Sri Lanka: Siam City Cement subsidiary Insee Cement says that it is operating at full capacity utilisation across its network, which includes a 3.6Mt/yr-integrated cement plant. The Daily News (Sri Lanka) newspaper has reported that the producer is responding to a shortage in the country due to the partial suspension of imports. It said that it has been able to do this thanks to the uninterrupted supply of raw materials by its parent company.

Chief executive officer Gustavo Navarro said, "Our consumers can be assured as always of full-capacity production and supply of Insee Cement to the market. We trust that we can curtail any unnecessary pressure on the Consumer Affairs Authority and government regulators who have been pressed for price hikes and hope to quell any disruptions to market supply across Sri Lanka."

India: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) approved the acquisition of a 12.55% stake in JSW Cement Ltd by Singapore-based AP Asia Opportunistic Holdings Pte Ltd under the green channel route on 19 August 2021. Green channel is an automatic approval system, whereby a combination is deemed to have been approved by the CCI upon receiving the filing of the notice for the combination by the parties concerned.

The CCI stated that there were no overlaps between the parties to the proposed transaction and therefore it does not raise any risk of an appreciable adverse effect on competition in India, according to a notice filed with the regulator.

Germany: A pilot program of climate protection agreements has been launched to help German companies convert to CO2-free production, starting in 2022. The Federal government declared that Euro900m would be available in the first instance. This is intended to assist companies in hard-to-abate sectors, with the government assuming that more than 50 companies in the cement, steel, lime and ammonia industries will be eligible to apply for climate protection agreements. These will off-set the difference between the additional costs resulting from the CO2-neutral operation of a company and the CO2 price in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The terms of the contract will likely run for 10 years, to provide the companies with sufficient time to adjust to considerably higher CO2 abatement costs in the future.

In addition to the funding of investment costs in EU-wide hydrogen infrastructure projects, the federal government sees the industry decarbonisation programme as an essential transformation instrument for energy-intensive industry in order to achieve the goal of greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045.

Mexico: Cemex has announced that it will join forces with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Tecnológico de Monterrey (TEM) to promote Research and Development projects focused on ‘solving the company's current needs to offer more value to its customers, suppliers and stakeholders.’ Cemex has joined the Consortium for Research, Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship UNAM - TEC through the signing of a ‘’ memorandum of understanding’ that took place on 19 August 2021.

"Cemex recognises the value and capacity of UNAM and TEM for the development of research,” said Ricardo Naya, President of Cemex Mexico. “We are convinced that by joining the Consortium we are taking an important step towards solving the real and current challenges we face as a company. This alliance will help us accelerate our innovation projects, such as the Future in Action program, with which we seek to achieve carbon neutrality, among many other projects that we hope to promote with both academic institutions.”

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