Displaying items by tag: LafargeHolcim

Sri Lanka: The Sri Lankan Navy has rescued nine sailors from the ‘Sri Lanka Glory,’ a barge that transports clinker to the Rugunu cement grinding plant in Galle. The barge was forced off course by gale-force winds off the coast of Rumassala, according to the Daily Mirror newspaper. A previous attempt to retrieve the seamen from the damaged vessel by tug had failed.

France: The Ministry of Culture has refused a sponsorship of Euro0.2m from Lafarge intended for the Musée de Cluny in Paris. The ministry said that the sponsorship was paid in 2015 and then returned in 2018, according to the Agence France Presse. However, the ministry did not say why the money has been rejected. In 2017 the Paris City Council ended a partnership with Lafarge for the supply of sand for an urban beach project due to allegations of the building material manufacturer’s conduct in Syria during the civil war. A legal case examining Lafarge’s conduct in Syria between 2011 and 2014 is on-going.

UK: Climate change protestors from the Extinction Rebellion group have been arrested for blockading a ready-mixed concrete plant operated by London Concrete at Bow in London. Concrete from the plant is being used to supply a major road tunnel project at Silvertown beneath the River Thames, according to Reuters. Extinction Rebellion blamed concrete production for being a major source of CO2 emissions and it also has concerns about dust pollution. Seven people were arrested by the Metropolitan Police for aggravated trespass. London Concrete is part of LafargeHolcim Group. It operates 12 concrete plants in London.

Philippines: Holcim Philippines is promoting its retail mobile app called Easybuild. It is intended to allow customers to place orders, check delivery status and review account history and credit, among others functions. The company has initially partnered with leading financial institution Metrobank for an online payment facility. Nearly 700 customers are using the system. It is the latest version of Holcim Philippines’ online customer service portal, which it pioneered in the cement industry in 2001. Already available for the Android operating system, an iOS version will be launched in August 2019.

France: Lafarge France plans to launch a reusable cement pallet scheme in October 2019. The new single-size wooden pallets for bagged cement will be reinforced for use at least six times. They will be used at all of the company’s sites across its range of bagged cement products. The pallets will also include Lafarge branding. A saving of 7500t/yr of wood is anticipated. The scheme is part of the Lafarge 360 initiative.

Netherlands: Holcim Nederland Bouwmaterialen has recevied certification from the Concrete Sustainability Council (CSC) for its five concrete plants. The certification process was handled by Kiwa Netherlands.

Romania: LafargeHolcim has signed an agreement with Oresa to buy Somaco, precast concrete producers. The transaction will allow LafargeHolcim to develop its position on the Romanian building materials market, where the company is already present in the cement, ready-mix concrete and aggregates segments. No value for the transaction has been disclosed. It is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in late 2019.

“This is our sixth bolt-on acquisition this year and we are delivering on our commitment to further develop our Solutions & Products business segment as part of Strategy 2022 – ‘Building for Growth.’ The acquisition enables LafargeHolcim to enter Romania’s fast growing precast concrete market and to become an integrated solutions provider for our local customers,” said Jan Jenisch, chief executive officer (CEO) of LafargeHolcim.

Somaco operates five precast concrete plants and one plant for aerated blocks in Romania. The company reported net sales of Euro56m in 2018 and has 750 employees. It has a portfolio of precast products for bridges, tunnels, subways and logistics platforms and supplies products for the residential sector.

The big announcement from LafargeHolcim this week was the launch of its Industry 4.0 plan known as ‘Plants of Tomorrow.’ The scheme hopes to use automation technologies and robotics, artificial intelligence, predictive maintenance and digital twin technologies across the company’s entire production process. Operational efficiency gains of 15 - 20% are promised.

There wasn’t much detail beyond the use of the Siggenthal integrated cement plant in Switzerland as the ‘lighthouse’ of the scheme, where around 30 proof-of-concept technology ideas will be tested. One technology it did flesh out a little was its long-running Technical Information System (TIS). This follows the work between Holcim and the power and automation product supplier ABB. LafargeHolcim says that over 80% of its plants around the world use the TIS to provide data transparency at plant, country, regional and global level. It added that some country operations have more than a decade of historic technical data available. This last point is pertinent as the data could potentially be used to support the training of any machine learning algorithms the company might want to invest in. The building materials company also mentioned its LH Maqer subsidiary. This startup incubator was launched at the end of 2018.

LafargeHolcim appears to be playing catch up here with Cemex, which has steadily been promoting its own Industry 4.0 developments in recent years. Emphasis on ‘promotion’ here as only yesterday, the day LafargeHolcim made its big reveal, Cemex happened to release information about a recent roundtable in France that it participated in on digitisation and productivity in the construction sector.

Notably in March 2019, the Mexican multinational struck a deal with Petuum to implement its Industrial AI Autopilot software products for autonomous cement plant operations at its plants around the world in March 2019. Readers can find out more about Petuum’s work with Cemex in the June 2019 issue of Global Cement Magazine. In late 2017 Cemex too set up a division, Cemex Ventures, to engage with startups, universities and other organisations. Cemex has also been building its digital customer integration platform Cemex Go since around the same time.

One interpretation of Industry 4.0 is as a German-industrial approach to the so-called fourth or digital revolution pushed by Anglophone software companies. The idea of taking as much data from a production process, such as making cement, is enticing but the prospect of actually doing something useful with this tsunami of information is daunting. Typically algorithm techniques or predictive maintenance seem so far to focus on discrete parts of a process such as a finish grinding mill or final product logistics networks. Companies like Germany’s Inform focus on the latter for example and, incidentally, it celebrated its 50th anniversary this week.

If automated systems start making apparently nonsensical yet useful decisions across the whole raw materials, production and supply chains, then Industry 4.0 will reach its full potential. This moment, if it comes, will be analogous to the time IBM’s computer Deep Blue managed to beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the late 1990s. What’s more likely are automated systems that can perform consistently outside the human operator comfort zone edging up against hard physical process constraints.

Meanwhile, what will be interesting to watch here is whether LafargeHolcim will be able to leverage any advantage over Cemex by having more cement plants to pull data from. Before LafargeHolcim started selling off its south-east Asian subsidiaries it had more than three times as many cement plants as Cemex. If data really is more valuable than oil these days then starting late in the industrial digital arms race may not be as deleterious as one might first think.

El Salvador: Holcim El Salvador is marking its 70th anniversary with the launch of a 42.5kg limited edition bag for its Fuerte cement brand. The new bag features the traditional red and black colours and landmark buildings constructed with Holcim’s cement product packaging, such as Torre Futura, the San Salvador Metropolitan Cathedral and the Divino Salvador del Mundo monument, according to the El Mundo newspaper. The new limited edition bag will be sold until the end of 2019.

France: Lafarge France has launched its Lafarge 360 initiative. The scheme aims to aid specifiers, contractors and builders make low-carbon structures through reducing CO₂ emissions, preserving natural resources and responsible innovation. It will start the initiative by proving a Lafarge 360 score on its associated digital platform to allow customers to assess the environmental impact of Lafarge’s products. By providing a rating of A to D the tool will offer information on the concrete types.