Displaying items by tag: Huaxin Cement

Uzbekistan: China-based Huaxin Cement has successfully ignited the kiln at its 2Mt/yr Jizzakh cement plant in Jizzakh Oblast. 200 employees attended the plant’ opening ceremony, which was streamed by video link to Huaxin Cement’s global headquarters in Wuhan Province. Huaxin Cement president Li Yeqing said, “Everyone has done a very good job, demonstrating the company's strength and personnel capabilities.” Trial operation had been due to begin in April 2020, but was delayed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

China: Huaxin Cement has announced that it burned 2.7t of seized opiates in its fuel mix at its Diwei cement plant in Chongqing. Representatives of the Chongqing Anti-Drug Committee, Public Service Bureau, Eco-Environmental Bureau and Procuratorate were in attendance. Huaxin Cement reports that the dangerous substances have been “safely disposed of.” The producer said that this is the largest single volume of drugs to have been combusted in a cement kiln. The plant previously burnt 1.22Mt of illicit substances in 2018.

Exports are the theme this week with news that the value of Turkey’s cement exports fell by 26% year-on-year in April 2020. Reporting from the Trend News Agency showed that the export market has been stable so far for the year to date, with some countries, like Kazakhstan, increasing exports and others, like France, decreasing exports. However the change in April may mark the start of a new trend.

As Tamer Saka, the chairman of the Turkish Cement Manufacturers’ Association (TÇMB), said earlier in the year, his country is one of biggest cement exporters in the world and among its most important markets are the US, Israel, Ghana and Ivory Coast. To look at one of these countries, United States Geology Survey (USGS) data shows that cement and clinker imports from Turkey to the US grew by 26% year-on-year to 1Mt for the first quarter of 2020 but that exports fell by 24% year-on-year to 0.11Mt in March 2020. Each of these countries is being affected in different ways by the coronavirus pandemic and at different times. Overall though, Saka’s and the TÇMB’s forecast in February 2020 that exports would rise by 15% year-on-year in 2020 is looking decidedly shaky. Any knock to the export market in Turkey is particularly unwanted given the poor state of the Turkish economy at the moment.

What would be useful to know here is how other major cement exporters are coping with the global situation. Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics shows that Pakistan’s cement exports dropped by 31% year-on-year to 0.36Mt in April 2020. Data from the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) for the same month tells a similar story. Its data shows a 57% drop in exports to 0.25Mt in April 2020, with a bigger share lost by plants in the north of the country than those in the south.

The other country to note is Vietnam. Here, data from the General Department of Vietnam Customs shows that cement exports fell by 9.7% year-on-year to 7.73Mt in the first quarter of 2020. This follows the announcement by Vietnam Cement Association (VCA) chair Nguyễn Quang Cung in May 2020 that all cement plant projects scheduled to begin in 2020 would be suspended. Luckily those currently being built avoided this fate. This has included a new line at Thanh Thang Group Cement’s integrated Bong Lang cement plant, which Germany’s Loesche has just sent a pair of clinker mills to this week.

These changes from the major cement exporters are bad for their host countries but the other side of the chain is how their destinations are affected. For example, Australia’s clinker imports nearly doubled between 2010 – 2011 and 2018 – 2019 to 4.1Mt. This compares to local clinker production of 5.6Mt in 2018 – 2019, according to the Cement Industry Federation and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. With this in mind, this week saw the resolution to a legal dispute between Wagners Holdings and Boral over a cement supply contract. Boral found a cheaper source of cement from Cement Australia in early 2019 and the two parties argued over their contract. This dispute may have nothing to do with foreign import levels but Wagners Holdings, Boral and Cement Australia all operate standalone clinker grinding plants and will all be subject to general market pricing trends. Higher international clinker levels may add pressure to pricing issues surrounding cement supply contracts in Australia and elsewhere.

Finally, cement trade flows aren’t the only commodity that has been affected by coronavirus disruption. The mass movement of workers home and then back to work is expected to complicate India’s return to business, as discussed in last week’s column. In this context it’s pleasing to come across one sign of normality. Local press in Hubei, China reported this week that workers from Huaxin Cement finally flew back to Uzbekistan. They were originally meant to commission a new plant in March 2020 but became stranded at home when they returned for the Chinese New Year. Commissioning of the plant is now planned for later in June 2020.

The Virtual Global CemTrans Conference and Exhibition 2020 on cement & clinker, shipping & trade, transport & logistics takes place on 16 June 2020. To find out more information and to register click here.

Uzbekistan: Huaxin Cement has announced that 112 of its employees took the first charter flight from Hubei Province since the coronavirus lockdown began, arriving in Jizzakh, Jizzakh Oblast on 6 June 2020. Hubei Daily News has reported that Huaxin Cement’s upcoming 1.5Mt/yr integrated Jizzakh cement plant, previously scheduled for commissioning in March 2020, will now start operation in June 2020. Huaxin Cement thanked the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Civil Aviation authority for their support.

Huaxin Cement’s deal to buy ARM Cement’s assets in Tanzania has reportedly completed this morning. The Chinese cement producer will pour US$116m into Maweni Limestone to settle its liabilities and add another US$30m to complete plant construction and an upgrade, according to Reuters. Kenyan-based ARM Cement operates an integrated plant at Tanga and a grinding plant at Dar es Salaam.

Given the state of the world at the moment due to coronavirus the timing seems almost prophetic. There have been plenty of jingoistic warnings in Western media about renewed Chinese global dominance in the wake of the crisis. However, this agreement dates back to at least September 2019 when it was publicly announced, well before the current health scare. This is part of the Chinese expansion plan in Sub-Saharan Africa that’s been happening informally and formally since at least 2013. ARM Cement has seriously suffered since 2017 when cement demand fell in Kenya, a coal import ban in Tanzania caused production issues at its Tanga plant and increased competition hit both countries. It entered administration in the summer of 2018 and previous owner Pradeep Paunrana has been fighting PricewaterhouseCoopers’ attempts to sell the business to local rival National Cement. In some respects the timing of this deal may also be bad for Huaxin Cement given that it’s just suffered a 36% year-on-year drop in sales revenue to US$542m in the first quarter of 2020, related to the coronavirus outbreak. If the company can’t absorb this through the rest of the year then it might have a problem.

The real trend here in Chinese expansion strategy by its cement sector is a move from imports, building plants and co-financing projects to outright asset acquisition. This isn’t the first example either. West China Cement completed its purchase of a majority stake in Schwenk Namibia for US$104m in January 2020. This gave it control of Ohorongo Cement. Other recent Chinese moves in Sub-Saharan Africa include the supply of a modular grinding mill in Guinea by Sinoma and the competition of construction of a 1Mt/yr integrated plant in Lubudi Territory in Democratic Republic of Congo by another CNBM subsidiary, Tianjin Cement Industry Design and Research Institute.

An outlier from the more ‘traditional’ Chinese routes of either supplying equipment and/or co-financing cement plants in Africa has been the CNBM/Sinoma plan to build a 7Mt/yr ‘mega’ plant in Tanzania. Once completed it will nearly double local clinker production! Unsurprisingly, when it was first announced it was pitched towards the export market. Cement producers in East Africa might do well to remind themselves what has happened in Egypt since the 13Mt/yr government/army-run El-Arish Cement plant at Beni Suef opened in 2018: the over-supplied market collapsed. Together with the Huaxin Cement purchase, once the CNBM project completes, Chinese companies will own the majority of cement production capacity in Tanzania.

Looking at Sub-Saharan Africa, Chinese cement producers look set to benefit from any potential economic realignment following the coronavirus pandemic due to their conservative approach in expanding overseas. By investing cautiously and generally avoiding large-scale international acquisitions and mergers they have insulated themselves relatively well from any potential economic crisis. One weakness though is a reliance on the strong Chinese domestic market. If, say, it declines over a longer period due to the coronavirus crisis or ever reaches more ‘normal’ per-capita cement consumption figures then expanding too slowly overseas might look like the wrong strategy in retrospect. Yet, if western competitors start retreating further then the temptation to start to buy assets in bulk may grow. Another risk is how badly the coronavirus outbreak hits countries in Africa. The combination of poor healthcare systems, younger populations and warmer climates make it extremely unpredictable. Fortune may favour the bold but slow success seems to be working well for Chinese producers so far.

Tanzania: Huaxin Cement has announced the completion of its acquisition of Kenya-based Athi River Mining (ARM) Cement’s Tanzanian subsidiary Maweni Limestone. Reuters has reported that Huaxin Cement will invest US$30m in completing upgrades to the company’s plants in addition to an investment of US$116m to settle Maweni Limestone’s debts.

China: The China Building Materials Federation and the China Silicate Society have named Hauxin Cement as the winner of the Science and Technology Award 2019 for its digitisation project. The project, entitled ‘Development and Innovation of a Cement Enterprise Operation Digital System,’ aims to modernise management at a pan-business level by using monitoring and analysis, intelligent logistics and a service centre system across 11 different software platforms. 39 Huaxin-affiliated companies currently use the product.

China: Huaxin Cement has announced a predicted profit drop of 46% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020, to US$100m from US$188m in the corresponding three months of 2019. Huaxin Cement said, “During the reporting period, the company's performance declined significantly, mainly due to the impact of the coronavirus epidemic, which caused sales to fall by 36%.”

With events moving fast in Europe with regard to the on-going health crisis, here are a few threads to consider from the cement industry news this week.

Firstly, there have been two solar power stories over the last week in North America. Grupo Argos said that it had installed a 10.6MW solar power plant at Cementos Argos’ Piedras Azules cement plant in Comayagua. Then US-based Alamo Cement Company was reported to have signed a contract with Renergetica to build a solar power plant at its integrated plant in San Antonio, Texas. Global Cement has looked at this topic on and off over the years from the steady addition of photovoltaic (PV) solar plants around the world to supply electricity to cement plants to more ambitious plans such as research into using concentrated solar power to start powering creating clinker directly. These two latest PV stories follow projects in El Salvador and Cyprus so far this year. We’re not going to comment now on the overall progress the cement industry is making towards moving away from fossil fuels but the general trend is encouraging.

Next, there are on-going investments and upgrade projects being announced. Germany’s KHD revealed on 17 March 2020 that is building a new raw mill and pyroprocessing line for an ACC plant in India. FCT combustion recently announced that it has won a deal to supply Titan Cement in the US with an upgrade to a kiln line to natural gas. Buzzi Unicem’s SLK Cement in Russia has agreed to co-process solid municipal waste at its Sukholozhskcement plant. South Africa’s PPC has invested in a pneumatic offloading facility and a silo for its George Depot cement terminal in the Western Cape. These will have likely been agreed before the global coronavirus outbreak but they are reminders that some level of capital expenditure by cement companies is happening.

In China the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said this week that the domestic cement sector’s net profit grew by 20% year-on-year to US$26.6bn in 2019. With this in mind the first quarter results for 2020 from cement producers in China will make essential reading for producers from elsewhere around the world wondering what to expect. However, a recent interview with the president of Huaxin Cement, a company based in Hubei province at the epicentre of the outbreak, revealed that despite the short term economic disruption from the quarantine the company was expecting a rapid economic rebound after April 2020 provided that there is a suitable government stewardship. He also mentioned the key role the company was playing in disposing of clinical waste. As such it was hoping for tax breaks to support continuing incineration and the advancement of co-processing in general.

Finally, also on the health crisis, many cement industry events have been cancelled or postponed as work practices change including those organised by Global Cement. We’re taking our events online in the short term as virtual conferences with opportunities for information exchange and networking. We encourage as many of you as possible to register.

China: Huaxin Cement’s Guoditang quarry in Dongchuan district, Kunming has won the Chinese government’s ‘Green Mine of the Year 2019’ award after receiving total investments of US$0.9m for vegetation recovery. Huaxin integrates land reclamation and afforestation into its step-mining method at the quarry, using planting quilts, sprinklers and drip irrigation devices to recover 80,000m2 of vegetation so far. The company has estimated that the mine will continue to supply its limestone needs in the area until late 2033.

The National Civil Affairs Commission named Huaxin Cement a ‘National Model Unit for National Unity and Progress’ on 17 December 2019. It is the only building materials producer to have obtained the title.