Displaying items by tag: Plant

India: Reliance Cement has said that it will commission its US$485m cement plant in Madhya Pradesh in October 2013. The company is due to complete the project in 22 months, five months ahead of its original schedule. The 5Mt/yr cement plant includes a 10MW waste heat recovery system. The plant is intended to target markets in central, eastern and northern India.

The Madhya Pradesh plant follows the company's 0.5Mt/yr cement plant in Butibori, Maharashtra that was launched in 2012.

Tajikistan: The first coal-fired rotary kiln at the Dushanbe cement plant is about to start operation, according to the Tajik Ministry of Energy and Industry (MoEI). Chinese contractor Beijing Uni-Construction Group has installed the 600t/day cement kiln.

The Dushanbe cement plant has four large rotary kilns with capacity of 600t/day each and two small rotary kilns with capacity of 300t/day each. The 1.2Mt/yr plant has not been in operation since the beginning of 2013 due to a lack of natural gas.

Pakistan provides the majority of cement imports to Tajikistan, supplying 1.7Mt/yr.

Democratic Republic of Congo: PPC (formerly Pretoria Portland Cement) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Democratic Republic of Congo's Barnet Group to build a US$230m greenfield cement plant. The project will involve building a 1Mt/yr plant and an associated quarry 20km from Kimpese in western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

"This investment is another of PPC's commitments to invest in sub-Saharan Africa and we are very confident about DRC. 22% of PPC's revenue comes from outside South Africa, at present, but the target is to increase this to 40% by our 2016 financial year. We look forward to a growing contribution and partnership with the DRC in the years ahead," said CEO of PPC, Ketso Gordhan.

In its press release announcing the project, PPC noted that the existing cement market in DRC was 'severely' undersupplied. At present, the DRC has 16kg/capita annual cement consumption, the lowest in Africa, compared with the South African average of 240kg and the global average of 400kg.

For the project PPC has partnered with Jean Saidi Bamanisa, Chairman of the Barnet Group, who is also the Honorary Secretary of the Federation of Congolese Companies. He was elected Governor of the Oriental Province of the DRC. The project will take advantage of DRC's first special economic zone.

Vietnam: The Vietnam Cement Association (VNCA) has said that three more cement plants will open later in 2013 – X18, Quang Phuc and Dong Lam - despite the country's current cement surplus.

According to reporting by the Tuoi Tre newspaper, the new plants will raise national cement production capacity to around 70Mt/yr. Domestic cement demand is estimated at up to 46Mt/yr in 2013. The opening of the new plants will lead to a surplus of up to 25Mt/yr.

Local cement producers in Vietnam face rising debts and high stock inventories due to inaccurate demand forecasts and massive investment. The country's cement sales are expected to rise by 4 - 5% year-on-year to up to 57Mt in 2013, including 49Mt of domestic sales and 8Mt of export.

Portugal: 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.

India: Mangalam Cement has started a trial run of a new 1.25Mt/yr grinding plant. In addition the Indian cement producer announced to the Bombay Stock Exchange that the kiln at its plant in Morak in Rajasthan had commenced operation after a break for renovation since May 2013. The cement plant's clinker production capacity has now risen to 2.21Mt/yr from 1.71Mt/yr.

Indonesia: PT Cemindo Gemilang is due to start building a US$450m cement plant in Banten province following a groundbreaking ceremony on 11 September 2013. The 4Mt/yr plant will be situated on a 500 hectare plot in Bayah, Lebak regency. It is due to start commercial operations in the third quarter of 2015.

The subsidiary of oil palm plantation, mining and property business Ganda Group intends to spend a further US$150m on developing related infrastructure for the plant including a port and a power network. Cemindo will finance the project with external and internal funds. The majority of the funding, representing 70% of total investment, will be obtained from a syndicated loan led by the state-owned Bank Negara Indonesia.

Cemindo sells cement under the Semen Merah Putih brand in 20 provinces in Java, Kalimantan and Sumatra. In 2012 it acquired a majority stake in Vietnamese cement producer Chinfon Cement Corporation for US$250m.

Egypt: ASEC Minya, formally Arab National Cement Company, has begun cement production at its 2Mt/yr cement plant in Minya, Egypt. The ASEC Cement subsidiary has been producing clinker at the site since May 2013.

"We are extremely proud to have been able to see this project through to completion despite the challenging operational environment," said ASEC Cement CEO Giorgio Bodo. "The launch of cement production, which marks the official completion of this project, is a clear reflection of our confidence in the Egyptian economy and our belief in the country's ability to recover from the current volatility."

Bodo cited security issues, fuel scarcity and general 'instability' as causing major setbacks that the cement producer had to overcome. Construction of the plant originally began in December 2010 but work was interrupted by the Egyptian Revolution in January 2011.

ASEC Minya will be connected to the Egyptian national electric grid via a 42km transmission line to be completed by the end of 2014. Until then the plant will use rented generators. The new cement plant has created 400 direct and 800 indirect jobs.

Armenia: The Mika Cement plant, which has been idle since September 2012, is due to start up production on 10 September 2013 according to the plant's director Naira Martirosyan.

In an interview with Armenian news agency Arminfo, Martirosyan revealed that rises in power costs on 7 July 2013 may lead to increased cement prices. As a result of energy price rise, overall production costs have risen by 20 – 25%.

Originally built in 1970, the cement plant was privatised in 2001. Holding two production lines the plant has a cement production capacity of 1.2Mt/yr. The plant employs 450 workers when operational.

Pakistan: 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.