Global Cement News

Bangladesh: Saudi Arabian company Engineering Dimensions has signed a partnership agreement with Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC) to build a cement plant at Chhatak in Sunamgan. BCIC Chairman Shah M Aminul Haque and Engineering Dimensions President Mohammed N Hijji signed the deal, according to the Financial Express newspaper. Representatives of the Ministry of Industries and the Saudi Arabian embassy also attended the ceremony.

China: Russia’s Mechel says it has prolonged a coal supply contract with Jidong Cement until the end of 2019. The mining and steel company will supply 2Mt/yr of thermal coal mined at the company’s Elga and Yakutugol mines in South Yakutia. Monthly supplies will vary from 100,000 to 150,000t of coal products. Prices will be adjusted on a monthly basis following negotiations and on the basis of index rates.

“This is a third major contract signed by Mechel and Jidong Cement. I am sure that our ties will continue to develop in a constructive manner in the future. It is also important to note that Jidong Cement is a key customer of Elga’s thermal coal in Asia. In 2017 we supplied our Chinese partners with 1.9Mt and another 1.4Mt in 2018. In 2019 we plan to export thermal coal from Elga in comparable volumes,” said Mechel Mining Management’s chief executive officer (CEO) Pavel Shtark.

India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi says he wants to reduce the rate of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on regular items, including cement, to 18% from 28%. A proposal to reduce the rate will be considered by the GST Council in late December 2018, according to the Economic Times. Luxury items are likely to remain in the higher tax bracket.

Pakistan: Two contract workers at Lucky Cement’s plant in Pezu, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province have been killed in a gun attacked on a bus. A third worker was wounded in the incident, according to the Dawn newspaper. Local police are searching for the killers.

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.