Displaying items by tag: Plant
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to invest US$245 in cement plant
24 January 2017Pakistan: Pervez Khattak, the chief minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has ordered that plans to build a cement plant at Haripur be sped up. He made the pronouncement while attending a meeting to plan infrastructure development in the region including new towns, an oil refinery and hydroelectric projects, according to the Dawn newspaper. Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) officials who attended the meeting said that US$245m would be invested in the cement plant project. Altogether the investments total nearly US$10bn and are part of the on-going China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative.
India: UltaTech Cement’s net profit has risen by 20% year-on-year to US$292m for the first nine months of its financial year to the 31 March 2017 from US$244m in the same period in the pervious year. Its total income from operations rose slightly to US$3.04bn. However, net sales fell slightly in the third quarter.
The cement producer reported that its board of directors had approved the setting up of a 3.5Mt/yr cement plant at Dhar, Madhya Pradesh for a cost of around US$382m. Commercial production at the plant is anticipated to start in early 2019. The plant is intended to grow the company’s markets in southwest Madhya Pradesh.
UltaTech Cement added that it had deposited a penalty of US$17.3m, 10% of a fine imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in August 2016. It is also facing a separate fine for U$10m from the CCI in relation to alleged misconduct in Haryana. The company intends to appeal both fines.
Algeria/Nigeria: CBMI Construction (Sinoma) has issued paperwork passing over completed projects to Lafarge Africa, a part of LafargeHolcim, for projects in Algeria and Nigeria.
A provisional taking-over certificate (PTC) was signed by representatives of Unicem, a joint venture partly operated by Lafarge Africa in Nigeria, at Sinoma’s Beijing headquarters on 18 January 2017. Tomas Lorent, Lafarge Africa Project Manager and Liu Xinwang, CBMI Project Manager signed the paperwork on behalf of their companies. The certificate was signed eight weeks ahead of the contract. The new production line at the Calabar cement plant in Cross River State started operation in the summer of 2016. It includes one of the world’s largest vertical roller mills supplied by Loesche.
Meanwhile, a different PTC was signed on the same day by Didier Michel, Lafarge Algeria’s Project Manager and Gu Jinjun, CBMI Project Manager at Lafarge Algeria’s headquarters in Algiers. The 2.7Mt/yr CILAS Biskra cement plant, a joint operation between Lafarge Algeria and Souakri Group, was commissioned in the summer of 2016.
Russia: Sibirsky Cement expects that demand for cement in Siberia will fall by 8 – 10% to 4.7 - 4.8Mt in 2017. The cement producer said that its output decreased by 22% to 2.15Mt from its Kemerovo Region-based Topkinsky Cement, by 3% to 0.75Mt from its Krasnoyarsky Cement plant and by 10% to 0.27Mt from its Timlyuisky cement plant, according to the Prime Tass news agency. Overall its cement production fell by 17% year-on-year to 3.17Mt in 2016. It has blamed falling production on an overall decline in Russia’s cement market.
Jordan: LafargeHolcim’s Rashadiya cement plant is set to generate up to a quarter of its power from a solar plant that will start operations in July 2017. Dubai’s Adenium Energy Capital signed a deal for the cement producer to develop the photovoltaic (PV) facility, according to SeeNews. Previously the PV unit was reported to have a capacity of 15MW but this has not been confirmed. In October 2016 Adenium Energy Capital said it had commissioned four PV parks in Jordan with a total capacity of 50MW in total.
Holcim New Zealand in talks to sell Westport plant
20 January 2017New Zealand: Holcim is conducting negotiations with prospective buyers for its Westport cement plant and associated assets. The cement producer closed the site in June 2016 with the loss of 100 jobs, according to the Daily Post newspaper. The assets on sale include the cement plant site, a quarry, a packing plant site, wharf silos, a water treatment plant and 11 houses. The assets comprise about 500 hectares of land, including 200 hectares of farmland. Expressions of interest closed in July 2016.
Arif Habib Group to expand production at Power Cement plant
19 January 2017Pakistan: Arif Habib Group plans to spend US$235m on upgrading its Power Cement plant in Nooriabad to 3.37Mt/yr from 0.9Mt/yr. The upgrade will be completed by the end of 2019, according to the Express Tribune newspaper. Company chairman Nasim Beg said that he was hoping to take advantage of growing cement demand in the country as the effects of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor heighten.
Power Cement has also completed a US$3.4m upgrade to its filter bag house equipment by installing new equipment to reduce dust emissions. Company officials say the plant is now capable of reducing dust emissions to just 17mg/m3. This is below the 300mg/m3 level set by the Environment Quality Standards in Pakistan and the World Bank’s limit of 100mg/m3 for old cement plants.
More details on EcoCementos plant in Colombia revealed
19 January 2017Colombia: A new cement plant to be built at Rio Claro in the Sonsón municipality of Antioquia for Empresa Colombiana de Cementos (EcoCementos) will have a production capacity of 1.35Mt/yr. The company is a joint-venture between Spain’s Cementos Molins and Grupo Corona. Cementos Molins and Grupo Corona originally started working together in September 2015 when they formed an alliance to develop their cement businesses in the country, according to the El Tiempo newspaper. The plant is expected to be completed in mid-2019 whereupon it is hoped that it will capture 7% of the market. Once operational the plant will create 450 direct and indirect jobs.
Funding released for PPC to build new line at Slurry plant
19 January 2017South Africa: PPC has completed the components of its 2008 broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) transaction, releasing US$74m in funding in mid-December 2016. Strategic black partners and community service groups subscribed for 15.6 million shares as part of earlier agreements. The funding will be used to reduce company debts and pay for a new production line at its Slurry cement plant in Lichtenburg.
UK: Hanson is spending Euro29m on upgrades at its Ribblesdale cement plant in a seven-year project to improve production efficiency and emissions. In the first six months nearly Euro13m will be spent on improvements and maintenance to enable the plant to meet new dust emission regulations. This is the biggest investment programme at the site since the 1990s and includes a Euro2m replacement of the filters on two cement mills.
“The permitted dust level is being reduced by 66% in April 2017, from 30mg/m2 to 10 - the new equipment will perform better than this,” said plant manager Terry Reynolds. He added that the filters will run well below the new maximum dust emission levels after the installation
The plant will spend Euro7.5m, its largest investment, towards replacing its wet gas scrubber in March 2017. In addition, 75m of ducts have been replaced at a cost of Euro440,000 during a shutdown in January 2017 as part of a five-year improvement plan for the site’s exhaust gas handling system.
Ribblesdale employs 116 people and is supplied by two on-site quarries worked by an 11-person team and a team of contractors managing the loading and hauling of quarry materials. The cement plant has produced cement for projects including the Manchester International Airport, Heysham nuclear power station, Manchester United football stadium, Liverpool’s Roman Catholic cathedral and also now for Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.