Displaying items by tag: Gebr Pfeiffer

Last month Soyuzcement, the Union of Russian Cement Producers, reported that cement production was on course to grow by 8% year-on-year to 58Mt in 2019. This estimate was based on growth from January to October 2019 followed by a modest rise in November.

Graph 1: Cement production in Russia, 2010 – 2019. Source: CM Pro, Ernst & Young.

The pickup is significant because it’s the country’s first annual resumption of growth since 2014. At that time low commodity prices, a worsening economy and international sanctions broke a fairly steady growth cycle that had started in 2000. The only blip in that run was the global economic downturn around 2008. In the medium to long term Soyuzcement’s review pinpointed growth drivers as being government-backed residential housing schemes, integrated land development projects and an increase in the construction of concrete roads. This increase has been driven by consumption growth in most regions, led by a 12% rise in the Central Federal District although the Volga Federal District started to slow in the second half of 2019.

Figure 1: Russian Federal Districts by cement production in 2016. Source: Soyuzcement.ru.

Anecdotally, this change in the fortunes of the Russian cement industry can be seen in the volume of news coverage on the Global Cement website over the last few years. The mean number of news stories on the country in 2016 and 2017, increased by half in 2018 and then again in 2019. Partly this is down to our attempts to increase our coverage of the region but it also shows a general trend. In the news specifically there haven’t been many new plant projects domestically but there has been a steady stream of upgrades and maintenance related stories. For example, Eurocement subsidiary Kavkazcement reported in recent weeks that it had installed a replacement dry kiln. This has been part of a group of upgrades that Eurocement has started in 2019. On the supplier side both Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer and Italy’s Bedeschi opened subsidiaries in Russia in 2019.

One thing that didn’t seem to slow down the growth were mounting tariffs on Russian exports into Ukraine. Russia’s neighbour first blocked imports of cement from Russia in May 2019 due to, what it said was a Russian ban on imports. It then followed this with an antidumping rate of 115% for imported clinker and Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) from Russia. It also penalised imports from Belarus and Moldova, although at lower rates. Russia’s cement export rates seemed untroubled by this, rising by 13.5% year-on-year to 0.8Mt in the first 10 months of 2019. Exports hit of high of just below 2Mt/yr in 2014 but have since stabilised at around 1Mt/yr. Imports reached around 5Mt/yr in the early 2010s and have been slowly declining since then, reaching 1.5Mt in 2018.

The lowered production rate that the Russian cement industry has faced over the last five years has been noteworthy given the apparent low capacity utilisation rate. The Global Cement Directory 2019 records the country as having a production capacity of 111Mt/yr. This gives Russia a capacity utilisation rate of 48% in 2018! Unlike, say, the countries in southern Europe that have had to rationalise their cement industries following the post-2008 decline, Russia may have structural aspects to the industry that have helped protect it from lower utilisation rates. These include relatively low export-import rates and the large size of the country with limited sea access to many regions. Most of its production capacity is located in the west but a sizable minority of plants are based further east across the Ural, Siberian and Far Eastern regions. Even under subdued economic conditions, plants in these places are likely to be less susceptible to foreign imports, for example.

Looking ahead, the question is whether the current growth that the cement industry is enjoying is viable once government spending slows down. Alongside this the industry could also focus on sustainability. As the government announced in early January 2020, the country expects to face both negative and positive effects from climate change. The cement industry could be at the front of this trend if it decides to clean up production and/or move into new markets as the Arctic region opens up.

India: Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer has won a supply contract with UltraTech for one MVR 6000 C-6. The mill can grind up to 370t/hr of mixed cements or 225t/hr of granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS). Gebr. Pfeiffer has stated that it is the 17th mill of its type in India. The company will assist its subsidiary Gebr. Pfeiffer (India) Pvt. Ltd. in commissioning the mill in early 2021.

Germany: Gebr. Pfeiffer has appointed the current head of its Malaysia office Timothy Burden as president of its US subsidiary Gebr. Pfeiffer Inc., effective 1 January 2020. Burden brings 15 years’ materials handling and crushing engineering and sales experience to the role. He studied at Queen’s University Belfast and attained his Masters in engineering from the University of Southhampton in 2004.

Gebr. Pfeiffer will replace Burden in the Malaysian office with Vesa Peurakari, an experienced project and service manager and sales professional with a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Gothenburg.

Sweden: Construction and engineering conglomerate Peab’s subsidiary Swecem has engaged German-based Gebr. Pfeiffer for the supply of one MVR 2500 C-4 grinding mill at its granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) grinding plant in Oxelösund in Södermanland. The mill has four grinding rollers and a table diameter of 2.5m, giving it a 25t/hr slag grinding capacity.

Swecem operates a concrete plant in Kungsängen. It currently uses ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) supplied by Irish-based Ecocem’s 0.7Mt/yr Dunkirk grinding plant in France.

Philippines: Cemex Philippines has ordered a MVR type mill for cement raw material grinding from Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer for a plant in Antipolo. The order also includes a MPS mill to grind coal. Gebr. Pfeiffer said that the order was received through a Chinese general contractor. No value for the order or timescale was disclosed.

Russia: Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer has opened a new subsidiary called ‘Gebr. Pfeiffer GUS’ based in Moscow. The company is led by General Director Alex Nickel and it offers new machinery as well as after sales for customers based in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region. Nickel is joined by Sales Director Svetlana Tarasova and Service Manager Alexander Zolotarev. The parent company holds long links with the region with machine and equipment sales to countries including Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Uzbekistan.

India: Shree Cement has ordered a MVR 6000 C-6 mill from Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer. The mill will be used to grind cement at a grinding unit near Pune in the state of Maharashtra. No value for the order has been disclosed.

The new mill will be used to alternately produce 300t/hr of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) at a product fineness of 3100cm²/g acc. to Blaine or 300t/hr of Portland Pozzolana Cement (PPC) containing as much as 35% of fly ash at a product fineness of 3500cm²/g acc. to Blaine or 180t/hr of ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBFS) at a product fineness of 4500 cm²/g acc. to Blaine. The mill will come equipped with a 6700kW drive.

Gebr. Pfeiffer SE will supply the core components of the mill and the gear unit from Europe and its Indian subsidiary, Gebr. Pfeiffer (India), will provide the components such as the housing of the mill and classifier, the steel foundation parts as well as the internal parts of the classifier. The Indian subsidiary will also design the plant layout and advise the customer on the equipment he will procure on his own.

Shree Cement has ordered 34 mills from Gebr. Pfeiffer previously. It has recently commissioned a grinding plant in Jharkand that also uses a mill supplied by Gebr. Pfeiffer.

Two new stories from Algeria this week highlight a changing industry. Firstly, Groupe Industriel des Ciments d’Algérie (GICA) started marketing cement from its new Sigus integrated plant. The unit was commissioned earlier in the year. Secondly, clinker export figures for the sector show 10-fold growth year-on-year to a value of US$30m for the first five months of 2019.

Graph 1: Cement production and capacity in Algeria, 2012 - 2018. Source: Algerian National Office of Statistics, United States Geological Survey, Global Cement Directory 2013 - 2019. Estimates supplied for 2017 and 2018.

Graph 1 above depicts the moment that lots of new production capacity started to be ordered and then commissioned in 2017. The Global Cement Directory lists new plant projects as they are announced so the trend from 2016 to 2017 may not be as pronounced as it seems but the general destination remains the same. A Ministry of Industry and Mining report estimated that production capacity would reach 40Mt/yr in 2020. Consumption was reported at 26Mt in 2016.

To cope with this the cement industry in Algeria has been moving towards an export model over the last few years. Industry and government figures started to warn of an end to imports in 2016. This quickly flipped to prognostications of production overcapacity in 2017. This then became a stream of news stories about export operations from the local industries to places like West Africa. One consequence of this were problems for foreign exporters in Tunisia and Spain, for example, as the Algerian market was shut off. Indeed, it must have been satisfying for state-producer and market leader GICA to announce that it was exporting cement to Europe in 2018!

Notably the local market has no cement grinding plants, yet this too has started to change. In May 2019 Algematco Steel ordered a modular Ready2Grind MVR vertical roller mill from Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer. Target markets for the exports identified by the Ministry of Industry and Mining included neighbouring Mali, Libya, Mauritania and Niger. However, only two of these countries are accessible by sea. Unfortunately, Libya’s resurgence in violence since April 2019 is unlikely to help the export market. The other countries share land borders with Algeria but no rail links. An overland export operation to Niger from a plant near Adrar was reported in early 2019 but feasibility on a large scale seems unlikely given the distances involved.

LafargeHolcim said in its 2018 financial report that its net sales were down in its Middle East and African region due to price pressure and lower volumes in oversupplied markets, particularly in Algeria, Iraq and Jordan. Bloomberg reported in February 2019 that LafargeHolcim was considering divesting assets in the region. However, LafargeHolcim’s exit from Southeast Asia may have since bought it some financial breathing room.

With Algeria facing a production capacity gap of at least 10Mt/yr it seems likely that foreign-backed producers like LafargeHolcim will suffer despite potential in the local economy. Nationally, the race is on to see if the industry can bring its cement to the sea and find new export markets.

Sri Lanka: Lanwa Sanstha Cement has ordered two MVR 5000 C-4 type roller mills from Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer. The vertical roller mills will be used for the production of various cement types based on clinker, gypsum, granulated blast-furnace slag and fly ash. The end customer is part of Onyx Group, which mainly operates in Sri Lanka and the UAE. The contract was signed in February 2019. No value for the order has been disclosed.

Most of the components of the grinding plants will be supplied by Gebr. Pfeiffer (India). The core components of the mills - including the grinding rollers, the tension systems and the gear units - will come from Europe. Gebr. Pfeiffer (India) will also provide the entire engineering for the grinding plants and make available staff to support and supervise the erection and commissioning and assist with the performance test. The two grinding plants will each produce about 180t/hr of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) ground to a fineness of 4000cm²/g acc. to Blaine and they will be set up at staggered intervals. Delivery of the first plant is slated for the end of 2019 and scheduled to be commissioned in the second quarter of 2020.

Kenya: Mombasa Cement has ordered a MVR 3750 C-4 type vertical roller mill from Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer. It will be used to grind cement on the second production line it is building at its integrated Vipingo plant. The mill has a drive power of 2900kW to produce 150t/hr of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). Delivery will be coordinated between Gebr. Pfeiffer’s Indian subsidiary and its headquarters in Kaiserslautern, Germany. No value for the order has been disclosed.

The cement producer has previously ordered two cement mills from Gebr. Pfeiffer. In January 2016 it ordered a type MVR 3750 C-4 vertical mill for the Tororo plant in Uganda. In June 2016 it ordered a Ready2Grind type MVR 1800 C-4 mill for its Vipingo plant. The latest order at Vipingo has the same design as the mill in Uganda.