Displaying items by tag: Morocco

Morocco: Hakan Gürdal has been appointed as the managing director of Ciments du Maroc, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement. He succeeds Nabil Francis, according to the Telquel newspaper.

Hakan Gürdal graduated from the Technical University of Yildiz in Istanbul in Mechanical Engineering and from the University of Istanbul with a MBA in International Management. He then joined Çanakkale Çimento in 1992. He became a member of the board of directors of HeidelbergCement in 2016 and has been in charge of the Africa-Eastern Mediterranean region since then. He has been responsible for Purchasing since the start of 2017.

Morocco: LafargeHolcim says that its 0.2Mt/yr Laâyoune cement grinding plant is complete. The cement producer is set to start production later in July 2017 it said in a director’s report, according to Medias 24. The company is also about to start building a 1.7Mt/yr cement plant in the Souss-Massa region. Thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions has been contracted to build this project.

Burkina Fasa: The West African Development Bank (BOAD) has granted a US$10m short term loan to Ciments de l'Afrique (CIMAF) for the import of raw materials for the production of cement to be sold locally. Morocco’s CIMAF operates a cement grinding plant at Ouagadougou and it is building another at Bobo-Dioulasso that is expected to be completed in mid-2018.

Morocco: Cemengal says that a modular and portable grinding station Plug&Grind XL it is supplying for LafargeHolcim in Laâyoune is proceeding to schedule. No details regarding cost and production capacity have been disclosed but the model has a cement production capacity of up to 0.22Mt/yr and a total installed power of around 1500kW.

Morocco: LafargeHolcim is preparing to inaugurate its Laâyoune cement grinding plant. The unit is expcted to join Ciments du Maroc, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement, that also operates a grinding plant in the south of the country, accoridng to the Aujourd'hui Le Maroc newspaper. In addition to these plants Anouar Invest also announced plans in late 2015 to build a 0.5Mt/yr cement plant in the region under the name of Ciement Sud (CIMSUD).

Morocco: LafargeHolcim has inaugurated a new Construction Development Lab (CDL) in Casablanca. The CDL will be dedicated to the Moroccan and African construction markets and it will help the group develop construction solutions for the markets it serves. The laboratory is LafargeHolcim’s eighth laboratory in the world after those in Algeria, Argentina, China, France, India, Malaysia and Mexico. The 4000m² facility will house 50 engineers, architects and technicians and marketers. LafargeHolcim’s central research and development site is based in Lyon, France.

The new CDL will also aim to develop partnerships with start-ups, universities and other higher education institutions to promote research and development, test new ideas and reinforce relationships with building and infrastructure construction experts. It will organise specialised training for clients, influencers, product applicators and builders to enable them to use innovative solutions in their projects.

Morocco: LafargeHolcim Morocco plans to build two new cement plants at Tizgilt, Chtouka Ait-Baha and Tidmi, Taroudant in the Souss-Massa region. The project is budgeted at Euro720m and it is expected to create 1400 jobs, according to the Challenge newspaper. Marcel Kobuz, the chief executive officer for the cement producer, has met with region head Zineb El Adaoui to discuss the initiatives including the allocation of land.

Last 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.

Morocco: Cement consumption has fallen by year-on-year 0.7% to 14.1Mt in 2016 from 14.3Mt in 2015. Data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Policy shows that particular falls in consumption of nearly 10% were recorded in the Béni Mellal – Khénifra and Drâa – Tafilalet regions. However, the country’s Dakhla - Oued Ed-Dahab region in the south-west reported a 64.3% rise in sales to 63,771t.

Ghana: President John Dramani Mahama has inaugurated a 1Mt/yr cement plant in Tema on behalf of Ciments de l'Afrique (CIMAF), a subsidiary of Morocco’s Addoha Group. The project had an investment of Euro60m according to the Ghana News Agency. Construction started in 2014.