Displaying items by tag: Mozambique
PPC Zimbabwe secures US$18m for new Harare plant
29 July 2014Zimbabwe: PPC Zimbabwe has secured US$18m for the construction of a new cement plant in Harare Province. The company said that construction of the new plant is currently its main priority.
"Preliminary work at the site is underway and fully-fledged construction is scheduled for August 2014," said PPC's managing director, Njombo Lekula. A road access network to the plant has already been completed and a temporary office is already set up at the site. Public hearings for the Environment Impact Assessment have been concluded, providing the green light for the project to commence.
PPC, which has 1.2Mt/yr of cement production capacity, intends to double its capacity by building a clinker plant in Mount Darwin District in Zimbabwe, as well as cement grinding plants in Harare Province, Zimbabwe and Tete Province, Mozambique. Lekula said that PPC is also looking at investing more in new technology to increase production capacity. According to Lekula, a feasibility study for the construction of a clinker plant and a cement grinding plant in Mashonaland Central Province, Zimbabwe is almost complete.
"We are conducting a feasibility study for the clinker plant in Mashonaland Central, but the plant in Harare is our main priority at the moment," said Lekula. He added that the construction of another clinker plant in Mashonaland Central would go in tandem with the limestone geological studies currently being carried out.
PPC, however, is worried by the performance of its export business. "Currently our plants in Zimbabwe are running at about 70% capacity utilisation and for us to get to decent levels of capacity utilisation, we have to find other markets," said Lekula. "We export to Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique and we continuously look for opportunities in the region." PPC's export business contributes about 20% to its total turnover, but the figure fluctuates. "Our export market margins are impacted by logistics. Sometimes the exports are not very stable hence the need to look at both the local and export markets to ensure sustainability," he added.
PPC Zimbabwe domestic sales drop 5%
06 June 2014Zimbabwe: PPC Zimbabwe reports that its domestic sales for the first five months of 2014 have fallen by 5% compared to the same period in 2013. Managing director Njombo Lekula blamed the drop on a decrease in housing projects.
"For the past few years there has been significant growth in housing, which boosted cement demand, however, the current economic situation is beginning to have an impact on home building activities," said Lekula in comments reported by The Herald.
PPC Zimbabwe now intends to sell its excess production in neighbouring countries. However, Lekula pointed out that Mozambique has a 'very competitive' market due to imports from the Far East via the port of Beira. In addition the cost of logistics to reach this market is an issue for the cement producer. PPC Zimbabwe are also considering targeting Zambia but logistics and the fluctuating price of the Kwacha have posed challenges.
PPC Zimbabwe intends to start building a US$200m cement plant in the north-east of Zimbabwe in 2014. The company has also started constructing clinker grinding plants near Harare and Tete, Mozambique. Currently, PPC Zimbabwe has a cement production capacity of 0.76Mt/yr. The new projects are expected to increase capacity to 1.2Mt/yr.
Cimpor to increase cement production to 2.4Mt/yr in Mozambique
30 September 2013Portugal: Cimpor intends to increase its cement production capacity in Mozambique to 2.4Mt/yr after a new grinding unit is put on stream, the company has said in a statement.
The new unit at the plant in Dondo, in southern Mozambique, has a production capacity of 60t/hr. The unit will double the Dondo plant capacity and will add almost 0.5Mt/yr to Cimpor's overall cement output in the country. Tests at the new grinding unit began on 27 August 2013. Works for optimisation of the capacity and reduction of electricity consumption will be carried out in October 2013.
In July 2013 Cimpor signed a contract to rent a cement grinding plant close to its Matola cement plant.
Cimentos Mozambique order US$8m filter from American Air Filter
12 September 2013Mozambique: Cimentos Mozambique has signed a contract for the manufacture and installation of a filter to reduce the emissions from its cement plant in the southern city of Matola. The US$8m order has been placed with American Air Filter for installation in 2014.
"Protecting the environment and the health and well-being of the residents of Matola and the surrounding area was one of the first points on the agenda of the new management of the factory. We are convinced that we will be in a much better situation when the new filter is installed next year," said Cimentos Mozambique spokesman Sergio Bandeira.
Cimentos Mozambique is Mozambique's largest cement producer. In late 2012 Brazilan cement producer InterCement took over the company from Cimpor.
DG Khan Cement profit rises by 35% to US$52.5m
11 September 2013Pakistan: DG Khan Cement has reported that its profit after taxation rose by 35% year-in-year to US$52.5m for the 2012 – 2013 financial year that ended on 30 June 2013. In the same period in the 2011 – 2012 year it reported a profit of US$39.2m. No reason for the increase in profit was given in the notice sent to the Karachi Stock Exchange. The cement producer also saw its sales rise by 9% to US$238m from US$219m.
In its release DG Khan revealed that its board has approved plans to build a green-field 2.6Mt/yr cement plant on land the company owns at Hub, Lasbela District. Meanwhile, plans to build a cement plant in Mozambique have been dropped due to a lack of supporting infrastructure.
Cimpor to increase grinding capacity in Mozambique
24 July 2013Mozambique: Portuguese cement producer Cimpor intends to increase its grinding capacity in Mozambique by 220,000t/yr. Cimpor's local subsidiary Cimentos Mozambique has signed an agreement to lease a grinding plant near to its Matola cement plant. The agreement will also allow Cimpor to increase its product range.
New Zimbabwe plant for PPC
11 February 2013Zimbabwe/Mozambique: South African cement manufacturer PPC's (Pretoria Portland Cement) Zimbabwean subsidiary, Portland Holdings Limited (PHL), is to build a new cement plant in the country to service its markets in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The new plant will produce about 1Mt/yr of cement and will work alongside a separate grinding facility being constructed in Tete in Mozambique.
"In recent years our investment in Zimbabwe has show strong growth on the back of a more buoyant and stable economy," said PPC's chief executive officer, Ketso Gordhan. "This, together with the fact that PPC has received an indigenisation certificate, makes us optimistic about the future of the economy and the country as a whole."
"The construction of additional cement capacity will ensure that PPC continues to be a key player in the development of infrastructure in Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries," added Gordhan. "It is totally in line with our stated strategy of growing our non-South African revenue from the current 21% to at least 40% by 2016.
"Not only will this investment address the expected future increase in cement demand in Zimbabwe but create employment opportunities, beneficiation of the country's mineral reserves and a significant growth opportunity for our indigenisation partners," said PHL's managing director, Zak Limbada.
Where to build an African cement plant
28 November 2012The outgoing chief executive of PPC (Portland Pretoria Cement) officer, Paul Stuiver, summed up the dilemma facing cement producers on the east coast of Africa. Building near the coast leaves you vulnerable to imports.
In a recent interview with the South African business weekly, 'Financial Mail', Stuiver said that imports are not a threat to African expansion, provided that a facility is not built within 200km of a port. Exactly the same issue was raised by Yves De Moor in his column in the November 2012 issue of Global Cement Magazine.
Countries along Africa's east coast receive imports, but Stuiver said that Africa's high logistics costs mean the prices increase steeply as the cement is transported inland. He commented that the markets in Mozambique and KwaZulu Natal in South Africa were especially vulnerable and that most imports to South Africa come through Durban. Unsurprisingly both of PPC's big recent investments have been in landlocked countries, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia respectively. In July 2012 it also tried to invest in CINAT, the Democratic Republic of Congo's state-owned cement producer.
The import issue to South Africa reignited last week when the South African National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications (NRCS) confirmed that it had confiscated 'sub-standard' cement imported from Vietnam. As we covered in August 2012 in this column this follows a row in July 2012 about whether cement from Pakistan's Lucky Cement was complying with South African standards.
Although standards still lead the argument, more honesty has emerged with the use of the word 'dumping' in the complaints. Stuiver explained that "...the price of cement from Pakistan, India and Vietnam is low because electricity, fuel and transport rates are subsidised." Whilst PPC can report that its revenue has risen by 9% to US$837m for the first nine months of 2012, complaints against foreign imports seem overly protective. In 2009 PPC confirmed the existence of a cartel in the country. PPC has even gone to the Advertising Standards Authority to stop imports with elephants on their bags!
With reports that Nigerian producer Dangote is building a new US$389m plant in South Africa, thoughts turn to what will happen once South Africa becomes 'self-sufficient' in cement, like Nigeria which has proudly announced this recently. Giant infrastructure projects are one way to use all that excess cement and this is what Lafarge WAPCO has been asking the Nigerian government to do recently, in a road building drive. Better transport links in South Africa would wreck Stuiver's maxim about not building near a port.
Two solutions from this week's news might appeal to the industry on the south and east coasts of Africa. The first is to use inventive export barriers just like the Bureau of Indian Standards have imposed to slow down exports from Pakistan. The second is to persuade importers to do what a North Korean ship reportedly did with its consignment of cement this week off the coast of Somalia: dump it in the sea.
Mozambique investigate ‘dramatic’ rise in the price of cement
17 October 2012Mozambique: The Mozambican government's National Economic Activities Inspectorate (INAE) is investigating cement wholesalers and retailers in the northern province of Nampula, after recent dramatic increases in the price of cement. The move is attempting to halt the hoarding of cement and its subsequent resale at speculative prices on the informal market.
The investigation is examining why a 50kg sack of cement produced at a plant in Nacala is being resold at a 66% mark-up in the provincial capital of Nampula city. A government decree from November 2011 fixed the maximum profit margin at 12% for wholesalers and 25% for retailers.
However, wholesalers and retailers in Nampula have claimed that the prices cited by the INAE are unrealistic because of the high transport costs involved in moving cement from Nacala to Nampula. According to the wholesalers and retailers, waiting times in Nacala also contribute to the cost. Trucks sometimes wait outside the cement factory for seven days before they are loaded, suggesting that the plant in Nacala is unable to cope with the demand.
Nacala has two cement plants but only one supplies the market. The other sells its cement directly to the contractors building major public works in the Nampula province.
Mozambique production hits record high
06 June 2012Mozambique: Domestic production in Mozambique reached a record high of 0.28Mt in the first quarter of 2012, with imports falling to 79,000t during the same period.
National Director of Industry, Sidonio dos Santos, has attributed this growth to a sharp increase in the availability of cement, although domestic production is yet to meet the demands of the market. Cimento Nacional, a new cement factory, has been commissioned with an installed annual capacity of 0.25Mt/yr. Cimentos de Mocambique, the largest cement factory in the country, has increased its capacity to 0.40Mt/yr with the inauguration of a new mill.
In 2010 total production capacity for the country was estimated at 1.3Mt, which increased to 2Mt in 2011. In January 2012 domestic production reached 79,000t while imports were just 16,000t. In February 2012 production was nearly 90,000t, with imports at 26,000t. In March 2012 production was 0.11Mt, with imports at 37,000t.
"We believe we will meet the government's five-year plan for cement production, because investors are implementing their projects to increase production and build new factories," said Dos Santos.
Currently there are five cement factories in Mozambique. The government expects to inaugurate another three cement factories in the province of Maputo: GS Cimentos, with a capacity of 0.5Mt/yr; ADIL Cement, with a capacity of 0.12Mt/yr; Maputo Cement and Steel Maputo with a capacity of 0.13Mt/yr. In January 2012 Industry and Trade Minister Armando Inroga announced that the government is considering imposing a quota system for imported cement later in 2012 in order to protect Mozambican cement producers.