Displaying items by tag: Italy
Redecam Group and Isgec Heavy Engineering start air pollution control joint venture in India
21 March 2017India: Redecam Group and Isgec Heavy Engineering have started a joint venture called Isgec Redecam Enviro Solutions in Noida, Delhi. The new company will provide for flue gas treatment systems for the cement, power and metals industries.
“Air pollution is one of the major environmental issues India and the rest of Asia face today and it is a serious problem with the major sources being industrial emission and biomass burning, vehicle emissions and traffic congestion. In the effort to reduce the country’s air pollution, Redecam and Isgec aim to build a strong business in Asia, drawing upon Redecam’s global expertise combined with the skills and knowledge of Isgec, a strong partner headquartered in India,” said Barry Downing, chief executive officer of Redecam Group.
Italy’s Redecam Group is an engineering company that serves the air pollution control industry around the world. India’s Isgec Heavy Engineering is a general engineering company with references in the cement, chemical, textile, power, oil, gas and sugar industries.
Italy: Cementir Holding’s sales revenue has risen by 6% year-on-year to Euro1.03bn in 2016 from Euro0.97bn in 2015. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 2% to Euro198m from Euro194m and its sales volumes of cement rose by 7.9% to 10.1Mt from 9.4Mt. The gains arose from the company’s purchase of Compagnie des Ciments Belges in 2016. On a like-for-like basis revenue fell slightly, EBITDA fell more deeply and sales volumes of cement rose modestly in the period.
“Strong performance in the Scandinavian countries and Malaysia have substantially offset lower earnings in Turkey, Egypt and Italy. Also, group results have been negatively affected by the depreciation of the Turkish lira and, since the Brexit vote, the British pound, together with the fall in the value of the Egyptian pound and geopolitical events in Turkey and Egypt,” said Francesco Caltagirone Jr, chairman and chief executive officer of Cementir Holding.
Italy: A recovery in sales volumes in Central and Eastern Europe has helped Buzzi Unicem maintain stable sales in 2016. Its net sales rose slightly to Euro2.67bn in 2016 from Euro2.66bn in 2015. Cement and clinker sales volumes remained flat at 25.6Mt. It also reduced its net debt to Euro942m from Euro1.03bn. The cement producer reported slowing sales growth in the US, a decline in Russia and a continued ‘marked’ fall in sales in Italy.
By region, the cement producer said that cement and clinker sales volumes fell by 6.2% year-on-year due to a reduction in exports. Volumes rose in Germany by 3.4% despite low prices and oil well cement demand picked up in the last quarter of the year. Poland reported a 11.9% boost in volumes, driven by the second half of the year, despite lower prices compared to 2015. In Russia sales volumes started to improve in the second half of the year hitting an overall decline of 1% as a decline in construction industry investment started to soften. Also of note, sales of oil well cement started to recovery towards the end of the year.
Cement sales volumes in the US started to decline throughout the year, eventually falling by 1.7%, with a notable weakness in demand in Texas, particularly in the Houston area. Again, oil well cement products declined over the year as a whole but showed signs of recovery in the final months of the period. Finally, Buzzi Unicem’s associate company Corporación Moctezuma saw its cement sales volumes rise slightly compared to 2015, supported by rising prices.
Owner of Panalytical buys Pixirad
09 February 2017Italy: Spectris, the company that owns Panalytical, has acquired Pixirad, a technology company that develops and distributes X-ray detectors. The business will be integrated into Panalytical within Spectris’ Materials Analysis division.
Pixirad was established in 2012 under the spin-off programme of the Instituto Nationale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN). The detector technology was originally developed through research into advanced particle physics and space research technologies and has been improved by Pixirad for use with high energetic X-rays. Before the purchase, Panalytical solds the Pixirad detectors as a high-end option for its Empyrean X-ray diffraction (XRD) instrument used for various materials analysis applications. Following the acquisition the combination of Pixirad’s technology with Panalytical’s experience in products using X-ray detectors is expected to allow expansion of the range applications addressed by existing and future instruments.
Not in my cement kiln: waste fuels in Morocco
08 February 2017Last week’s Global CemFuels Conference in Barcelona raised a considerable amount of information about the state of the alternative fuels market for the cement industry and recent technical advances. One particular facet that stuck out were reports from cement and waste producers, from their perspective, about Morocco’s decision to ban imports of waste from Italy in mid-2016. The debacle raises prickly questions about how decisive attempts to reduce carbon emissions can be.
Public outcry broke out in Morocco in July 2016 over imports of refuse derived fuel (RDF) imported from Italy for use at a cement plant in the country. At the time a ship carrying 2500t of RDF was stopped at the Jorf Lasfar port. Local media and activists presented the shipment in terms of a dangerous waste, ‘too toxic’ for a European country, which was being dumped on a developing one. Public outcry followed and despite attempts to calm the situation the government soon banned imports of ‘waste’.
What wasn’t much reported at the time was that RDF usage rates in Europe have been rising in recent years and that the product is viewed as a commodity. As Michele Graffigna from HeidelbergCement explained at the conference in his presentation, its subsidiary Italcementi runs seven cement plants in Italy but only two of them have the permits to use alternative fuels like RDF. Italy also has amongst the lowest rates of alternative fuels usage in Europe, in part due to issues with legislation. This is changing slowly but the company has an export strategy for waste fuels from the country at the moment. Italy’s largest cement producer wants to use waste fuels in Italy but it can’t fully, so it is exporting them so it (and others) is exporting them to countries where it can.
In the Waste Hierarchy, using waste as energy fits in the ‘other recovery’ section near the bottom of the inverted pyramid, but it is still preferable to disposal. Waste fuels may be smelly, unsightly and have other concerns but they are a better environmental option than burning fossil fuels. HeidelbergCement engaged locally with media and local authorities to try and convey this. It also arranged visits to RDF production sites in Italy and German cement plant that use RDF to present its message. Looking to the future, HeidelbergCement now plans to focus on local waste production in Morocco with projects for a tyre shredder at a cement plant and an RDF production site at a Marrakesh landfill site in the pipeline. Graffigna didn’t say so directly, but the decision to focus on local waste supplies clearly dispenses with historical and cultural baggage of moving ‘dirty’ products between countries.
In another talk, at the conference Andy Hill of Suez then mentioned the Morocco situation from his company’s angle. His point was that moving waste fuels around can carry risks and that a waste management company, like Suez, knows how to handle them. It is worth pointing out here that Suez UK has supplied solid recovered fuel (SRF) to the country so it has a commercial interest here. He also suggested that despatching a bulk vessel of waste to a sensitive market did not help the situation and that it heightened negative publicity.
Morocco’s decision to ban the import of waste fuels in mid-2016 is an unfortunate speed bump along the highway to a more sustainable cement industry. It raises all sorts of issues about public perceptions of environmental efforts to clean up the cement industry and where they clash with commercially minded attempts to do so by the cement producers. A similar battle is playing out in Ireland between locals in Limerick and Irish Cement, as it tries to start burning tyres and RDF. These are not new issues. Meanwhile in the background the amendment to the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme draws close with a vote set for mid-February 2017. It could have implications for all of this depending on what happens. More on this later in the month.
Metso announces new distribution model in Italy
24 January 2017Italy: Metso has changed its distribution model in Italy in 2017, appointing three exclusive distributors to cover the country. Righini and Frantoparts FP will handle the exclusive distribution of all Metso stationary crushing and screening machines. Righini will cover the provinces of Valle d'Aosta, Piemonte and Liguria. Frantoparts will cover the remaining provinces. Scai will be the exclusive distributor of the mobile equipment for the whole of Italy.
"These three distributors are already our long-term partners with proven expertise and service capability. We are confident that they are the right partners for us for many years to come," said Angel Luis Garcia, Metso's Distribution Business Manager for Spain & Italy.
Buzzi Unicem sees cement sales rise slightly so far in 2016
11 November 2016Italy: Buzzi Unicem’s cement sales have risen by 1.2% year-on-year to 19.5Mt for the first nine months of 2016 from 19.3Mt in the same period of 2015. Its total net sales rose slightly to Euro2bn and its earnings before interest, taxation depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 18.3% to Euro416m from Euro352m. It reported improved demand in Central Europe, Poland and Ukraine but that the US was affected by poor weather. Elsewhere, it said that the recession in Russia has lessened although its sales have continued to decline.
Cementir sales rise but profit falls so far in 2016
10 November 2016Italy: Cementir Holding’s revenue has risen by 1.8% year-on-year to Euro733m in the first nine months of 2016 from Euro720m. Its sales volumes of grey and white cement grew by 4.6% to 7.28Mt from 6.96Mt. Yet, its profit fell by 24.9% to Euro47.7m from Euro63.6m. It blamed the fall in profit indicators on foreign currency effects and poor markets in Italy and Turkey.
HeidelbergCement appoints new board of directors for Italcementi
26 October 2016Italy: HeidelbergCement, the sole shareholder of Italcementi, has appointed a new board of directors its subsidiary at a shareholder meeting on 19 October 2016. The new members are Luca Sabelli as chairman, Dominik von Achten as executive vice president, Lorenz Näger as executive vice president and Roberto Callieri as chief executive officer.
On 12 October 2016, HeidelbergCement purchased the remaining Italcementi shares that had not been tendered in the mandatory tender offer. From this date HeidelbergCement became the sole shareholder of Italcementi and owns 100% of the share capital. Italcementi shares were delisted from the Italian Stock Exchange on the same day.
Italy: Italcementi will start temporary lay-offs for workers at its Scafa and Monselice cement plants when unemployment benefits end on 31 January 2017. The plans were announced at a meeting on 14 October 2016 following agreements signed in December 2015 at the Ministry of Labour by trade union representatives and Italcementi’s workers, according to the Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper. The cement producer has confirmed that the on-going reorganisation at its plants are related to poor market conditions and not the acquisition of Italcementi by HeidelbergCement.