US: Timken has acquired the Diamond Chain Company from Amsted Industries for an undisclosed sum. The US-based chain manufacturer supplies a range of industrial markets, which include material handling, mining and aggregates.

"The acquisition of the Diamond Chain Company adds another strong industrial brand with a reputation for quality, reliability and performance to Timken's growing power transmission portfolio," said Richard G Kyle, Timken president and chief executive officer. He added that the purchase was an ‘excellent strategic fit’ with Timken’s drives chain business and that it would aid its manufacturing presence in Asia.

The Diamond Chain Company was founded in 1890 and it has its headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. It has manufacturing operations in the US and China. It employs approximately 370 people.

China/France: Song Zhi Ping, president of China National Building Material Company (CNBM), and Frédéric Sanchez, chairman of Fives, have signed strategic agreement towards climate change and cooperation in third countries. This agreement develops the collaboration plans drawn up in January 2019 between cement plant manufacturer CNBM the engineering group Fives. It forecasts a volume of business of at least Euro600m over three years, and forms part of CNBM’s stated strategy of developing in partnership with western companies. The agreement was signed at the Elysée Palace in Paris during a state visit to France by China’s President Xi Jinping.

The agreement focuses on upgrading CNBM’s cement plants in China, building new plants outside of China and creating a Joint Engineering Centre to implement these projects and share information. The Joint Engineering Centre was inaugurated on 28 February 2019 in Shanghai. With regards to modernising its cement production lines in China, Fives said that its technologies, in grinding in particular, would ‘significantly’ improve performance and return on investment with regards to modernising CNBM’s domestic cement production lines. Fives said that the agreement is in full alignment with the Paris Agreement. It added that the agreement also shows the ‘mutual trust’ between the two companies with respect to intellectual property.

Germany: Siemens is presenting new products from its Digital Enterprise portfolio for process industries at the Hannover Messe trade fair. These include new versions of its Comos computer-aided engineering (CAE), XHQ Operations Intelligence and its PCS 7 Plant Automation Accelerator software products. The latest version of Comos includes a portal to help users choose components from a range of manufacturers. The new version of XHQ Operations Intelligence includes better access to remote data and simplified integration of engineering data. The update to PCS 7 Plant Automation Accelerator includes increased system openness based on GSDML and NE150 standards.

Philippines: Holcim Philippines has ordered power monitoring equipment from CMR Philippines for its 2.3Mt/yr Lugait cement plant in Misamis Oriental. It includes the development, delivery, installation, testing and networking of the electrical installation at the unit. Current and voltage transformers are to be supplied as part of a package of engineering support that also sees CMR completing the integration and connection of plant wide power monitoring to Siemens PCS 7 process control technology.

“Winning the Holcim contract reflects the expertise we can bring to successfully delivering complex and technologically advanced industrial projects,” said Rojel Rivera, general manager at CMR Philippines.

CMR Philippines is part of the CMR Group, which designs, manufactures and commissions automation, control system and turnkey project solutions for global industrial and renewable energy sectors, alongside specialist instrumentation for high power diesel engines.