Global Cement News

Ireland/UK: Lagan Group’s bagged cement, brick and tile products have been rebranded within the Breedon Group. The Irish company was acquired by Breedon Group earlier in 2018. It manufactures a range of bagged cement, concrete roof tiles and clay facing bricks, which it supplies to builders’ merchants across the UK and Ireland. The newly branded range has widened the product range available through Breedon’s distributor network.

As James Cousins, regional director responsible for Breedon’s specialist building products, said, “It’s a very exciting time to be part of Breedon. We’ve spent the last few months getting to know our new colleagues, as well as the products and plants within the group, and the rebranding from Lagan to Breedon demonstrates our commitment to the market to move forward as a single brand, leveraging the strength of the enlarged group to offer our customers high quality products and the highest level of customer service.”

India: Dalmia Bharat’s sales rose but its earnings and profit fell in the half-year to the end of September 2018. Its income increased by 10% year-on-year to US$625m from US$570m and its sales volumes grew by 13% to 8.6Mt from 7.6Mt. However, earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) decreased by 8% to US$126m from US$138m and its profit after tax dropped by over a third to US$7.7m from US$12m.

The cement producer said it had reduced its logistic costs despite an increase in diesel prices. It also reported that its alternative fuels co-processing rate was 5.5% in the second quarter of its 2019 financial year with the company focused on raising this. The board of director also announced that the amalgamation with Odisha Cement had been completed.

Germany: Aixergee has held its annual workshop-seminar on process optimisation for cement producers. The two-day event took place in Aachen in early October 2018. It covered improvements in the cement production process, including production increases, emissions regulations, alternative fuel burning and related topics. Aixergee uses a modelling toolbox from over 200 optimisation projects it has been involved with and a particular focus was on methods such as CFD (computational fluid dynamics), flowsheet simulation and data analysis.

Spain: The Ministry of Industry and two unions have asked Cemex to keep the Gádor cement plant in Almería open. However, the Mexican cement company has rejected the pleas although it has said it will make a ‘definitive’ decision shortly, according to the Expansión newspaper. The company is due to start mandatory consultations with the unions in early November 2018. Cemex announced in mid-October 2018 that it was closing two of its seven cement plants in the country.

India: Private equity companies Blackstone Group and Temasek Holdings are holding separate negotiations to buy up to a 20% stake in Wonder Cement for around US$136m. The investment is expected to allow the cement producer to expand its production capacity to 11Mt/yr from 6.75Mt/yr at present, according to the Economic Times newspaper. Wonder Cement, part of the Rajasthan-headquartered RK Group, announced in August 2018 that it was preparing to set up a 2Mt/yr clinker grinding unit in Dhule, Maharashtra.