Displaying items by tag: grinding plant
India: The Cement Corporation of India (CCI) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the owner of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant to build a 2Mt/yr slag and fly ash cement plant. RINL will provide the blast furnace slag and fly ash for the project. The plant is expected to cost US$23m and it will take 15 months once the deal is finalised.
Kenya: Bamburi Cement is set to start a US$39m upgrade to its Athi River grinding plant in August 2017. Preliminary work on the 18-month project started in January 2017 and construction is about to commence, according to the Business Daily newspaper. The upgrade will increase cement production by 0.9Mt/yr at the unit when it is completed in mid-2018. Following the project the cement producer’s total national cement production capacity, including its integrated plant in Mombasa, will reach 3.2Mt/yr.
Update on Chile
12 July 2017Sad news this week from the Talcahuano cement plant in Chile that is to stop producing clinker. Local media reports that the Cementos Bío Bío unit has decided to import clinker from Asia instead, which will reduce its production costs. At the same time it has laid off a third of its workforce. The plant has been producing cement since 1961.
The decision carries echoes of Holcim New Zealand’s closure of its Westport cement plant in 2016, another unit in a country on the Pacific Rim. However, in that country LafargeHolcim has purposely moved towards becoming a distribution company by opening import terminals and depots. Plus the local subsidiary benefits from the cement-trading arm of a multinational company. By contrast, local producer Cementos Bío Bío still retains two integrated plants and a grinding plant in Chile. Following the closure its production share from integrated plants will drop to 2.4Mt/yr (39%) from 3.2Mt/yr (45%). The country will retain a total production capacity of 6.2Mt/yr from its clinker producing plants.
The timing of Cementos Bío Bío’s decision is also interesting given that the Chilean competition authority (TDLC) approved Hurtado Vicuña Group to buy a controlling stake in Cemento Polpaico from LafargeHolcim in early July 2017. The deal was originally announced in October 2016 to sell LafargeHolcim’s 54.3% stake in Cemento Polpaico for US$225m. The sale includes one integrated plant with a cement production capacity of 2.3Mt/yr and two grinding plants. Hurtado Vicuña has not been required by the regulator to sell any of its cement units but it has been asked to sell parts of its concrete business and to abide to a ban on repurchasing the assets within 10 years. Hurtado Vicuña owns Cementos BSA, a subsidiary that runs the El Bosque cement grinding plant in Santiago and it has just started-up production at a new 0.95Mt/yr grinding plant at Quilicura, also near the capital.
In its 2016 annual report LafargeHolcim reported that cement sales volumes of cement fell in Chile due to a fall in the residential construction market in the second half of the year. However it did manage to raise its operating earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBTIDA) off the back of higher prices and lower production costs compared to the previous year. Cementos Bío Bío concurred with this assessment of the market in its 2016 report, lamenting the country’s poor economic growth since 2015 and declines in the mining and construction sectors. Despite this its cement despatches rose very slightly to 1.56Mt in 2016. The big drop in its sales occurred in 2014 when its sales fell by 10% year-on-year to 1.51Mt. More recently, Bío Bío noted a 37% decrease in its operating profit for its cement, concrete and lime division for the first quarter of 2017 due to falling sales volumes and margins in cement and lime. However, it did benefit from falling costs for energy and petcoke inputs. The group also announced plans to sell a minority stake in itself in February 2017.
These stories show another country that is realigning its cement industry to a clinker-rich world market. Chile appears to retain a ‘big three’ group of local clinker producers that has shifted with the rise of Cementos BSA and the departure of LafargeHolcim. However, the market share in the cement grinding business has changed significantly as Cementos BSA has gained both an integrated plant and a more national profile, away from the capital, with its grinding plants. Once the local market picks up it will be interesting to see whether this trend towards clinker import and local grinding continues.
Bangladesh: FLSmidth has confirmed that is to supply a cement grinding production line for Meghna Cement Mills. The Danish equipment manufacturer has signed a contract with Meghna Cement Mills for engineering, procurement and supply of equipment for a 415t/hr Portland composite cement at 3800 Blaine grinding unit at it plant in Mongla in the Bagerhat District. No value for the deal has been disclosed.
The scope of the order includes an FLSmidth OKTM 54-6 mill, planetary gear unit from FLSmidth MAAG Gear, fabric filters from FLSmidth Airtech, weigh feeders from FLSmidth Pfister and a plant control system from FLSmidth Automation. The project is scheduled for completion by the end of 2018.
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.
Oman: Tanfeedh, the National Programme for Enhancing Economic Diversification, is calling for captive coal power stations to be used to support new cement plants that are being planned for the Duqm special economic zone. The programme wants two Ordinary Portland Cement plants and a white cement plant to be built in the zone to reduce imports, according to the Oman Daily Observer newspaper. It also wants investors to build one cement grinding plants in Duqm and one in Suhar. Tanfeedh says that the country used 9Mt of cement in 2015 but that only 44% came from local producers.
Ciments de l'Afrique secures loan from West African Development Bank for Burkina Faso project
04 July 2017Burkina Fasa: The West African Development Bank (BOAD) has granted a US$10m short term loan to Ciments de l'Afrique (CIMAF) for the import of raw materials for the production of cement to be sold locally. Morocco’s CIMAF operates a cement grinding plant at Ouagadougou and it is building another at Bobo-Dioulasso that is expected to be completed in mid-2018.
India: Odisha’s State Level Single Window Clearance Authority (SLSWCA) has approved a proposal by Ambuja Cements to build a 1.5M/yr cement grinding plant at the Industrial Growth Centre, Jharsuguda. The proposed unit will use an area of 125 acres, according to the Press Trust of India. It is expected to create 300 direct and indirect jobs. Once complete the plant will join the company’s five integrated cement plants and eight grinding plants.
India: UltraTech Cement has completed its US$2.5bn acquisition of six integrated cement plants and five grinding plants from Jaiprakash Associates. The transfer was made effective at a meeting of the Scheme Implementation Committee of the board of directors of UltraTech Cement. The purchase includes plants in Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh with a total production capacity of 21.2Mt/yr.
“This move is essentially for geographic market expansion, enabling UltraTech’s entry into the high growth markets of India where it needed greater reinforcement,” said Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of UltraTech. He added that the acquisition would add synergies in manufacturing, distribution and logistics.
Following the purchase UltraTech holds 18 integrated plants, one standalone clinker production plant, 25 grinding plants and seven bulk terminals, increasing its Ordinary Portland Cement capacity to 93Mt/yr. UltraTech said that the new production units will make it the fourth largest cement producer in the world outside of China and that it confirms its place as the largest producer in India.
Poland: Belgium’s Lhoist has ordered a FCB TSV Classifier 1400 HF from Fives to increase the production of a limestone grinding plant. The unit already operates two FCB TSV Classifiers following upgrades in 1999 and 2016. The classifier will close a circuit, which consisted in a ball mill in open circuit. The installation of this equipment is intended to increase both the grinding line capacity and the finished products quality.