Displaying items by tag: US

US: Cemex USA is preparing to expand its cement terminal at Port Tampa Bay in Florida. It wants to increase the size of its operations so it can process more cement, fly ash, slag, limestone and other materials, according to the Tampa Bay Business Journal. The company also wants to build a ready-mx concrete plant at the site.

US/Europe: US refractory manufacturer Plibrico has entered into a distribution partnership with the Pli Group Europe, a refractory distributor contractor based in Vienna, Austria. Under the new alliance, Pli Group Europe will provide full-service distribution of Plibrico’s Plico brand refractories in Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria, with immediate effect.

“Adding Pli Group Europe to our ranks of Pli Partners allows Plibrico to reinforce its expertise, enhance its service offering and strengthen the value chain offered to customers throughout Europe,” said Brad Taylor, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Plibrico.

Iran: Jafar Sarqeini, the Deputy Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade for Mining Affairs, says that US-backed trade sanctions have not slowed cement exports. He added that the embargo has only placed some obstacles in the way of financial transactions and return of money to the country, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. The official said that the local industry can export up to 20Mt/yr of cement. Local production capacity is forecast to reach 120Mt/yr by 2025. However, a recession in the mining sector has kept production behind capacity.

US: Charah Solutions has installed its MP618 thermal beneficiation technology at its terminal in Sulphur, Louisiana. The upgrade is intended to improve the quality of fly ash and to increase its supply of marketable fly ash to concrete producers. The proprietary process reduces loss on ignition, ammonia, activated carbon and moisture in fly ash.

The company hopes to provides concrete product producers and builders with a source of Class F fly ash to support a growing number of construction projects in the greater Lake Charles and Sulphur region. The Sulphur terminal is Charah Solutions’ second barge-supplied location in southern Louisiana. Its LaPlace, Louisiana terminal currently serves customers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

US: Continental Cement’s Hannibal plant has been awarded Energy Star certification by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). To qualify for the certification the cement producer was required to perform in the top 25% of cement plants nationwide for total energy efficiency (thermal and electrical) and meet environmental performance levels set by the EPA.

“Continental Cement Company is pleased to accept EPA’s Energy Star certification in recognition of our energy efficiency efforts,” said Matt Helms, plant manager at the unit.

To earn the Energy Star certification Continental Cement established an energy management policy, it identified operating characteristics and energy usage, it promoted energy efficiency and it followed the Energy Star guidelines for energy management.

US: Randall P Breaux has been appointed as the president of Motion Industries. He was most recently Executive Vice President of Marketing, Distribution, and Purchasing for Motion Industries, and has nearly four decades of experience in the industrial manufacturing and distribution markets.

Breaux joined Motion Industries in mid-2011 following 21 years with ABB/Baldor Electric Company, a manufacturer of industrial electric motors, drives and mechanical power transmission components, based in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He joined Baldor in 1989, and held various sales and marketing positions in the company. Just prior to joining Motion, Baldor was acquired by ABB. At that time, he was promoted to Vice President of Integration by ABB and was tasked with bringing the Baldor and ABB electric motor businesses together in North America. He served as Baldor's Vice President of Marketing from 2001 - 2011, played a key role in Baldor's acquisition of Dodge and Reliance Electric from Rockwell Automation in 2007, and served as an officer of the company for over 11 years.

US: Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC) says that the upgrade to its Rapid City cement plant in South Dakota has started operation. The expansion has added 0.44Mt/yr of production capacity to the unit taking its total capacity to 1.18Mt/yr. The project cost US$105m and it started in 2016. Tie-in of the upgrade was finished in late November 2018. Production was suspended during the tie-in-process and has now resumed. The new facilities are now being stabilised.

“The Rapid City expansion comes at an opportune time, as our US cement plants are running nearly at full capacity, and we expect to see continued, steady growth in demand across our market area. We will be able to serve our customers better and operate our cement logistics network more efficiently with the additional capacity,” said Enrique Escalante, GCC’s chief executive officer (CEO).

GCC has 5.8Mt/yr of cement production capacity. Of this, 3.5Mt/yr is in the US, with plants in Pueblo in Colorado, Odessa in Texas, Tijeras in New Mexico, Trident in Montana and Rapid City in South Dakota. GCC expects to ramp up the new production capacity at Rapid City gradually over the next 18 to 24 months, in accordance with market conditions.

GCC’s cement production capacity in Mexico is 2.3Mt/yr from plants in Chihuahua, Juarez and Samalayuca in Chihuahua state. In the third quarter of 2018, GCC reactivated two idled kilns in Chihuahua to increase production of both oil well cement and construction cement.

US: France’s Fives Group has released detail about a project to upgrade the cement mill workshop at Giant Cement’s Harleyville plant in South Carolina. The contracts included the complete engineering, supply, fabrication, transport, installation and commissioning services for material handling, cement grinding and cement loading. New equipment included a clinker and additives transport circuit with a dedusting system, a classifying circuit with a FCB TSV Classifier, a new Fives TGT Filter, all gas and material connections as well as the ball mill internals revamping, a cement truck bulk loading area and a weighing station.

Engineering, offshore supplies and project management were handled by Fives FCB. Onshore supplies and all site works including civil and structural works, mechanical and electrical installations were covered by Fives Solios. Major milestones of the project included starting civil works in November 2017. Mechanical and electrical erection work ran from February to July 2018. First cement production was on 29 June 2018.

US: Aggregate Industries, a US subsidiary of LafargeHolcim, has secured the contract to provide concrete for the US$2bn Minneapolis-area Southwest Light Rail Transit (LRT) extension of the Metro Green Line. The new line will run 14.5 miles from downtown Minneapolis to the suburb of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and require construction of 16 new stations, plus the rail infrastructure itself. The project will require an estimated 0.30Mm³ of ready-mix concrete. It includes the construction of 44 structures, 29 new bridges, two cut and cover tunnels, six pedestrian tunnels, 15 at-grade crossings, 110 retaining walls and over 45,000m of track.

US: Claudius Peters has been awarded the ‘Innovator of the Year’ award in the Design & Manufacturing category at the Autodesk University (AU) Las Vegas in November 2018. It was given due to changes Claudius Peters made to its engineering and business processes, which led in turn to a ’generative design’ approach to some of its largest manufactured components, including its clinker cooler product. The equipment manufacturer has adopted an agile project management system similar to that used in computer software development. It has removed traditional departmental barriers between engineering and manufacturing teams and replaced them with ‘scrum’ teams of 5 to 9 persons.

“Our project team included young people who embraced this new concept and understood that the electric light didn’t come from the continuous improvement of candles. It needed a complete change. That’s how we came to try generative design. By inputting the project parameters, computers can do the heavy lifting, freeing up our engineers to innovate,” said Thomas Nagel, Chief Digital Officer at Claudius Peters.