Displaying items by tag: Rail

India: Penna Cement has signed a five years freight tariff deal with South Central Railway (SCR). As part of the agreement the rate will remain fixed for one year, according to the New Indian Express newspaper. The contract also offers incentives including discounts if the freight volume exceeds the previous year’s amount. Penna Cement is the eighth company to sign such an agreement with the SCR.

Afghanistan/Uzbekistan: Uzbekistan’s Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Complex (AMMC) has started exporting cement to Afghanistan. A trial consignment of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) was despatched from the company’s new 1.5Mt/yr Sherabad cement plant in Surkhandarya, according to the Trend News Agency. It intends to export 0.5Mt/yr to Afghanistan. As part of a contract signed with the Hamid Company just under 1000t of cement has been sent by train to Mazar-i-Sharif.

UK: Hanson has completed a Euro1.25m upgrade to its Bellshill cement terminal in Glasgow, converting it into a dual product storage and distribution site. Improvements included new pipework and a new silo monitoring system. The site has three silos: two for cement powder, transported by rail from the company’s Ribblesdale cement plant in Lancashire, and one for the storage and distribution of ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS), produced at the company’s Teesport site in Middlesbrough. The upgrade took 17 months to complete. Cement has been transported by rail to the Bellshill terminal since 2007.

Switzerland: Deliveries of cement rose slightly to 4.29Mt in 2018 from 4.27Mt in 2017. CemSuisse, the local cement association, said that it was expecting lower imports in 2018 due to reduced cement demand. Over half of the deliveries were made by rail at 51.5% but the share of road deliveries increased. Over 70% of local cement production was delivered to ready-mix concrete plants and around a further 20% was sent to in-situ concrete plants at major construction projects.

Colombia: Cementos Argos and Ibines Ferreo have been helping the National Agency for Infrastructure run freight train tests on the 257km railway line between Bogota and Belencito. To show that the refurbished line can handle different loads, a train travelled from Cementos Argos' Sogamoso plant in the department of Boyaca to Bogota, according to the Portafolio newspaper. It carried 204t of cement at an estimated speed of 20km/hr.

ANI has invested US$73.3m in the refurbishment of rail infrastructure between Bogota and the Boyaca department. Sections of track repaired by ANI between Bogota and Boyaca include La Caro-Zipaquira, Bogota-Facatativa and Bogota-Belencito. The line stopped operating due to damage caused by winter storms in 2010 and 2011.

Nepal: Cement producers in the Parsa-Bara industrial corridor have started importing clinker from the Narayanpur railway station in Bihar. The change in the supply chain has followed disruption in clinker imports via the Raxaul- Birgunj border crossing on environmental grounds, according to the Kathmandu Post newspaper. The longer route has raised production costs due to higher transport fees.

Russia: Eurocement’s subsidiary Lipetskcement has launched a new production and logistics unit at its cement plant at Lipetsk. The cement producer has spent around Euro9m on the upgrade that allows the plant to ship up to 10,000t/day of cement. Features of the new unit include an automated weighbridge and lines for road and rail transport with a capacity of 800t/hr and 1600t/hr respectively.

US: Cemex USA has officially launched a new railway terminal at Commerce City near Denver, Colorado. The site started operations in late September 2017. It is served by an existing rail line from the Lyons Cement Plant and has a silo capacity of 5000t. It will be used to store Type II ordinary Portland Cement. The unit is intended to supply cement to the Denver Metropolitan area as well as the wider state market.

Cemex’s US assets include 11 cement plants, 43 distribution terminals, 57 aggregate quarries and more than 270 ready-mix concrete plants.

Zambia: Dangote Cement Zambia has contracted Zambia Railways to transport 2000t/month of cement and 500t/month of coal. Zambia Railways is transporting cement from Ndola to Lusaka and coal from Batoka to Ndola on behalf of Dangote Cement, according to the Times of Zambia newspaper. The cement producer operates a 1.5Mt/yr integrated plant in the country with 1200 employees and a fleet of over 500 trucks. It also runs a 30MW coal power plant.

Poland: A shortage of truck drivers may negatively affect cement sales. Vacancies for drivers have grown to the extent that even migrant workers from the Ukraine are unable to meet demand, according to the Polish News Bulletin newspaper. The exodus of drivers from the Ukraine has also reportedly impacted upon that country’s cement market. Industry sources say that railway transport is unlikely to help the situation due to a lack of loading facilities. Cement production rose by 7% year-on-year to 9.4Mt in 2017. Cement sales are expected to reach 16.5Mt in 2017 and 17.5Mt in 2018.