Colombia: Cementos Argos has successfully commissioned its new cement terminal in Bolívar Department’s Cartagena Free Zone. Semana News has reported that the terminal will export cement to the Caribbean, Central America and the US. It triples Cementos Argos’ cement export capacity to 3.5Mt/yr.

Russia: Siberian Cement’s chair Oleg Sharykin has signed an agreement with the Sergey Tsivilev, the Governor of Kuzbass, to build a lime plant in the Kuzbass Special Economic Zone. The Euro23m project will create a 0.2Mt/yr lime plant with two kilns. The unit will use the Solominskoye limestone deposit, which is being developed by Topkinsky Cement, a subsidiary of Siberian Cement. Around 70 jobs are expected to be created. Russian lime production was reported at around 11Mt/yr from 2014 to 2020.

Russia: Eurocement has completed a Euro3.3m maintenance project on the kiln at its Mordovcement plant in Chamzinsky District. The wet-process kiln was reconstructed as part of a large-scale modernisation program. Work conducted included replacement casing bandages, roller supports, the kiln chain curtain and the welding of cracks along the kiln shell. The project included a major relining of refractory material with magnesia bricks produced by the Magnezit Group and aluminosilicate refractory bricks produced by BKO. Maintenance work was also carried out on the plant’s FLSmidth Cross-Bar cooler.

France/Germany: Cemex has introduced electric vehicles into the concrete mixer truck fleets of its subsidiaries in France and Germany. The El Financiero newspaper has reported that, if successful, the test may lead to continued introductions and tests of new prototype zero-emission concrete mixer trucks in its operations.