Global Cement News

UK: A team of Hanson employees has produced a sign from recycled materials from around the company’s 1.0Mt/yr Purfleet slag cement grinding plant. The 6m-long luminous sign, which reads ‘NHS Thank You,’ has been installed at the plant on the mill three tower overlooking the QE2 Dartford Crossing. Hanson Purfleet plant manager Warren Scott said, “The team wanted to show their appreciation for the NHS and key workers and came up with and executed this idea in their own time.”

Hanson has kept ‘a number of key sites’ open through the coronavirus outbreak in order ‘to supply key national infrastructure projects or to provide maintenance materials to critical sectors.’ Hanson has furloughed part of its staff under the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

US: A cloud of dust from Cemex’s 3.3Mt/yr Victorville, California plant caused the fire brigade to be called to the site at 17:00 on 24 April 2020. Victor Valley News has reported that what onlookers believed to be smoke was indeed escaped dust from silo refilling. Locals reported that dust frequently covers their cars.

Vietnam: US-based FCT Combustion has published details of a new contract with Vietnam National Coal and Minerals Industry Holding Group (Vinacomin) for the supply of an FCT Turbo-Jet burner to Vinacomin’s 0.6Mt/yr La Hiên plant in Thái Nguyên province. The upgrade aims to enable the use of lower calorific coal while maintaining clinker strength and specific fuel consumption, in order to reduce fuel costs.

FCT Combustion previously provided burners at Vinacomin’s 0.8Mt/yr Quan Trieu cement plant in 2019 and 1.5Mt/yr Quang Son cement plant in 2020, both in Thái Nguyên province.

India: Both Germany-based HeidelbergCement and Aditya Birla subsidiary UltraTech have responded to the government’s partial lifting of the coronavirus lockdown for rurally-located continuous industries by resuming ‘partial operations in some production facilities.’ Orient Cement subsidiary CK Birla said, “We are in the process of partially resuming our operations at our plants in Karnataka and Maharashtra.” Producers require the permission of the relevant state government to restart plants. In Telangana, where the government has not lifted the lockdown, CK Birla’s facilities remain shut.

The Economic Times newspaper has reported that ‘limited transportation facilities, higher than usual inventory and stricter rules regarding labour safety’ have added a note of caution to resumed operations. Shree Cement managing director Hari Mohan Bangur said, given the continuation of restrictions on construction in cities, “We expect just 10% of normal consumption, with hopes of a gradual increase.”

Malaysia: The Cement and Concrete Association of Malaysia (CCA) has praised the government’s decision to grant an exception to cement plants in order to allow production to resume in the third phase of the country’s lockdown, beginning on 28 April 2020. The Straits Times newspaper has reported that the current and previous stages of the lockdown have exacerbated the cement sector’s losses over the past two years.

The CCA said that the development ‘will have a multiplier effect on the economy.’ CCA chair Datuk Yeoh Soo Keng said that 100,000 jobs ‘depend either directly and indirectly on cement production,’ including many ‘in small and medium enterprises’ that will not survive the outbreak without it. “Cement is the fundamental building material of our country’s wealth,” he added. The CCA thanked the government for the ‘welcome reprieve’ and urged it to allow ‘related sectors to slowly and gradually resume operations, for the industry to effectively function.’