Global Cement News

Ghana: HeidelbergCement has commissioned a new cement mill with a capacity of 1Mt/yr at its Tema cement grinding plant in Ghana. The project has cost Euro16m.

"The commissioning of the new cement mill is part of our strategy of focusing on expanding our clinker and cement capacities in attractive growth markets. In addition to Asia and Eastern Europe, these include, in particular, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa," said Dr Bernd Scheifele, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement. Schiefele added that HeidelbergCement announced in September 2012 the construction of a new clinker plant and a new cement grinding installation in the neighbouring country of Togo.

HeidelbergCement's subsidiary, Ghacem Ltd, operates two cement grinding plants in the coastal cities of Tema and Takoradi. With the commissioning of the new mill, the company has increased its cement grinding capacity to 3.7Mt.

Russia: Eurocement Group plans to invest around US$388m towards building a 1.3Mt/yr plant in the Sverdlovsk Region, according to the region's government. The project at the Nevyansky Tsementnik plant is expected to be finished by 2015. It will create around 1000 jobs for the construction and around 400 jobs for the operation of the line. Eurocement will invest its own and borrowed funds into the construction.

Iraq: Sinoma (Suzhou) Construction Co has placed an order for an MPS 5000 B vertical roller mill for raw material grinding from Germany's Gebr. Pfeiffer. The grinding plant will be set in GRD Cement Plant Company Tainall's 5000t/day cement plant located near the town of Sulaimaniah in northern Iraq. The MPS vertical roller mill on order is designed for a capacity of 450t/hour at a product fineness of 12 % R 90µm.

Tajikistan: The Tajikistan government has announced that the Tajikistan Aluminum Company (TALCO) will build a 3Mt/yr cement plant costing over US$600m in a joint venture with China National Building Material Company (CNBM). The new plant will be built in Khatlon province in the south of the country. The plant is expected to be operational by the end of 2013 and the project will create 5000 new jobs.

The outgoing chief executive of PPC (Portland Pretoria Cement) officer, Paul Stuiver, summed up the dilemma facing cement producers on the east coast of Africa. Building near the coast leaves you vulnerable to imports.

In a recent interview with the South African business weekly, 'Financial Mail', Stuiver said that imports are not a threat to African expansion, provided that a facility is not built within 200km of a port. Exactly the same issue was raised by Yves De Moor in his column in the November 2012 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

Countries along Africa's east coast receive imports, but Stuiver said that Africa's high logistics costs mean the prices increase steeply as the cement is transported inland. He commented that the markets in Mozambique and KwaZulu Natal in South Africa were especially vulnerable and that most imports to South Africa come through Durban. Unsurprisingly both of PPC's big recent investments have been in landlocked countries, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia respectively. In July 2012 it also tried to invest in CINAT, the Democratic Republic of Congo's state-owned cement producer.

The import issue to South Africa reignited last week when the South African National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications (NRCS) confirmed that it had confiscated 'sub-standard' cement imported from Vietnam. As we covered in August 2012 in this column this follows a row in July 2012 about whether cement from Pakistan's Lucky Cement was complying with South African standards.

Although standards still lead the argument, more honesty has emerged with the use of the word 'dumping' in the complaints. Stuiver explained that "...the price of cement from Pakistan, India and Vietnam is low because electricity, fuel and transport rates are subsidised." Whilst PPC can report that its revenue has risen by 9% to US$837m for the first nine months of 2012, complaints against foreign imports seem overly protective. In 2009 PPC confirmed the existence of a cartel in the country. PPC has even gone to the Advertising Standards Authority to stop imports with elephants on their bags!

With reports that Nigerian producer Dangote is building a new US$389m plant in South Africa, thoughts turn to what will happen once South Africa becomes 'self-sufficient' in cement, like Nigeria which has proudly announced this recently. Giant infrastructure projects are one way to use all that excess cement and this is what Lafarge WAPCO has been asking the Nigerian government to do recently, in a road building drive. Better transport links in South Africa would wreck Stuiver's maxim about not building near a port.

Two solutions from this week's news might appeal to the industry on the south and east coasts of Africa. The first is to use inventive export barriers just like the Bureau of Indian Standards have imposed to slow down exports from Pakistan. The second is to persuade importers to do what a North Korean ship reportedly did with its consignment of cement this week off the coast of Somalia: dump it in the sea.