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Siam City Cement buys Holcim Lanka 25 July 2016
Sri Lanka: LafargeHolcim has signed an agreement with Siam City Cement to sell Holcim Lanka for US$400m. Holcim Lanka operates one integrated plant and one grinding plant in the country. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016.
The proceeds from the sale of Holcim Lanka will be used by Lafarge Holcim to further reduce debt. The Sri Lanka sale follows the divestment of Lafarge India to Nirma that was announced in mid-July 2016. The group says it has now secured three-quarters of its targets to reduce its debt by Euro3.2bn in 2016.
US: The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is working with Lehigh Cement to investigate a potential source of hexavalent chromium (chromium six) emissions from a cement terminal in Portland. The environmental agency suspects that cement dust may be a contributing source of chromium six that it has monitored since March 2016 in southeast Portland. The DEQ is working with the cement company to improve its dust-capturing efforts when unloading cement from railcars.
“We're concerned about the persistence of elevated levels of chromium,” said Pete Shepherd, interim DEQ director. “We are making every effort to bring those levels down.” The DEQ has also required a nearby glass manufacturer to clean its exhaust stacks to tackle the problem.
Turkey: General contractor Bilim Makina has commissioned Beumer to supply and mount equipment at a cement plant project in Elazig. The order includes 13 bucket elevators for the transport of cement, clinker and raw meal, six apron conveyors and 13 silo discharge systems for clinker transport. The greenfield plant is expected to achieve a capacity of 5000t/day. Sycs İnşaar Çimento Madencilik is the user of this plant.
Two high-capacity belt bucket elevators with a centre distance of 133m each are included in the scope of supply. They are used for feeding the preheater tower with raw meal. Owing to the size of this plant, a conveying capacity of 500t/hr is achieved using steel wire belts.
The supply of the comprehensive technology has been completed. Beumer is now installing the plant.
HeidelbergCement releases Sustainability Report 2015 21 July 2016
Germany: HeidelbergCement has released its seventh Sustainability Report so far. Highlights from the report include a reduction of specific net CO2 emissions by 22% to 606kg/t of cement (compared to 1990 levels) and a decreased clinker factor of 75%. However, specific emissions for NOx, SO2 and mercury all rose slightly from 2014.
“The numbers show what kind of progress HeidelbergCement made in 2015,” said Bernd Scheifele, CEO of HeidelbergCement. “We have also substantially intensified our commitment to the development of technologies to use CO2 as a resource, and we have entered into very promising cooperative research projects. This puts us at the forefront of the movement in the cement industry.”
The 2015 report is also the first to present data on water management, following the implementation of industry indicators for water reporting at all cement plants in 2013 and 2014.
Ukraine: Cement production has increased by 10.5% year-on-year, to 3.19Mt/yr according to Roman Skilsky, CEO of the Ukrcement cement producers' association. Skilsky expects for the country’s annual cement production to grow by 10% to over 9Mt in 2016 in comments made to Interfax-Ukraine.
Exports of cement grew by 71% to 62,700t in January to March 2016. However, Skilsky attributed the rise to the introduction of various restrictions by key exports markets including Moldova and Belarus. Skilsky also said that the introduction of European standards for cement production in Ukraine could help to restrict counterfeit products on the market.
Dyckerhoff Cement Ukraine, HeidelbergCement Ukraine, Ivano-Frankivskcement, Eurocement-Ukraine, Podilsky Cement, Mykolaivcement and Cement LLC (part of CRH Group) are all members of Ukrcement.