Global Cement News

Denmark: FLSmidth plans to change its internal business structure to focus on two industries: cement and mining. The reorganisation will see it change its focus from four divisions to two industries and from a country setup into a regional structure. Sales and service will be decentralised in seven regions, while ownership for the full life cycle offering will be anchored in the two industries. This is intended to create a productivity-driven organisation with a strong, unified digital approach and strengthen the engineering firm’s local presence.

"With the end markets recovering, our customers accelerate to invest in productivity enhancing and digital solutions. To support our customers' growth, the two industries, Cement and Mining, will deliver integrated productivity offerings through the regions. Our decentralised organisation will give us a strong point of entry to offer our customers key products, shorter delivery times and a strong service setup," said group chief executive officer Thomas Schulz.

Its two industry grouping, Cement and Mining, will develop and drive the life-cycle offering and the product portfolio. The two industries will be supported by seven regions: North America; South America; Europe, Russia & North Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa & Middle East; Asia; Subcontinental India; and Australia. The regions will drive customer relations, sales and service for both industries. A central digital organisation will drive an enhanced, unified approach to digitalisation. The realigned organisation will become effective from 1 July 2018.

Lithuania: Claudius Peters has commissioned a turnkey cement silo and discharge equipment for stevedoring company Bega at the Port of Klaipėda. Its scope of supply comprised a rail car unloading system and a storage silo with pneumatic conveying for ship loading to unload three railcars simultaneously up to a capacity of 200t/hr. The storage silo is a Claudius Peters 3300T Conventional Cone cement storage silo 27m high and 12.5m in diameter equipped with a silo bottom fluidisation system.

The pneumatic conveying system utilises a size 350 Claudius Peters X-pump and enables a total conveying distance of 205m. Originally the project was based on a conveying distance of 148m. During the project phase the customer decided to use two different quays with a conveying distance of 148m and 205m. Commissioning was competed at the end of March 2018.

US: The Portland Cement Association (PCA) has announced the winners of the 2018 Safety Innovation Awards. The awards recognise creative safety-enhancing projects in the cement industry. Winners were determined by a panel of judges that evaluated submissions from across the country for milling/grinding, distribution, pyroprocessing and general facility.

Cemex USA’s Miami plant Florida won the milling/grinding category with its new process to load ball mills. The site developed a new mill loading process that uses a small hopper for grinding media, and an incline transport system with buckets to convey the grinding media directly to the mill. This new system eliminates the interaction between the employee and the machine, reduces the number of people needed to load the mill from five to two, and eliminates the need for employees to stand on top of the mill. This new system also improves mill loading rates from seven drums/hr to 30 drums/hr.

Cemex USA’s Houston operations in Texas won the pyroprocessing category for it use of drones for hazardous inspections. It has implemented a system for using protected air drones to inspect enclosed and confined spaces. Visual inspections of enclosed areas (preheater towers, tanks, silos, process ducts, etc) normally require intrusive equipment, long delays for system cooling, and placement of employees on scaffolding in confined spaces. These drones utilise an outer protective cage to minimize the risk of breakage due to impact. The drone program has eliminated the risk of putting staff in confined spaces, reduced the cost of scaffolding, and reduced the overall time for inspections.

LafargeHolcim US’ Corporate Program in Chicago won the distribution category for its X-Factor barge cover. It has developed a process for barge cover removal that reduces the risk of falls from employees stepping on to the barge. The X-Factor barge cover, developed over the last three years with a contractor, uses the latest technology and a no-touch design to allow a crane operator to perform all functions associated with barge lid handling without additional human assistance. Barge workers will no longer be required to step onto the barge to remove or replace barge covers, eliminating a potential fall risk.

Ash Grove Cement’s Louisville plant in Nebraska won the general facility category for its use of magnets as duct hole patches. Ash Grove has developed a hole-patch technique using magnets. Magnetic patches are quick, simple, and effective at preventing or limiting the release of materials from holes created in ducts caused by abrasion, leading to a cleaner plant, reduced slip, trip and fall risks, and fewer related Mine Safety and Health Administration housekeeping citations.

Cemex USA’s Brooksville in Florida also won the general facility category for its filters moved to ground level project. It redesigned the blower housings to move the filter from the top of the blower housings to an easily accessible location at ground level. The redesigned blower housing eliminates the need for employees to climb up and down a ladder, reducing overexertion and fall hazard.

US: CalPortland has been awarded the 2018 Energy Star Partner of the Year - Sustained Excellence by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). It received the award for its commitment to high-level leadership in energy management throughout the company.

Key 2017 accomplishments for the award include: reaching a 16% improvement in 2017 from a baseline year of 2003 for cumulative savings of US$109m; promoting energy management across the US cement industry through the chief executive officer’s leadership of the trade association and an offer of the company’s assistance to others in the industry; earning EPA’s Energy Star plant certification for two cement plants where one was recently purchased and required extensive upgrades and energy improvements to qualify in less than two years; expanding energy management into its fleet of ready mix concrete trucks by 118 units that run on compressed natural gas; continuing to invest in operations through new plant hardware such as a high efficiency separator for a mill, efficient new equipment to improve raw feed processing, and computational fluid dynamic software to better manage process air and material flows; developing innovative methods for training employees and motivating them to manage energy in their work; and outreaching to inform employees, over 106,000 community members and schools, competitors, and others on how they can manage energy and use Energy Star to save.

The latest award is the 14th consecutive recognition, from 2005 to 2018, by US EPA Energy Star for CalPortland.

No consolidation has happened yet in the Saudi Arabian cement industry but exports have started to be announced. Yanbu Cement signed an export deal in March 2018 to despatch 1Mt of clinker and 0.5Mt of cement from one year from 1 April 2018. Prior to that, Al Jouf Cement Company started a contract to export 72.000t/yr to Jordan from late February 2018. Earlier still, Bahrain was expected to benefit from a lifting of cement export tariffs at the end of January 2018.

Its early days yet but some of sort of action is starting to happen about the country’s falling cement sales. If export deals are in the early stages of being set following the lifting of the ban, then local movements of cement have intensified. As Al Rajhi Capital reports in its latest market update, that producers have been forced by low sales and high inventory levels to take action. It says that cement companies have started to sell products in different parts of the country than they do normally leading to a ‘price war’. The financial services and analytical company has pinpointed the central region as the key battleground as company market shares have fallen over the last six months as northern producers have moved in.

Graph 1: Cement sales (Mt) by quarter in Saudi Arabia, 2015 to March 2018. Source: Yamama Cement.

Cement sales fell by 15% year-on-year to 11.8Mt in the first quarter of 2018 from 13.7Mt in the same period in 2017. This is the first time in recent years that sales did not rise from the fourth quarter to the following first quarter. Not a good sign. Despite the bad news, a few producers did mange to increases their deliveries in the first quarter, including Saudi Cement, Hail Cement, Umm Al Qura Cement and United Cement.

Bizarrely, into this sales environment, plans for the long delayed Al Baha Cement cement plant project have re-emerged. The project previously has received coverage at various stages over the years. This time it has reportedly gained a licence to set up the company and it hopes to start tendering for the build in the second half of 2018. The investors may want to leave it a little longer given the current state of the Saudi cement industry.