Vietnam: Lam Tach Cement has upgraded Kiln 1 of its integrated cement plant with a new Turbu-Flex burner supplied by FCT Combustion. The upgrade follows the successful installation of an FCT Combustion Turbu-Flex burner in Kiln 2 of the plant in late 2019.

Brazil: Votorantim Cimentos has said that it will end 2020 with an agricultural lime production capacity of 1.0Mt/yr, up by 25% year-on-year from 0.8Mt/yr in 2019 following a US$12.6m investment in two new plants in Itapeva and Nobres and upgrades to plants in Itau de Minas and Nobres. SABI News has reported that the expansion will bring Votorantim Cimentos’ diversified products capacity to 4.3Mt/yr. The company says that it is ‘targeting value-added products’ to insure itself against a fall in demand for cement.

UK: Global Cement Magazine's virtual CemProducer Conference on 19 May 2020 attracted 940 registrations from 84 countries worldwide, to listen to 12 presentations on the topic of 'cement plant maintenance in the time of coronavirus.'

The conference proceedings volume, delegate list, presentation PDFs and access to the full conference video are available for purchase

Image credit: creativeneko / Shutterstock.com

Peru: Cementos Pacasmayo has reported a first-quarter profit of US$3.14m in the first quarter of 2020, down by 65% year-on-year from US$7.00m in the same period of 2019. Sales fell by 4.4% year-on-year to US$87.9m, from US$92.0m. Despite having increased by 13% year-on-year in the first two months of 2020, cement, concrete and precast sales volumes fell by 6.0% to US$81.5m from US$86.7m.

Cementos Pacasmayo said that it has suspended all production and sale of its products since 16 March 2020 in response to the national state of emergency due to the coronavirus outbreak. It said, “We are unsure when operations will be allowed to restart.”