Displaying items by tag: Plant

Nepal: Sarbottam Cement Industries (SCI) has started commercial operation at its 400,000t/yr cement plant. The plant, which includes a captive power plant and a grinding unit, will employ over 1600 staff both directly and indirectly when fully functional. Saurabh Group, which has major share in import-export business of cement, steel, tea and woollen products, among others, set up SCI with an investment of US$64m. The cement plant has 45% foreign investment.

Saudi Arabia: Saudi City Cement Company has started trial operations of a second production line. Without disclosing any financial details, Saudi City Cement said that the new production line will have a production capacity of 5,500t/day. The trial period will last about four months.

Guyana: Caricom Cement Company has commissioned its new US$53.1m cement plant at Everton, Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne). The new plant will produce 500,000t/yr of cement, double Guyana's current consumption. The plant, which is the first integrated cement plant in Guyana, employs in excess of 250 persons from Berbice, Georgetown, Essequibo and Suriname.

"Caricom Cement Company has been in operation for the past four years and during that period we were bagging cement under the brand names West Indies Cement and Titan Cement," said Caricom. "The main purpose of the cement plant is to make cement affordable to all Guyanese, taking into consideration the construction boom that our country is undergoing at this time."

The plant was built in three phases and started in August 2010 at the old bauxite plant (Bermine), which was developed in phase one. The first part of the current operations saw a bagging system installed at the Everton plant. Phase two saw a Portland cement plant being added to the system while the machinery was being built for phase three, which commenced in December 2013 with the installation of the new plant. The plant was then upgraded with a kiln and cooling system and its grinding capacity was increased by 50%.

Indonesia: PT Holcim Indonesia has said that it expects its new plant in Tuban, East Java, to start operations during the first half of 2015. Spokesperson Deni Nuryandain said that the plant would increase the company's production capacity by 3.4Mt, or 40%. "Our total production capacity will reach 12.5Mt /yr," he said. Deni added that currently, Holcim has started operating its new plants in Narogong, West Java, and Cilacap, Central Java.

DRC: The Nyumba Ya Akiba Cement project in the Democratic Republic of Congo marked a significant milestone on 27 November 2014 with a loan signing of US$135m, making it a strong step towards country's industrialisation through improvement of the cement market. The project will add 1.18Mt/yr of cement capacity to the national market.

The project has attracted financial support from the African Development Bank (AfDB), Eksport Kredit Fonden (EKF, as guarantor to AfDB), the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), Habib Bank Limited (HBL, as lead arranger) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Total project costs of US$270m will be funded by the US$135m loans. The AfDB will contribute two tranches of up to US$30m each, with one tranche being fully guaranteed by the Danish Export Credit Agency (EKF).

Nyumba Cement will address the rising cement demand fuelled by infrastructure development and reconstruction needs. The plant will be located in the Songololo, Bas Congo Province, DRC. The limestone and clay quarries are located on the plant site, 250km from Kinshasa. The Matadi port, located 100km from the plant, will allow easy access for importing raw materials and for cement exports to the regional markets.

The project is sponsored by a 50/50 joint venture between Pakistan's Lucky Cement Limited and the DRC's Groupe Rawji. Nyumba Cement will ease the country's dependency on expensive imports, which stand at over 50% of total cement consumption. The Nyumba cement output will target a vast area of the country and stimulate infrastructure development while supporting the local private sector, particularly small and medium enterprises, by promoting the reinforcement of the local supply value chain.

As a cost competitive import substitution project, Nyumba Cement will enhance the efficiency of the domestic markets, boost infrastructure, create jobs and transfer knowledge to the local workforce and is expected to have a significant demonstration effect to attract direct investments to the DRC.

Germany/Nigeria: United Cement Company of Nigeria (UNICEM) has ordered the largest Loesche mill to date, a LM 70.4+4. The new LM 70.4+4 will have an output of 370t/hr at 4,700 Blaine in UNICEM's new line in Calabar, Nigeria. The delivery period is 14 months.

The 4+4 concept follows mill types with 2+2 and 3+3 rollers. The 4+4 grinding concept is intended to allow high throughput capacity or it can run in 2+2 roller operation, generating a mill output of 60%.

Loesche will use the Cope gearbox, which was developed in cooperation with Renk and offers a redundancy of up to eight motors at the motor end. With all eight motors in operation, a capacity totaling 8.8MW is achieved. The new Cope gearbox contributes the feature of working without a variable speed drive and operating with a reduced number of motors

Mexico: Cemex has announced that it is restarting its expansion of the Tepeaca cement plant in Puebla State. By 2017 its total production capacity will reach 7.6Mt/yr. Total investment is estimated to be approximately US$650m. The additional investment, in order to add 4.4Mt/yr to the current capacity, will be approximately US$200m, since the company had already invested close to US$450m by 2008.

"We are encouraged by our industry's positive outlook in Mexico. With this investment, Cemex reaffirms its confidence in the country's future" said Rogelio Zambrano, chairman of the board of Cemex. The expansion is expected to generate approximately 1500 jobs during the construction phase and about 100 direct and 240 indirect jobs once operation begins.

The announcement was made during a ceremony at the plant with the attendance of Ildefonso Guajardo, Secretary of Economy of Mexico, Rafael Moreno, Governor of Puebla, Amelio Flores, Mayor of Cuautinchan, Rogelio Zambrano, Chairman of the Board of Cemex, Fernando A Gonzalez, CEO of Cemex and Juan Romero, President of Cemex Mexico.

China: China has ordered several cement plants located in the northern provinces to shut for four months, starting on 1 December 2014, to reduce over-capacity and curb air pollution during the winter months, according to state news agency Xinhua.

The move, which will affect 103 production lines in the three Provinces of Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin, is set to hit coal consumption and limit a rebound in domestic prices.

The China Cement Association and the three provincial governments jointly issued the order. Persistent over-capacity has dogged the sector for years, with northern China using only about half of its total production capacity.

The northern provinces, including Hebei, are a major source of industrial pollutants blamed for a toxic smog that often spreads to neighbouring regions like Beijing. Kong Xiangzhong, vice president of the China Cement Association, was quoted as saying the winter stoppage would greatly curb air pollution, as fuel consumption increases markedly when temperatures drop. Total cement output in northern China, including Inner Mongolia, hovers around 120Mt in the winter months and requires about 20Mt of coal. Fuel consumption falls to just 16Mt in summer, according to Xiangzhong.

The suspension in Xinjiang is expected to reduce coal consumption by about 1Mt and help increase plant utilisation rates to 75%, from the current 60%, according to local media reports. It takes about 200kg of coal to produce 1t of cement, according to the World Coal Association.

Despite efforts to cut output, China's cement production rose 9.6% to 2.41Bnt in 2013 from a year earlier, while total capacity has surged to more than 3.2Bnt/yr, according to data from the cement association.

US: The mayor of Dixon, Illinois says that he is 'optimistic' that the mothballed St. Marys cement plant in the city will reopen. Mayor Jim Burke told local press that representatives from St. Marys Cement approached him in mid-2014 to discuss the possibility of restarting operations at the plant. The mayor says that the city government is working with the company to see if there are incentives 'to make it all work.'

The plant has been idle since December 2008. When it closed about 90 people lost their jobs. At the same time the Environment Protection Agency fined the company and a co-owner for violations of the Clean Air Act. St. Marys Cement is owned by Brazilian-based cement producer Votorantim.

Denmark/US: FLSmidth has signed an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Cemex for the supply of a new cement production line at its Odessa cement plant in Texas, US. Once the installation is finished, the cement production line is expected to have a capacity of approximately 2540t/day.

The expansion will focus on higher fuel efficiency and improved productivity. The equipment scope includes a five-stage ILC preheater with a Low NO_x Calciner, three-pier kiln, FLSmidth Cross-Bar cooler, Duoflex burner, Pfister weighing and dosing systems, gas analysers and three Fuller-Kinyon pumps. The line will also use an FLSmidth control system.