Displaying items by tag: HeidelbergCement

Spain: FYM-HeidelbergCement plans to invest Euro2.5m in a new 4900m² plot at the Port of Malaga. The company will use the unit to export cement and clinker, according to the La Opinión de Málaga newspaper. At present the cement producer exports 0.5Mt/yr of clinker to markets in Africa, South America and Europe. FYM-HeidelbergCement operates an integrated cement plant in Malaga.

India: HeidelbergCement India’s sales rose by 11.9% year-on-year to US$222m in the nine months to 31 December 2018 from US$202m in the same period in 2017. Its expense increased by 3.5% to US$193m from US$186m. Its net profit nearly doubled to US$22.6m. The cement producer reported a strong third quarter of its 2017 – 2018 financial year due to improved construction activity in central India.

Georgia: Mamuka Bakhtadz, the prime minister of Georgia, has officially opened a US$100m upgrade to HeidelbergCement’s Kaspi cement plant. Work on the new dry production line at the site started in mid-2016. A filtration system and equipment for continuous emission control were installed to allow for online monitoring of the plant's dust and emission volumes. The project was supported by the Georgian Co-Investment Fund and Honeywell Partners.

Ukraine: Germany’s HeidelbergCement is selling its assets according to sources quoted by Interfax-Ukraine. It is reportedly selling to local investment group Concorde Capital and the deal will be completed during March and April 2019. The building materials local subsidiary, HeidelbergCement Ukraine, has not commented on story. The company operates integrated plants at Kryvyi Rih and Amvrosiyivka and a slag grinding plant at Kamyanske. Its loss rose by 14.4% year-on-year to around Euro14m in 2017.

Sweden: HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary Cementa has completed a feasibility study into electrifying its cement plant at Slite in Gotland as part of its Cemzero project. A report from the first phase of the project has been submitted to the Swedish Energy Agency.

The study found that using electricity to supply heat during the clinker production process is possible using plasma technology, although this needs to be tested on a larger scale. Using an electrified process was found to be competitive compared to other options for achieving high reductions in carbon emission. The production cost of cement would be doubled approximately but the research suggested that this might only mean a small percentage increase to the end cost of a building or an infrastructure project. Finally, the study reported that any future electrification of the Slite plant would work well with a planned expansion to wind turbine generation at the site. It would improve the energy balance and reduce the maximum power surplus that might occur.

Cementa and energy company Vatenfall will now look at how to build a pilot plant.

Germany: HeidelbergCement has been awarded ‘A-‘ in the climate change category of CDP’s Climate A List. It also received the same score in the water security category. The result marked it as the highest-scoring cement company on the list beating other major international producers such as LafargeHolcim, Cemex and CRH. Notably, these other cement companies each received ‘F’ for water security due to a lack of sufficient information available. CDP analyses data from over 6800 large companies around the world.

“This is a strong confirmation that we are on the right track with our Sustainability Commitments 2030. The excellent result encourages us to further reduce our ecological footprint across all business lines and on a global level,” said Bernd Scheifele, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement.

Ghana: Morten Gade, the managing director of Ghacem, says that the company plans to make 3Mt of cement in 2019. It also has a target of producing and distributing 60 million bags compared to 56 million bags, according to the Daily Graphic newspaper. The subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement operates two grinding plants in the country.

The Bangladeshi cement industry has been busy over the last month. Both Vietnam and Iran have marked up the country as a major destination for their exports. No change there, but Saudi Arabia has also started to join them as its producers have started announcing clinker export deals to the country. Alongside this there have also been production upgrades announced from MI Cement, Chhatak Cement and a Saudi-led partnership. Also, just before Christmas, Shah Cement inaugurated the world’s largest vertical roller mill (VRM) with a 8.1m grinding table, supplied by Denmark’s FLSmidth, at its Muktarpur plant in Munshiganj.

Md Shahidullah, vice president of the Bangladesh Cement Manufacturers Association (BCMA), described 2018 as a good year for the local industry to local media. Cement sales rose to 33Mt and consumption grew by 12% year-on-year.

The country has an integrated production capacity of 8.4Mt/yr from eight plants according to Global Cement Directory data. The main plants are Chhatak Cement and Lafarge Surma Cement. Locally produced clinker accounts for about 20% of the country’s needs, with the other 80% imported from abroad. Hence, the action is really with the grinding plants and the country has over 30 of them. A market report by EBL Securities in mid-2017 reckoned that local cement production capacity was 40Mt/yr but that actual production was around 32Mt in the 2016 - 2017 reporting year due to problems with power supplies and so on. Given the focus on grinding it’s interesting to note imports of clinker. These rose by 9% year-on-year to a value of US$518m in 2017 - 2018, the highest figure since 2014 - 2015. Not all of this may be consumption related since the local currency, the Taka, depreciated against the US dollar in 2017 and 2018.

Back in 2016 the market leaders were Shah Cement, LafargeHolcim Bangladesh, Bashundhara Group, Seven Rings Cement and HeidelbergCement. They accounted for about half of the market share. Of these LafargeHolcim Bangladesh saw its revenue nearly double year-on-year to US$101m from US$58m in the first half of 2018. Its profit did double to US$6.3m from US$2.7m. The company is a joint venture between LafargeHolcim, Spain’s Cementos Molins and other partners.

Bangladesh suits a grinding-based industry due to its high level of navigable waterways and low levels of limestone. In some respects though the country is a glimpse of what future cement markets might look like. Its lack of raw materials means it focuses on grinding and a clinker-rich world plays right into this. This creates an oversaturated market full of lots of companies due to the lower cost of setting up a grinding business or cement trading. In theory this should be great for end consumers and the general development of the country. After all Bangladesh has a high population, of 164 million, and a low gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, US$4561, and similarly low per capita consumption of cement. The downside though is that reliance on external raw materials. Any changes to exchange rates or material supply puts the entire industry at risk or puts prices in flux. In the meantime though the interest by Saudi exporters adds an interesting dynamic to a crowded market.

Sweden: Conveyor belts supplied by Germany’s Continental are being used in the Förbifart Stockholm road infrastructure project. HeidelbergCement’s aggregate company Jehander is using Continental steel cord conveyor belts at its Löten quarry near Stockholm to allow rubble from tunnelling to be reused for road construction. In addition, drilling machines from Epiroc are using Continental DrillMaster tyres to provide high cut resistance, good traction and stability.

Overall, around 5.5Mt of rock will be extracted to build the tunnels required for the new bypass. A series of conveyor belt systems are being used to transport the extracted rock to three temporary ports that have been set up for the project. The rubble is taken across the waterways by inland vessels from the construction site in Stockholm to Löten. The rubble is then reused as concrete, mostly for road construction, or it used for local construction.

UK: Hanson has completed a Euro1.25m upgrade to its Bellshill cement terminal in Glasgow, converting it into a dual product storage and distribution site. Improvements included new pipework and a new silo monitoring system. The site has three silos: two for cement powder, transported by rail from the company’s Ribblesdale cement plant in Lancashire, and one for the storage and distribution of ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS), produced at the company’s Teesport site in Middlesbrough. The upgrade took 17 months to complete. Cement has been transported by rail to the Bellshill terminal since 2007.