Global Cement News

Colombia: FLSmidth has signed a contract with Cementos Argos S.A. for a new OK 33-4 cement mill system to be installed at its cement plant in Sogamoso, Boyac, Colombia. This contract marks the fourth OK mill purchased by Cementos Argos. The mill system will include cement storage, Ventomatic packing plant, MAAG gear, Airtech filters and auxiliary equipment.

Saudi Arabia: Qassim Cement Co's quarterly net profit during the fourth quarter of 2015 amounted to US$37.4m, up by 4.69% from US$35.7m for the same quarter of 2014.

The main reasons for the net profit increase were higher sales volume and value, lower general and administrative expenses and higher other income. Gross profit during the fourth quarter of 2015 was US$42.3m, some 0.83% higher than the US$41.8m in the same period of 2014. Its operating profit increased by 7.96% to US$40.6m during the fourth quarter of 2015 compared to US$37.6m in the same quarter of 2014.

The company's net profit in 2015 grew by 4.05% year-on-year to US$156m and its gross profit grew by 2.33% to US$168m. Its operating profit grew by 4.49% to US$160m during 2015.

Ireland: Irish building materials group CRH spent Euro8bn on acquisitions and disposed of Euro1bn worth of assets in 2015.

In a development strategy update, the company said that it made Euro430m from the sale of its clay and concrete products operations in the UK and its clay business in the US in 2015. It also gained about Euro530m through several additional divestments across Europe and the Americas. These included the sale of its 45% stake in French builders' merchant Doras and its 25% stake in Israeli cement producer Mashav. CRH had come under fire from some shareholders for retaining its stake in Mashav, as the company's cement has been used for a widely condemned security wall that divides Palestine and Israel.

During 2015, CRH completed 20 bolt-on acquisition and investment transactions. The company said that these deals, along with the acquisition of assets from Lafarge and Holcim, the CR Laurence acquisition and net deferred consideration payments, brought its development spend for 2015 to about Euro8bn.

"We are pleased with our progress in 2015, which brought cumulative proceeds from our multiyear divestment programme to almost Euro1.4bn, while our targeted bolt-on investments strengthened our existing businesses and complemented the major acquisition activity, which saw total acquisition spend of approximately Euro8bn in 2015," said CRH Chief Executive Albert Manifold. "Portfolio management, and in particular the reallocation of capital from lower growth areas into core businesses for growth, is a cornerstone of our value creation model."

India: Emami Cement Ltd has made three recent orders for mills from Gebr. Pfeiffer. The first Gebr. Pfieffer mill is for its greenfield cement plant in Chhattisgarh, which is currently under construction. The second is destined for a standalone grinding unit in West Bengal. This order is currently being processed.

The latest mill order is for a grinding plant in Odisha. The order covers a MVR 6000 C-6 mill with an installed drive power of 6700kW. This mill will be capable of producing 335t/hr of ordinary Portland cement (OPC). The grinding plant will be designed in a way to allow fly ash cement and granulated blast-furnace slag to be ground to a fineness of 3800cm²/g and 4000cm²/g acc. to Blaine, respectively.

The MVR 6000 C-6 mill with is its six rollers has an actively redundant system. In case of an unplanned outage of one grinding roller, it allows the mill to continue in operation with four rollers while the roller swung out of the mill is being worked on outside of the mill. When it comes to cement grinding, where regular and planned maintenance works are scheduled for the regeneration of the grinding elements, this concept offers the customer the option to carry out maintenance works on two rollers outside the mill while at the same time cement can continue to be produced, albeit at a somewhat lower capacity.

Thanks to the modular design of the MVR mills, the essential components, such as bearings, seals of the grinding rollers and the tension system, as well as the gear units of the mill main drive, will be designed so as to be identical to the parts of the MVR mills that have been supplied to Emami Cement previously, i.e. an MVR 6000 R-6 and an MVR 6000 C-6. This will enable Emami Cement to manage with a small pool of strategic spare parts, which can be used with all the MVR mills.

Gebr. Pfeiffer SE will supply the core components of the mills and the gear units from Europe. Its Indian subsidiary, Gebr. Pfeiffer (India) Pvt. Ltd., will provide components such as the housing of the mill and classifier, the steel foundation parts as well as all static and dynamic interior parts of the classifier and, in addition, supply some of the equipment required to complete the grinding plant. Moreover, the Indian subsidiary will do the plant layout and advise Emami Cement on the equipment it must procure itself.

India: Kakatiya Cement Sugar & Industries' Chairman and Managing Director, Shri. P Venkateswarlu, passed away on 11 January 2016.