Displaying items by tag: Lafarge
Lafarge focused on India
28 March 2012India: Lafarge is focused on expanding its own operations in India and isn't considering any acquisitions at present, according to its chairman Bruno Lafont.
"We will continue to grow, mostly through internal growth and by expanding our existing cement plants and growing through several green-field plants," Lafont told reporters on the sidelines of an event.
He said the company will continue with its program to increase production capacity in India by 2Mt/yr, but he didn't say when the expansion will be completed. Lafarge has increased its capacity in India from 6.5Mt/yr in 2010 to 8Mt/yr in 2012. Lafont said the company will continue investing in its concrete and construction aggregates businesses in India.
The company recently expanded its capacity through new production lines at Jojobera in Jharkhand and at Mejia in West Bengal. Its four greenfield projects in Rajasthan, Karnataka, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh are in different stages of progress. Lafarge entered the Indian market in 1999 with the acquisition of Tata Steel's cement business. This was followed by the purchase of the Raymond Cement facility in 2001. Lafarge currently has four cement plant across the country - in Sonadih and Arasmeta in Chhattisgarh, Jojobera and Mejia.
Lamarche to join Lafarge board
21 March 2012France: Gerard Lamarche, managing director of Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, will be appointed to the board of Lafarge at a meeting on 15 May 2012. He will replace Thierry de Rudder.
Lamarche, aged 50, graduated from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium. He also completed the advanced management programme at the INSEAD Business School. He began his professional career in 1983 with Deloitte Haskins & Sells in Belgium, and became mergers and acquisition consultant in the Netherlands in 1987.
From 1995 he became the special projects advisor to the president and secretary of the Suez board of directors and participated in the merger between Compagnie de Suez and Lyonnaise des Eaux in 1997. He was later appointed the new Group's senior vice president in charge of planning, control and accounts management. He was appointed senior executive vice president – finance of the Suez Group in 2004, becoming executive vice president, CFO of GDF SUEZ, and member of the Management and Executive Committees of the GDF SUEZ Group in July 2008. Lamarche is also a director of Total and Legrand.
Third of workforce laid off as Joppa kiln shuts
19 March 2012US: Lafarge US has announced that it has laid off 36 workers at its plant at Joppa, Illinois, representing about one-third of the plant's total workforce. The layoffs, which took place Thursday 15 March 2012, were cited as the result of the closure of one of the two kilns at the plant, which has a total installed capacity of 1.25Mt/yr.
The kiln has been mothballed due to consistent low cement demand, with Lafarge saying that local sales have fallen by 44% in recent years.
Lafarge fined over South African cartel
12 March 2012South Africa: Lafarge Industries SA has admitted taking part in a cement cartel and agreed to pay a US$19.6m penalty. The company reached the settlement with the South African Competition Commission after admitting to having taken part in price fixing and market division in the cement industry. As part of the deal Lafarge agreed to pay the penalty, 6% of its 2010 annual turnover in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) region, which covers South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia.
The case, which has been running since 2008, has investigated dealings at Lafarge, Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC), AfriSam and Natal Portland Cement-Cimpor (NPC-Cimpor). Following a 2009 raid at the offices of the accused parties, PPC applied for leniency and confirmed the existence of a cartel among the four cement producers. In December 2011, an agreement was reached with Afrisam, in which it confirmed the information provided by PPC and agreed to pay a US$16.5m penalty, representing 3% of its 2010 annual turnover in the SACU region.
The commission said that it will continue to investigate NPC-Cimpor.
Lafarge plans blocked by French High Court
12 March 2012France: The French High Court has decided to block Lafarge's project to close its plant in Frangey, northern France, until 25 November 2012. The Frangey facility employs 74 workers and had previously been slated for closure in 2012.
The planned closure is part of a much larger restructuring plan at the building materials' giant, which was also annulled by the High Court. However, the court said that the fundamental economic case behind closing the Frangey plant was valid. The group had explained that its decision to shut down the plant was due to overcapacity and high production costs.
The management of Lafarge will now propose a new restructuring plan to the staff representatives starting from November 2012.
Safety First
07 March 2012Lafarge UK has scored a notable success recently at its Cookstown Works reaching 10 years without a lost-time injury (LTI). It has emerged that this is the longest a Lafarge Group plant anywhere in the world has gone without a LTI. Cookstown also set the record the previous year in 2011, showing how far ahead it is of the rest of the group.
LTIs are generally defined as any work related injury or illness which prevents a worker from doing any work the day after the accident. Another similar measure is Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR), which takes into account hours worked by staff.
For example, in April 2011 Global Cement Magazine interviewed the safety manager at the Ste. Genevieve plant in Missouri, USA. He revealed a rate of zero lost-time incidents rate over the last 1.2 million-man hours and no LTIs over the last 700 days. Through construction the plant employed 2300 personnel and then 200 operational employees when it went live. By comparison Cookstown employs only 80 workers. Its LTIFR will be much lower.
The Mineral Products Association recorded a 81% reduction in LTIs between 2004 and 2009 for the UK cement industry. It has since set itself the further target to halve the LTIFR between 2009 and 2014. As of 2009 the UK LTIFR for direct employees was 3.59 per million hours worked. The MPAs target LTIFR for 2014 is 1.79 or lower.
Regardless of how you present the figures the Cookstown Plant LTI achievement is impressive. The challenge, as ever, lies in bettering it.
UK: Lafarge UK is celebrating the achievement of one of its UK cement production sites, which has reached the milestone of 10 years without a lost-time injury (LTI). Workers at the Cookstown Works in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, have not suffered any injury that prevents an employee or contractor returning to work the next day since 2002.
Thanks to a strong team commitment to safety, the achievement has put Cookstown Works in the Lafarge Group's record books. Of the company's 170 cement production sites across the world, this is the longest any site has gone without a LTI.
Commenting on the major achievement, Cookstown Works manager William McGuckne said, "This is a proud moment for the team. Through continued hard work and constant vigilance on safety in all aspects of our operation, we have managed to maintain our safety performance and achieve this fantastic record. A culture of assessing risks, proceeding with care and looking out for each other has helped us contribute to the Lafarge Group's ultimate goal of zero harm to any of our employees or contractors."
Lafarge UK president Dyfrig James added, "My congratulations go to the whole Cookstown Works team of employees and contractors for achieving this world first for Lafarge's cement business."
Smooth test completed at Lafarge/Strabag plant
29 February 2012Hungary: Lafarge and Strabag have successfully finished a test run at a Euro250m cement plant that they have jointly completed near Kiralyegyhaza in south west Hungary, according to Lafarge Cement Magyarorszag managing director Frederic Aubet. Mr Aubet said the test run results show the plant to be one of the most environmentally friendly in Europe.
The plant, which will turn out 0.75Mt/yr of clinker and 1Mt/yr of cement, will be fully commissioned by 2015.
Lafarge's lament
22 February 2012Lafarge's annual report summed up the European malaise this week: too much debt; too little growth.
The world's biggest cement company posted a Euro3m loss for the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to a Euro62m profit for the same quarter in 2010. Overall for the full year in 2011 its income fell by 28%. Yet all of this occurred in the same year that the group sold the bulk of its gypsum assets for over a quarter of a billion Euros! All of which went into the group's debt reduction of Euro2bn.
Compare this to 2010 when Lafarge recorded a 12% increase in net profit for the year and the group was expecting an increase in cement demand of 6%. Chief Executive Bruno Lafont's words were, "The steps we have taken in 2010, ranging from structural cost savings to strategic investments in growing markets such as Brazil will provide the foundation for further improvement and growth as we enter 2011."
6% growth did happen in 2011 but only in the emerging markets in the Middle East and Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia. Overall sales growth remained at 3%, dragged down by sales decreases in North America and western Europe. Understandably Lafarge's outlook for 2012 remains muted.
All this gloom was compounded by the UK Competition Commission raising its concerns about the joint-venture between Anglo-American and Lafarge. With Lafarge expecting 'higher pricing' for 2012 any move with even a whiff of anti-competitive behaviour will draw in the watchdogs. With western European sales down by 2% in 2011 the challenge remains for the group, and for all cement producers, to somehow find profit once more in the mature markets.
Commission flattens Lafarge-Tarmac joint-venture
21 February 2012UK: The UK Competition Commission has decided provisionally that the proposed joint venture between Anglo American plc and Lafarge SA in the UK could damage competition in certain markets for construction materials.
In February 2011 Anglo American, through its UK subsidiary Tarmac Ltd, and Lafarge announced a proposal to establish a 50:50 joint venture, to which each of them would contribute the bulk of their construction materials businesses in the UK. The two parties' main overlapping activities in relation to the joint venture are in the production and supply of cement, aggregates, asphalt and ready-mixed concrete. The Office of Fair Trading referred the case to the Competition Commission on 2 September 2011.
Now the Competition Commission has reported that the joint venture could lead to a substantial lessening of competition in the markets for the supply of bulk cement, rail ballast, high-purity limestone (when used for flue-gas desulphurisation), primary aggregates for construction applications in 23 local markets, asphalt in two local markets and ready-mixed concrete in seven local markets.
"We have a number of concerns about this joint venture," said Roger Witcomb, chairman of the Anglo/Lafarge Inquiry Group. "In bulk cement there are currently only four UK producers and there is evidence that the market is not as competitive as it could be. Prices and profit margins haven't been affected in the way we would have expected following the big falls in the demand for cement in the past few years."
Although the Commission has not reached a view on whether or not there has been coordination in the bulk cement market, Witcomb said there were concerns that the proposed tie-up would increase the susceptibility of this market to co-ordination. "Some of the reasons for this arise from the proposed combination of the cement businesses and some from the increased vertical integration that would result from the combination of their ready-mixed concrete businesses," he said. "Lafarge currently have a relatively small ready-mixed concrete business, while Tarmac have a relatively large one."
Witcomb continued, "We are now consulting on the possible actions we could take in response to the reductions in competition we have found, bearing in mind the close links that exist between the different product markets."
As well as the summary of provisional findings, the Competition Commission has published a notice of possible remedies, outlining ways that the potential anti-competitive effects of the joint venture could be prevented. It will issue a final report no later than 1 May 2012.