Displaying items by tag: Plant

India: A fire broke out at the government run Jammu & Kashmir Cement plant in the Pulwama district of south Kashmir on 3 December 2013. No one was hurt and damage was caused to "a few machines like motors, diesel oil tank, hot air generator and coal mill," said a police spokesman. Fire and emergency services responded swiftly and put out the fire in an hour. The cause of the fire remains unknown.

Ethiopia: Mohammed al-Amoudi, the biggest private investor in Ethiopia, plans to build two cement plants in the country due to an 'improving investment environment'. Al-Amoudi said that the new plants would join the US$351m Derba Midroc cement plant that opened in December 2011. Al-Amoudi announced in March 2012 that he intends to invest US$3.4bn in Ethiopia in 2014 – 2016.

Colombia: Mexican cement maker Cemex has opened its fifth plant in Clemencia, Colombia. The US$50m plant in northern Colombia has a cement production capacity of 0.45Mt/yr.

Cemex plans to begin building its sixth plant in Colombia at the start of 2014 with a US$125m investment. The construction is expected to last 24 months and have a cement production capacity of 0.50Mt/yr.

Cemex foresees strong growth in the Colombian market, specifically in infrastructure, as President Juan Manuel Santos has been investing heavily in roads, ports, railways and airports, with some US$25bn invested in the past four years.

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.