponds in Victoria and first half restructuring and redundancy costs.
Tabuk profit up by 38%
04 March 2013Saudi Arabia: Tabuk Cement Company has registered an increase in net profit to US$50.4m in 2012, up from US$36.5m in 2011. This represents a year-on-year increase of 38%. Tabuk Cement attributed the rise to higher sales prices coupled with increased production efficiency.
Cemex España agrees downsizing
04 March 2013Spain: On 4 March 2013 Cemex España, the Spanish subsidiary of Mexican cement group Cemex, reached an agreement with Spanish trade unions to reduce the number of employees who will be affected by the planned downsizing plan. The staff reduction measure now will affect 127 people instead of the initially planned 156 people.
CPV loss down 55% in 2012
01 March 2013Spain: Spanish cement producer Cementos Portland Valderrivas (CPV) has announced that it reduced its loss to Euro147m in 2012 compared to Euro327m in 2011, a 55% year-on-year drop.
The improvement was due to the company's restructuring plan Plan NewVal, which aims to adapt production capacity to the current demand. According to data from the country's association of cement producers Oficemen, cement demand fell by 34% in Spain in 2012.
CPV generated a revenue of Euro653.7m in 2012, down by 12.9% year-on-year, and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of Euro69.8m, a 55% decrease.
New Indonesian plant for Siam Cement
28 February 2013Indonesia: Thai cement giant Siam Cement Group (SCG) will further expand its presence in Indonesia by building a new cement plant and acquiring more companies in the country, according to a company executive.
Chief finance officer Chaovalit Ekabut said that SCG expected to start the construction of a greenfield cement plant in Sukabumi, West Java with a total investment of US$356m."We expect to start construction this year and finish by 2015. We hope to commence operations at this cement plant in the second half of 2015," Chaovalit said on 27 February 2013.The cement plant will have a production capacity of 1.8Mt/yr.
Chaovalit added that SCG had decided to be careful and make small-scale investments in the cement market in Indonesia, which has grown rapidly on the back of increased housing demand and infrastructure projects.
"Some projections calculate that cement capacity (in Indonesia) may reach 100Mt/yr in another five to six years. This is very dangerous because you face a kind of bubble. When the demand seems to be very high, people build more and more plants and then everything stops and you end up having so much extra capacity," Chaovalit said."I hope we shall not fall into the same trap again. Companies should look at the market and continue to invest to serve the demand and not to overexploit something that is not real."