Global Cement News

US: Schust, a member of the Scheuch Group, has appointed Daniel Locke as Director of Business Development – Industrial Minerals, where he will support Schust’s North American cement producer customers. Locke has nearly five years of sales and technical experience in the industrial minerals and energy industries. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern Mississippi.

Schust provides turnkey industrial ventilation systems. It is part of Scheuch Group via Scheuch North America.

US: Jon K Tabor, the Chairman Emeritus of Allied Mineral Products, is to retire at the end of March 2020. He celebrates 50 years with Allied on 16 February 2020. He will remain on Allied’s board of directors following his retirement.

Tabor started a 65-year career in the refractories industry in 1955 when he started working for Norton Company (Saint-Gobain), in Worcester, Massachusetts. He joined Allied as Sales Manager in 1970, when Allied was a small company. Tabor helped transform Allied from a two-man partnership into a multi-national corporation with almost 1000 employees in 25 countries, and manufacturing facilities in eight countries and four US states. His Allied career has included the roles of Sales Manager, Vice President of Sales, President, chief executive officer (CEO), Chairman, and most recently, Chairman Emeritus. Notably, he led the transformation of Allied to an employee owned (ESOP) company in 1986.

Tabor attended the United States Merchant Marine Academy, served in the US Army and Army Reserves; graduated from Alfred University in 1955 and earned an MBA from Northeastern University in 1962.

Kenya: Devki Group subsidiary National Cement has launched its second Kenyan plant in Salgaa in Nakuru county at a cost of US$58.0m. Business Daily News has reported that the 0.75Mt integrated plant will supply cement to Kenya, South Sudan and southern Ethiopia.

Devki Group chairman Narendra Raval said that the completion of a 0.75Mt/yr second line at National Cement’s 1.2Mt/yr Kajiado County plant would bring the group’s total capacity to 3.5Mt/yr in July 2020, in a speech in which he lobbied the government to ban clinker imports. “We are gearing towards fixing the country’s clinker gap and making Kenya a regional market for raw material in cement production,” said Raval. The group also produces its Simba brand cement in Uganda.

Russia: Yakutcement has commissioned a crushed stone conveyor to circulate crushed stone of a 200 - 400mm fraction for secondary crushing at the 0.4Mt/yr Yakutcement plant in Mokhsogollokh. Yakutcement has said that the installation will save on the costs of a front-end loader and dump truck for conveying crushed stone to and from a temporary warehouse prior to secondary crushing.

Russia: Sibirsky Cement Holding (Sibtsem) subsidiary Topkinsky Cement has announced that it has entered commercial production of a new Mita slag Portland cement with granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) at its 2.7Mt/yr integrated plant in Topki, for which it received a certification of conformity with ‘cement for general construction’ standards on 16 January 2020. Nina Poputnikova, Topkinsky Cement laboratory and quality department head, said that it is producing the cement in response to ‘construction companies’ increased interest in cement for use in reinforced, precast concrete in monolithic structures such as buried and hydraulic structures.’

“In the near future we plan to certify two new cements,” said Topkinsky Cement managing director Alexey Ospelnikov. One will be a low-heat general-purpose cement for large-sized concrete structures and the other a sulphate-resistant Portland cement. “Expanding the assortment will help strengthen the company’s position in the Russian cement market.”