Displaying items by tag: Plant

UK: Breedon Group’s revenue grew by 32% year-on-year to Euro1bn in 2018 from Euro759m. Its profit rose by 13% to Euro75.2 from Euro66.3m. It sold 2Mt of cement and its ready-mixed concrete sales fell slightly to 3.2Mm³.

“We can be justifiably proud of our results. We outperformed the Great Britain market in sales volumes of all our key products, grew our revenues and underlying earning before interest and tax (EBIT), and once again generated strong cashflow, enabling us to pay down a material proportion of our post-Lagan debt by the year-end,” said executive chairman Peter Tom.

The building materials manufacturer said that the integration of Lagan Cement into the group enabled it to export cement from Kinnegad in Ireland to the UK. In early 2019 it intends to import cement from Kinnegad to a new terminal in Runcorn. Investments in the reporting year included an expansion of its transport fleet in the UK, a new mobile plant at its Hope quarry and the next stage of a four-year project to replace plant control systems at the Hope cement plant. Its single largest investment in 2019 will be the replacement of the raw mill drive at the Hope plant.

Breedon Group operates two cement plants, around 80 quarries, 40 asphalt plants, around 170 ready-mixed concrete and mortar plants, nine concrete and clay products plants, four contract surfacing businesses, six terminals and two slate production facilities. It employs nearly 3000 people and has nearly 900Mt of mineral reserves and resources.

Sweden: Cementa says that it plans to stop production of cement and clinker at its Degerhamn cement plant at the end of April 2019. The subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement said that it made the decision due to low profitability at the site and tightening environmental regulations.

The unit will continue to be used as a terminal and port operations will carry on at the site. Microcement will also continue to be made at the plant. The site’s quarry permit will be withdrawn but Cementa will continue to own the land and it will be gradually be restored. Six staff members will work at the site and a new site manager, Tommy Pettersson, has been appointed.

US: Cemex USA has unveiled a new train at its Victorville cement plant in California. The train was built by Knoxville Locomotive Works it comes with an MTU-4000 Series engine. It will be used to transport clinker at the plant. The engine has been selected to meet US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board Tier 4 Emissions requirements. A portion of the cost of the new train was covered by a federal grant secured with the assistance of the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District.

US: Lehigh Cement’s Mitchell plant in Indiana has won a 2019 Governor’s Workplace Safety Award for innovations as a medium-sized company. The awards are issued by the Indiana Department of Labor.

The subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement recorded no lost-time accidents in 2018 and the plant has not had a lost-time accident since September 2015, according to the Herald Times newspaper. The company uses a Safety Action Plan with specific targets that focus on areas of significant risk, including critical risk management and zero fatalities. It also runs weekly safety conversations between employees to raise health and safety issues with management.

US: Mitsubishi Cement’s Lucerne Valley plant in California has received a US$0.32m grant for emission-reducing equipment from the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District. The grant has been used to buy a new 2018 Viking Trackmobli diesel mobile railcar mover at the site to replace two older pieces of equipment. The railcar mover was purchased with grant funds through AB 2766, which authorises air districts to impose a US$4 vehicle registration fee to meet the requirements of the California Clean Air Act.

Algeria: Aïn El-Kebira Cement Company has won the Algerian Quality Award for 2018. The government-issued award includes a prize of around Euro15,000, a trophy and a diploma of honour. The 1Mt/yr integrated cement plant is part of GICA Group, according to the El Moudjahid newspaper. The unit plans to start producing oil well cement in 2019. GICA Group exported 0.2Mt/yr of cement in 2018 and it plans to increase this to 0.8Mt/yr in 2019.

India: The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has issued a show cause notice to UltraTech Cement's Amreli plant in Gujarat for breaching air pollution limits. CPCB inspectors found that the particulate matter (PM) and NOx emissions were higher than allowed, according to the Times of India newspaper. The unit has been given 15 days to respond to the notice or face a fine of US$420/day since 31 August 2018.

The UAE is having a moment. Over the last week Fujairah Natural Resources, a new entrant to cement, said it is going to build a clinker plant at Habbab in Fujairah. It’s also looking likely that Raysut Cement might buy UAE-based Fujairah Cement Company’s shares in Sohar Cement in Oman. Then, Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) Cement announced that it had purchased the Newtech cement plant. What’s happening here?

The last couple of years have been tough ones for Emirati cement producers, which have been fighting falling sales and beleaguered profits. The largest producer, Arkan Building Materials - a group majority controlled by the Abu Dhabi government, reported flat sales growth for the first nine months of 2018. It blamed this on falling sales of clinker due to imports from Iran and a tough pricing environment. Its profits were hit by rising clinker production costs due to its reliance on imported limestone from Oman whilst it resolves problems with its own local quarry. Arkan had closed its Emirates Cement plant in Al Ain following revenue and profit falls in 2016. This story thread reached its end earlier in February 2019 when Arkan sold the closed plant for around US$14m. National Cement reported a similar experience in its nine months results, with growing revenue but sales sapped by mounting costs.

Data from Riyad Capital in early-2018 suggested that the UAE only consumes about half of its own cement production. The rest is exported to the Middle East and North African region, particularly Oman and Egypt, and African countries. The country has 14 integrated cement plants with a production capacity of 31.4Mt/yr and eight grinding plants with a capacity of 10.4Mt/yr. These are owned by a mixture of local companies and multinationals.

The European producers still have a presence through LafargeHolcim’s Lafarge Emirates plant in Fujairah and a grinding plant run by Cemex. Although how long LafargeHolcim will remain seems uncertain given a report by Bloomberg earlier in February 2019 suggesting that the group is seriously looking at exiting the Middle East and Africa. Oman’s Raysut Cement holds a plant too via its Pioneer Cement subsidiary but the majority of the foreign-owned plants are Indian. Their presence has been steadily growing.

Aditya Birla/UltraTech Cement, JK Cement and Shree Cement all run plants in the UAE and JSW Cement said in mid-2018 that it was going to build a 1Mt/yr integrated plant in Fujairah. UltraTech Cement renamed its grinding plant UltraTech Nathdwara Cement in December 2018. This plant was formerly a Binani Cement plant and part of the rancorous bidding war between UltraTech Cement and Dalmia Bharat.

The background to all of this has been a country that is very willing to spend big on infrastructure projects when the need arises. Forbes reckoned, for example, that the UAE had awarded US$20.7bn on infrastructure projects in 2018 in the first nine months of 2018. Impending projects like the Expo 2020 are still generating construction activity and longer ones like Dubai Metro are in progress. However, the country is in a dynamic place geographically between the two-major economic and cement-producing powerhouses of Saudi Arabia and Iran. For the cement industry this explains the prominence of the grinding sector and the growing interest from Indian companies looking to expand overseas. For the new project and acquisition this week it’s looking more like local variation in the market at this stage. In this context though the fourth quarter results from local producers will make interesting reading to see if anything bigger is going on.

Cambodia: Chip Mong Insee Cement has commissioned a 9.8MW solar power system provided by Cleantech Solar. The system includes a 2.8MW floating solar power plant deployed on the plant’s reservoir and 7MW installed across multiple rooftops of the site. In addition, the deployment of the floating solar system will shield the reservoir from wind and the direct hot midday sun which is expected to reduce water loss through evaporation, contributing to Chip Mong Insee Cement’s water conservation efforts.

Cleantech Solar is a provider of renewable energy to companies in Southeast Asia and India. Based in Singapore, it owns and operates more than 120 solar power plants across the region, representing over 200MW of projects, with the majority in operation and the rest under construction and development.

Uzbekistan: Akhangarancement, part of Russia’s Eurocement, has installed a new Wikov gearbox on the rotary kiln at its plant in Akhangaransky as part of a US$1.5m upgrade project. Other work included upgrades to the clinker conveyors, the sludge line, the cooler, the heat exchanger and other equipment. A new production line is currently being built at the 2Mt/yr plant. It is scheduled for commissioning in 2020.