Displaying items by tag: Plant

Philippines: Lafarge Republic signed a contract with Fives FCB for a new cement grinding plant for the Teresa plant located in Rizal province. The proposed plant will add 850,000t/yr production capacity to the Teresa plant's capacity in 2015. No financial information for the contract has been released.

The contract includes raw material feeding, with clinker and pulverised coal fed through the existing circuit and other additives, such as a limestone, gypsum, fly ash, fed by truck dump. A cement grinding workshop will be fitted with one Horomill® 3800 and one TSV™ 4500 classifier, associated with a dryer-aerodecantor and a TGT™ filter (under Fives Solios licence). A Fives Pillard vertical hot gas generator (12 MW) for the pouzzolana (25% moisture) drying will also be fitted.

The plant's cement silo will have a capacity of 5000t. A new cement transport system will connect the new silo, the site's existing silos and the packing plant. The contract also includes the control and supervision system and an electrical sub-station for the new build.

US: Renovation of Lafarge's 50-year-old cement plant in Ravena, New York will be completed by mid-2016, preserving 112 jobs at the plant.

This is the first fixed timeline for the project since it was proposed in 2008. Delays have been blamed on the poor state of the economy. Lafarge also needed to obtain state and federal environmental permits, a process that involves rounds of reports and public hearings.

Construction is expected to cost several hundred million US$. A specific price tag has not been disclosed.

Company officials say that renovation was necessary in the face of stricter pollution controls from the federal government. Either they would shut down and abandon the location, or gut it and build a massive new kiln to meet the stronger standards. Pollution is a particularly sensitive issue as the cement plant and its quarry sandwich the middle school and high school for the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk district.

Kazakhstan: Construction of Caspian Cement, located in Mangistau Oblast, will be completed by the end of 2013 according to Alik Aidarbayev, Akim of Mangistau Oblast.

"By the end of the year, we plan to complete two major projects related to the construction of Caspian Cement and Caspian Bitumen with a total estimated cost of US$545m and the creation of 600 permanent jobs," Aidarbayev said.

Nine projects with an estimated cost of US$425m and the creation of more than 3000 new jobs are planned for completion at the site in the next few years.

Indonesia: PT Semen Papua plans to build the first cement unit in Indonesian Papua province. The unit will be built in the Paumako port area, East Mimika according to Adolf Haley, head of the regional development planning board (Bappeda).

Construction is expected to start in 2013 once an environmental impact analysis has been signed by the Papua Governor, Lukas Enembe. The plant will produce cement in bulk with basic material supplied from other cement factories with packing in Timika. Initially the unit will have a cement production capacity of 0.5Mt/yr that will rise to 3Mt/yr by 2016.

The project will be financed by a number of banks, with Bank Papua, which is owned by the regional administration forming a consortium to raise fund for the project.

Laos: A leading Thai cement company, widely speculated to be Siam Cement Group (SCG), will co-invest with Lao-Phatthana Cement Industry Co, a unit of Souksomboon Group, in the construction of a US$330m cement plant in Khammouane, Laos.

Chaovalit Ekabut, SCG's chief financial officer and vice-president for finance and investment, declined to comment on whether the Thai cement producer is SCG, but said the group continued to explore opportunities in the Asean countries.

Chittakorn Souksomboon, president of Souksomboon Group, said that the Khammouane plant will have a clinker capacity of 1.6Mt/yr. The clinker will become 2.2Mt/yr of OPC and blended cement, with half serving the Laotian market and the rest exported to Thailand. The plant is due to be completed at the end of 2015 or early 2016.

"The possible Thai partner with 100 years of history is interested in jointly investing with us because we have a 50-year concession from the Laotian government to operate a limestone mine on 3875m² nearby," said Souksomboon. The Souksomboon Group is keen to forge a partnership with a Thai cement firm because it wants to sell construction materials through a Thai hardware chain in the future.

Cement demand in Laos is forecast at 3.5Mt/yr, but supply is just 1.7Mt/yr. The landlocked country must import cement from China and Thailand. The Laotian economy is growing robustly with infrastructure projects such as roads, double-track rail and dams being developed ahead of the Asean single market comes into being in late 2015.

Souksomboon Group already runs a cement plant in Vientiane, Laos and is building a plant in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, which is due to be completed in 2014.

India: Birla Corporation is planning invest around US$154m to set up new units in four states, according to local media. The company will set up three grinding cum blending units in Madhya Pradesh, one grinding unit in Bihar, one blending unit in Uttar Pradesh and another in Jharkhand, which will have a combined capacity of 4.5Mt/yr. Birla Corporation has eight manufacturing facilities located in Pune, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Gurgoan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

India: Konark Cement, a subsidiary of OCL India, is building a 1.35Mt/yr grinding plant at Salboni in West Bengal. The cement producer is also intending to use laminated polypropylene (LPP) bags at the unit to minimise wastage.

At present Konark Cement produces seven varieties of cement; OPC 53 grade, OPC 53-S grade, OPC 43 Grade, PSC, PPC (Flyash based), SRPC and masonry Cement, according to OCL India deputy executive director Indrajit Chatterji. OCL India has two cement plants at Kapilash and Rajgangpur in Orissa with a combined production capacity of 5.35Mt/yr.

Indonesia: Semen Padang is preparing to build a new cement packing plant costing US$0.92m near Pulau Baai port in Bengkulu, said marketing director Benny Wendry.

"We have already earmarked US$0.92m to build a packing factory for Semen Padang near the Pualu Baai port in Bengkulu in 2014," said Wendry. However the project is still awaiting approval from the board of directors. Wendry added that the state-owned cement producer intends to start in early 2014 with completion scheduled for 2015. Once operational the plant will produce 300,000 sacks of cement per year.

Semen Padang is also building a 3Mt/yr cement plant in West Sumatra that is scheduled for operation by 2016. The new plant will increase the company's cement production capacity to 10Mt/yr.

US: Two workers at the Staker Parson cement plant, Tucson, Arizona, were exposed to cement powder when a silo malfunctioned and dumped the material onto them on 28 October 2013. When crews from the fire department arrived, their first priority was to decontaminate the employees by washing the cement powder off them using hoses.

Both men had respiratory complaints and one man had eye irritation. Both were taken to hospital for further treatment. Two other employees worked for one hour to plug the silo to keep the cement powder from continuing to leak out. They wore protective clothing, but also had to be decontaminated and were also taken to hospital for further evaluation.

All of the men were released from the hospital shortly after the incident.

Lithuania: Akmenes Cementas, Lithuania's only cement manufacturer, is about to complete the modernisation of its Naujoji Akmene cement factory in northwestern Lithuania. It's claimed to be one of the biggest industrial projects implemented in the country since restoration of independence. A new clinker manufacturing line, which cost around Euro107m, should begin operation late in November or early in December 2013, barring delays. The line should operate for around 50 years and investments are expected to be covered within a decade. The company used it's own funds to finance the bulk of investments, while banks provided around one-third of the total funding.

"Representatives of equipment suppliers are visiting the facility now. They are checking, fine tuning, testing the equipment and adjusting the programmes. We keep our fingers crossed and hope that everything goes smoothly," said Arturas Zaremba, CEO of Akmenes Cementas.