Nigeria: Obu Cement and Cement Company of Northern Nigeria (CCNN), both subsidiaries of BUA Group, are set to merge. Abdul Samad Rabiu, founder and executive chairman of BUA Group, said that the merger ‘marks the culmination of the first phase of the BUA mid-term strategic plan,’ which aims at deepening the domestic cement market and enhancing industry growth.

Rabiu stated that the completion of the 3Mt/yr integrated Sokota Kalambaina II cement plant and a 48MW power station, construction of which began in 2018, has been scheduled for the second half of 2020. In addition to its four existing plants, this will bring the group’s total integrated cement production capacity to 11Mt/yr.

Nigeria: Dangote Cement has extended its services agreement with US-based General Electric to the implementation of asset performance management (APM) digital products at its 12.5Mt/yr integrated Obajana cement plant and 12Mt/yr integrated Ibese cement plant, with the aim of unplanned downtime reduction. Dangote operations director Ravi Sood said that “Operational performance is crucial to a plant’s overall productivity, directly affecting end products. The introduction of GE’s latest digital solutions will improve efficiency and enable us to become more self-sufficient in power generation.”

Russia: 577 Gornozavodskcement employees became unemployed in the six months to 30 June 2019. 87 resigned, 195 retired and 295 left by agreement with the company. This follows South Ural Mining and Processing’s takeover of the struggling cement producer in December 2018. Kommersant has reported that the liquidation of auxiliary departments is a part of unit optimisation which extends to the company’s facilities, with the site of a planned dry line at its 2.2Mt/yr (wet) integrated Perm cement plant being used for parking. Wages have reportedly risen for the remaining three quarters of the Gornozavodskcement’s original staff.

Switzerland: LafargeHolcim has recorded a fall in third-quarter net sales of 3.0% year-on-year to Euro6.46bn from Euro6.68bn in 2018 and a fall of 2.1% year-on-year in 2019 to Euro18.3bn in nine-month net sales to 30 September 2019 from Euro18.7bn in the corresponding period of a 2018. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 0.8% year-on-year to Euro1.71bn in the third quarter of 2019 from Euro1.69bn. EBITDA in the nine months to 30 September 2019 grew by 4.4% to Euro4.12bn from Euro3.95bn. The company said that it improved its margin in the Europe, North America and Asia Pacific regions, with localised profit growth in the Middle East Africa region in South Africa, Jordan and Iraq. Profitability in Latin America stabilised, with price management partially mitigating the challenges of several markets and a good performance in Colombia.

Based on the results, LafarageHolcim has reaffirmed its commitment to increase net sales by 3-5% year-on-year to between Euro25.6bn and Euro26.2bn in 2019 from Euro24.9bn in 2018, and to reduce the ratio of its net debt to recurring EBITDA to ‘well below’ two to one.