Displaying items by tag: South Africa

Mozambique: The Mozambican customs service has defended the seizure of a 1440t import consignment of cement from South Africa in early June 2018. Fernando Tinga, the press attaché of the National Customs Directorate, said that the seizure of the cement was because the importing company Kawena did not present the legally required documentation at the time, according to the Noticias newspaper. Kawena has defended its actions saying that it has imported cement from South Africa for ‘many years’ and that its goods belonging to Mozambican migrant workers living in South Africa are exempt from taxes. However, it admitted that it did not have the correct documentation for the consignment.

South Africa: Magotteaux International has become a strategic equity partner in Grinding Media South Africa (GMSA). The decision follows an agreement between the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and Magotteaux on extending their partnership in GMSA. GMSA, a newly created company spun out of industrial group Scaw Metals, specialises in the manufacturing and design of grinding balls for use in the mining, cement and utilities industries.

The partnership will also enhance the technical and financial capacity of the business as well as provide access to new growth markets. As part of this partnership, Magotteaux will assume the operational management of GMSA upon conclusion of the agreement.

“Magotteaux has been collaborating closely with Scaw High Chromium grinding media for more than 30 years”, said Sébastien Dossogne, chief executive officer (CEO) of Magotteaux.

Mozambique: Cement imported illegally from South Africa has been seized at the border town of Ressano Garcia. Customs impounded 36 railway wagons containing an estimated 29,000 bags of cement being imported by Kawena, according to the O Pais newspaper. Due to a lack of proper documentation the customs office is treating the case as fraud. The shipment is valued at US$0.12m and duties of US$74,500 should have been paid on it. Kawena says it has the documentation for the consignment, according to the Mozambique News Agency.

Nigeria: Lafarge Africa’s chairman Mobolaji Balogun says that the company plans to cut its debts by 2020 before continuing with its expansion programme. In an interview with Bloomberg he said that the cement producer wants reduce its leverage ratio to below 70% from over 100% at present.

The subsidiary of LafargeHolcim wants to take advantage of improvements in the Nigerian economy and a recovery in South Africa to grow its profits. Its total debt recently dropped to about US$600m. Lafarge Africa incurred debt to expand the production capacity at its Calabar cement plant and plans to add more production to plants in the southwest and the north of the country.

South Africa: Gebr. Pfeiffer has started installing a MVR 3750 C-4 mill for a joint venture between Osho Cement and HeidelbergCement that is building a cement grinding plant at Port Elizabeth. The deal was agreed in 2017 and TCDRI is the general contractor. It is Gebr. Pfeiffer’s first MVR mill in the country.

The new mill will be grinding 110t/hr of Ordinary Portland Cement (CEM I) to a fineness of 3500cm²/g Blaine and 80t/hr of blast-furnace cement (CEM III-A) to 4500cm²/g Blaine. A SLS 3750 BC classifier with high-precision cut will be mounted on top of the mill. The mill will have an installed power of 2600kW. It is intended to start operation later in 2018.

South Africa: PPC and China’s Sinoma Construction have successfully ignited the kiln at the Slurry Kiln 9 project in North West province. The new clinker production line will now undergo a three-month test period, according to the China Economic Daily newspaper. Once testing is finished, the 3300t/day line will be transferred to PPC to start commissioning.

Nigeria: Lafarge Africa’s sales rose by 36% year-on-year to US$835m in 2017 from US$613m in 2016. Its recurring earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) nearly doubled to US$161m from US$81m. Michel Puchercos, the chief executive officer of Lafarge Africa, attributed the strong margins in its Nigerian business to cost initiatives and higher prices. He added that the company’s increased use of alternative fuels and coal to offset gas shortages in the west of Nigeria and a focus on coal and gas in the east and north of the country aided market share.

However, the cement producer reported a ‘challenging’ business environment in South Africa, where operations are expected to ‘stabilise’ in 2018. Its Lichtenburg cement plant returned to normal operations during the course of the year and a turnaround plan was initiated in order to transform the company’s operations.

Democratic Republic of Congo: South Africa’s PPC says it is talks with China National Materials (Sinoma) over selling a majority stake in its operations in the country. In an interview with Bloomberg chief executive officer Johann Claassen said that deal would depend on the price and implications on the on-going merger between Sinoma and China National Building Material (CNBM). He added that the PPC’s cement plant in the Democratic Republic of Congo had proven ‘challenging’ and that the company had arranged a ‘debt holiday’ with lenders after the market ‘didn’t pan out as envisaged.’

South Africa: Dangote Cement South Africa’s sales revenue rose by 3.7% year-on-year to US$200m in 2017 from US$192m in 2016. The subsidiary of Nigeria’s Dangote Cement attributed the result to increased demand and improvements in operational efficiency in the second half of the year. Its net profit fell by 16.2% to US$4.87m from US$5.81m due to one-off income from the closure agreement with Sinoma on the final handover of a new cement plant.

The cement producer added that the local cement industry increased its prices and ‘customer mix stability’ in 2017. Total estimated sales volumes including imports fell by 0.8% to 12.9Mt from 13Mt.

Lots of facts stuck out from the inaugural Global GypSupply Conference that took place in Brussels last week. One was that Spain exported 1.49Mt of raw gypsum to West Africa in 2016. The data point from Spanish customs popped up in a presentation by Mohamed El Moustapha, the managing director of a gypsum mining company based in Mauritania. He was using the figures to reinforce the opportunities for his company to supply the growing cement industry in West Africa. Yet the size of the market has implications for the oft-repeated claims of cement sector self-sufficiency that various countries in the region have cried out for.

Gypsum is used as a retarding agent to control the setting time of cement. It gets added whilst clinker is ground into cement. Roughly speaking, cement production requires about 5% of gypsum. So a 1Mt/yr cement plant would require around 50,000t/yr of gypsum. The crucial question for cement producers in West Africa is where is this gypsum coming from. Given that the Global Cement Directory 2018 places cement production capacity at just under 100Mt/yr in the region, this requires around just under 5Mt/yr of gypsum.

El Moustapha made out that there were no gypsum deposits in West Africa. This contradicts a study on Nigerian gypsum mining published in Global Gypsum Magazine in March 2016 estimated local reserves to be around 150Mt although to be fair to El Moustapha these appear to be relatively underused. This also doesn’t take into account sources of synthetic gypsum produced at coal-power plants although this is likely to be negligible at present.

Reserves in Mauritania appear to be much larger at 1.7Bnt. Instead, the problem here appears to be assisting the exploitation of mined gypsum by improving infrastructure and supply chain issues. El Moustapha’s company Samia reported that it exported 170,00t of gypsum to cement plants in West Africa, mainly via ship, but with a significant minority via truck overland to Mali. Another speaker at the conference from the Moroccan gypsum trader Cultura presented a snapshot of a more mature market with exports of 210,000t in 2017. However, similar issues with port infrastructure were also present. To this end the company was keenly looking forward to an upgrade project the Port of Safi due for commissioning in 2020 – 2022 that would allow larger ships to berth.

A market report on the gypsum and anhydrite market by Roskill in 2014 placed Egypt, Algeria and South Africa as Africa’s leading gypsum producers. In particular it singled out South Africa as the only sub-Saharan country producing more than 100,000t/yr of gypsum. In terms of usage of gypsum Roskill estimated that just over half of the world’s gypsum was used to make cement, followed by 38% for wallboard and plaster production and then 18% for agricultural usage. Although this compares to just over a quarter for cement production and most of the rest for wallboard production in the US, with its more developed wallboard market than the rest of the world, according to recent United States Geological Survey (USGS) data.

As the Global GypSupply Conference demonstrated plenty of raw gypsum is available around the world. However, since supply and price can vary considerably in the short term, cement producers are keen to secure steady sources. Developing gypsum sources in northern Africa are necessary to help build the West African cement industry, but the regions need to work together.

The 2nd Global GypSupply Conference will take place in spring 2020