Displaying items by tag: ThyssenKrupp

Bolivia: Ground removal work at the Potosí cement plant is expected to start in August 2017. Imasa, Valoriza and Polysius will prepare the 40-hectare site, according to the El Potosí newspaper. The plant has a proposed production capacity of 1.3Mt/yr and it has been budgeted at US$241m.

Morocco: LafargeHolcim says that its 0.2Mt/yr Laâyoune cement grinding plant is complete. The cement producer is set to start production later in July 2017 it said in a director’s report, according to Medias 24. The company is also about to start building a 1.7Mt/yr cement plant in the Souss-Massa region. Thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions has been contracted to build this project.

Germany: Peter Feldhaus has been appointed as the new chief executive officer (CEO) of the Industrial Solutions business division of ThyssenKrupp. Feldhaus, aged 50 years, succeeds Stefan Gesing, who was the acting CEO of the division. Gesing remains as the chief financial officer of the group. The new CEO of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems will be Rolf Wirtz, currently CEO of Atlas Elektronik. Jens Bodo Koch, member of the management board of Atlas Elektronik, is to take over as acting CEO.

Bolivia: Imasa, with ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions and Valoriza, has been awarded the contract to build a 1.3Mt/yr cement plant for Empresa Publica Productiva Cementos de Bolivia (ECEBOL) at Chiutara in Potosí. The contract is worth US$241m and it is expected to take three years to complete. President Evo Morales signed the deal with representatives of the European engineering companies.

Imasa is also building a similar sized plant for ECEBOL at Jeruyo, Caracollo that is scheduled to be finished in mid-2018. Elsewhere in Latin America the Spanish engineering firm is building a 2600t/day clinker production line for Unión Cementera Nacional (UCEM) at Riobamba in Ecuador.

Last month’s prize for the most clichéd phrases in the cement news nearly went to UK technology firm Hanhaa and its ‘internet of packaging.’ At first glance the phrase seems like a hackneyed marketing play on the ‘internet of things,’ where objects outside of normal computers start to get networked, allowing for ‘added value.’ Silly wording maybe, but the intent is serious. Tracking is a vital part of logistics for industries like cement. The investors in Hanhaa, BillerudKorsnäs, may be on to something. Indeed, in 10 years time we may be kicking ourselves that we didn’t see it.

One drawback with networking everything though is that all sorts of items start to become vulnerable to computer hacking. The famous industrial example in recent years was the so-called Stuxnet virus, an alleged attempt by US and Israeli intelligence services to physically damage parts of the Iranian nuclear industry. It was intended to damage centrifuges by looking for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) made by Siemens in very particular circumstances. A good overview on Stuxnet can be gained by watching Alex Gibney’s documentary ‘Zero Days.’

The problem for cement plants is that they also use PLCs for process control in common with other heavy industry. Effectively, whoever built Stuxnet has shown criminals how to attack any industrial plants that uses PLCs. Unsurprisingly, given the drip-drip of bad publicity, Siemens made a point of saying that it had gained a cybersecurity certification from TÜV SÜD, a German inspection and certification organisation, for some of its related products in late 2016.

Actual examples of cement plants being attacked are hard to find. Low-level cyber intrusions are likely to be treated akin to, say, individuals trespassing on a plant grounds and more serious incidents are probably kept quiet. ThyssenKrupp’s Industrial Solutions division, that builds cement plants amongst other things, reported that it had data stolen in an online attack from somewhere in Southeast Asia in 2016. Data espionage is one thing. Physical damage to an industrial plant is quite another. Previous to this, an unnamed German steel plant was reported to have been damaged by a systematically planned attack in 2014. Another way hackers can mess up your day is via extortion attempts or so-called ransonware attacks where systems are shut down until a ransom is paid. Recent examples of this in the wider public sphere include attempts to extort the San Francisco Municipal Railway in November 2016 and the St Louis Public Library system in January 2017. Despite shutting down their systems neither organisation paid up.

From our perspective, the Global Cement website runs using a common content management system (CMS) that runs on commonly used server software. Due to this we constantly receive low-level hacking and exploit attempts from automated scripts attempting to find weaknesses in the setup. New exploits are found, hacking attempts occur, software is updated and the cycle continues. However, the key difference between the Global Cement website and a cement producer is the turnover. A cement plant operates in millions or hundreds of millions. In this way, for hackers the return on investment of hacking an industrial plant is far higher. even if it is using limited-run proprietary software and equipment. And even if critical parts of a plant’s system are security hardened, hackers may be able to find a way in via less secure areas and then work their way across. Staff smartphones accessing a local wifi network, contractors using insecure USB drives, and hackers using social engineering techniques such as confidence tricks to gain system logins by phone are just some methods that could grant intruders digital access.

A report by Ponemon placed the average annualised cost of cyber crime to the industrial sector worldwide at US$8.05m. Although the authors point out sample size issues with their calculation, industry is the fifth most affected sector in terms of losses after finance, utilities, technology and services. Networking innovations in industry such as the ‘internet of packaging’ are potential game changers as added value from the network effect and suchlike becomes factored in. The risk though is that these kind of innovations also offer opportunities to criminals and anarchists. It’s likely only a matter of time until a serious hacking attack at a cement plant becomes public knowledge.

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Algeria: ThyssenKrupp’s Industrial Solutions has been awarded a contract by Société des Ciments de Sigus, part of Groupe Industriel des Ciments d’Algérie (GICA), to build a cement plant at Sigus, in the Wilaya of Oum El Bouaghi, near Constantine. The plant will have a clinker production capacity of 6000t/day. Operation is planned to start in early 2019. No exact value for the order was disclosed but it was placed above US$100m.

GICA has launched several projects to increase its cement production capacity from 12Mt/yr to 20Mt/yr by 2019. ThyssenKrupp previously received an order from GICA in 2013 to build a 6000t/day cement plant.

Saudi Arabia: Yamama Saudi Cement has ordered two sets of clinker conveying equipment from Aumund. The Saudi Arabian cement producer plans to start-up two clinker production lines in 2018 at a new site to the southwest of Riyadh. The two lines, with a combined capacity of 20,000t/day, are being built by ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions.

The scope of supply includes 29 chain bucket elevators and 18 belt bucket elevators, in heavy-duty and lighter designs, for these two lines. For raw meal, Aumund belt bucket elevators will be used. Filter dust will be conveyed by Aumund chain bucket elevators optimally designed for low capacity. Two Aumund double chain bucket elevators with a capacity of 2300t/hr have been ordered per line as recirculating bucket elevators in the cement mill. The supply package for the two lines also includes six Aumund pan conveyors as well as various flat gates, silo discharge gates, telescopic chutes and cleaning conveyors.

Germany: Jens Michael Wegmann is standing down as CEO of Thyssenkrupp’s Industrial Solutions division with immediate effect and leaving the company. Wegmann accepted a golden bracelet for his wife from a Pakistani business partner, according to Reuters.

“I made a mistake which I greatly regret and I am now paying the consequences. I realise that my conduct in my dealings with a sales partner was not in line with Thyssenkrupp’s values and that I can no longer credibly drive the necessary changes at Industrial solutions. For this reason I am standing down as CEO of Thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions – irrespective of legal issues and the findings of the on-going internal investigation. I would like to wish all employees the very best for the future and every success in the continuing implementation of the transformation,” said Wegmann in a statement.

Stefan Gesing, chief financial officer of Industrial Solutions, will assume Jens Michael Wegmann’s duties and serve as chair of the business area board on an acting basis. The group will decide on a permanent successor in a structured process.

Germany: Vivek Bhatia has been appointed as the CEO of ThyssenKrupp Asia Pacific with effect 1 October 2016. He succeeds Stefan Schmitt, who will move to ThyssenKrupp AG as Head of Human Resources Strategy.

Bhatia, aged 38 years, has been Head of Strategy, Markets and Development at the Regional Headquarters in Singapore since May 2014. Prior to this he advised industrial businesses on their strategy and operations, as part of the Boston Consulting Group for several years. He earlier gained experience in the oil and gas Industry as part of Engineers India.

Algeria: Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal has laid the first stone at a cement plant being built at Sigus, Oum El Bouaghi by the Industrial Public Group of Cements of Algeria (GICA). Sellal said that his country had invested significantly in the cement sector and that Algeria should being exporting cement by 2019, according to the Algeria Press Service.

Polysius SAS France, a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp, won the contract to build the cement plant in October 2015 on a budget of over Euro310m. The plant will have a production capacity of 2.2Mt/yr and it will start production in Febraury 2019.