Displaying items by tag: ThyssenKrupp
Germany: ThyssenKrupp’s overall performance has suffered from the poor results of its Industrial Solutions division. In the first nine months of its financial year, which ended on 30 June 2018, the order intake of its Industrial Solutions division, which includes building cement plants, fell by 32% year-on-year to Euro2.82bn from Euro4.15bn. Its net sales decreased by 10% to Euro3.59bn from Euro4bn. Overall, the group’s order intake and net sales also fell slightly. However, most divisions and overall performance improved in the third quarter.
“We see a mixed picture. The bottom line is, that we are not satisfied with the current results”, said Guido Kerkhoff, chairman of the executive board of ThyssenKrupp. “There’s no point in sugar-coating it. Notably the cash flow is unsatisfactory, and that is not a situation which can be sustained long term. We have to improve significantly across all our businesses. That is what we are now working hard to deliver.”
With respect to the cement sector the group said that had received small and medium-size orders for plants and machines in Mexico, West Africa and India. Despite this it described the current market as beset by production overcapacity.
Germany: ThyssenKrupp has decreased its earnings forecast for its 2017 – 2018 financial year due to the poor performance of its Industrial Solutions division. The division is expected to report a negative adjusted earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) of Euro200m in the third quarter of the year due to higher expected total costs, particularly for a cement plant in Saudi Arabia and two other industrial projects. The group said that the number of major projects in the cement and fertiliser sector had decreased ‘considerably,’ partly due to the production overcapacity in the cement market.
"It is important to me to call it what it is. The results of our analysis at Industrial Solutions are anything but satisfying. The structure of plant construction must be adjusted to the changed market conditions in order to achieve a turnaround and finally become competitive again. We must act swiftly here," said Guido Kerkhoff, chairman of the executive board of ThyssenKupp. The group has proposed focusing its Industrial Solutions division on small and medium-sized projects and targeting plant construction on the higher-margin service business.
In mid-2017 the group announced plans to reorganised its Industrial Solutions division, including the decision to cut 1500 jobs in operational areas.
Philippines: Germany’s ThyssenKrupp hopes to secure orders of around US$50 – 100m in 2017 due to the government’s ‘Build, Build, Build’ infrastructure development programme. It raised US$30m in the country in 2017, according to the BusinessWorld newspaper. The equipment manufacturer wants to benefit from the construction of new cement and power plants. Typically, it provides the engineering and material handling aspect of a project, while a local partner handles the construction.
ThyssenKrupp to build new cement plant for LafargeHolcim in Morocco
22 February 2018Morocco: Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions (TKIS) has won a contract from LafargeHolcim, to supply a new 3500t/day cement plant in Morocco. The project will cover the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the new plant. The line will be built in the Souss Massa region near Tidsi. Start-up of the plant is scheduled for the first half of 2020.
TKIS will provide engineering, procurement and construction for the entire clinker production line, ranging from raw material preparation to clinker storage, and a grinding facility for solid fuels. The main components include a 1000t/hr primary crusher, a longitudinal additives storage facility, a circular stockpile with a storage capacity of 12,000t, a Quadropol QMR² roller mill with an output of 290t/hr and a blending silo of 4600t. The kiln system consists of a five-stage, single-string polysius preheating tower, a two-pier rotary kiln and a
Polytrack clinker cooler. The line is completed by a ball mill for solid combustibles and a clinker stock with a total storage capacity of up to 65000t.
ThyssenKrupp’s Industrial Solutions division to cut 1500 extra jobs as part of reorganisation process
01 September 2017Germany: ThyssenKrupp’s Industrial Solutions division plans to cut 1500 jobs in operational areas as part of its on-going reorganisation process. Around two-thirds of these positions will be based in Germany. The reduction in jobs follows a previous announcement in July 2017 to cut 500 roles in administration, also mostly in Germany. The job losses are part of the division’s ‘planets’ transformation programme, launched in 2016, which is intended to increase the business area’s competitiveness.
“To ensure Industrial Solutions can compete in the market over the long term, we need a more efficient and effective set-up that goes for our cost structure as for our global presence. Although new orders have recovered from their trough, our structures are still oversized measured against orders in hand and our medium-term requirements. We must be able to respond more flexibly to fluctuations in order intake,” said Peter Feldhaus, chief executive officer (CEO) of Industrial Solutions.
Bolivia: Ground removal work at the Potosí cement plant is expected to start in August 2017. Imasa, Valoriza and Polysius will prepare the 40-hectare site, according to the El Potosí newspaper. The plant has a proposed production capacity of 1.3Mt/yr and it has been budgeted at US$241m.
Morocco: LafargeHolcim says that its 0.2Mt/yr Laâyoune cement grinding plant is complete. The cement producer is set to start production later in July 2017 it said in a director’s report, according to Medias 24. The company is also about to start building a 1.7Mt/yr cement plant in the Souss-Massa region. Thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions has been contracted to build this project.
Peter Feldhaus appointed as chief executive officer of ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions
10 May 2017Germany: Peter Feldhaus has been appointed as the new chief executive officer (CEO) of the Industrial Solutions business division of ThyssenKrupp. Feldhaus, aged 50 years, succeeds Stefan Gesing, who was the acting CEO of the division. Gesing remains as the chief financial officer of the group. The new CEO of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems will be Rolf Wirtz, currently CEO of Atlas Elektronik. Jens Bodo Koch, member of the management board of Atlas Elektronik, is to take over as acting CEO.
Imasa wins contract to build cement plant in Potosí
24 March 2017Bolivia: Imasa, with ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions and Valoriza, has been awarded the contract to build a 1.3Mt/yr cement plant for Empresa Publica Productiva Cementos de Bolivia (ECEBOL) at Chiutara in Potosí. The contract is worth US$241m and it is expected to take three years to complete. President Evo Morales signed the deal with representatives of the European engineering companies.
Imasa is also building a similar sized plant for ECEBOL at Jeruyo, Caracollo that is scheduled to be finished in mid-2018. Elsewhere in Latin America the Spanish engineering firm is building a 2600t/day clinker production line for Unión Cementera Nacional (UCEM) at Riobamba in Ecuador.
The internet of cement
01 February 2017Last month’s prize for the most clichéd phrases in the cement news nearly went to UK technology firm Hanhaa and its ‘internet of packaging.’ At first glance the phrase seems like a hackneyed marketing play on the ‘internet of things,’ where objects outside of normal computers start to get networked, allowing for ‘added value.’ Silly wording maybe, but the intent is serious. Tracking is a vital part of logistics for industries like cement. The investors in Hanhaa, BillerudKorsnäs, may be on to something. Indeed, in 10 years time we may be kicking ourselves that we didn’t see it.
One drawback with networking everything though is that all sorts of items start to become vulnerable to computer hacking. The famous industrial example in recent years was the so-called Stuxnet virus, an alleged attempt by US and Israeli intelligence services to physically damage parts of the Iranian nuclear industry. It was intended to damage centrifuges by looking for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) made by Siemens in very particular circumstances. A good overview on Stuxnet can be gained by watching Alex Gibney’s documentary ‘Zero Days.’
The problem for cement plants is that they also use PLCs for process control in common with other heavy industry. Effectively, whoever built Stuxnet has shown criminals how to attack any industrial plants that uses PLCs. Unsurprisingly, given the drip-drip of bad publicity, Siemens made a point of saying that it had gained a cybersecurity certification from TÜV SÜD, a German inspection and certification organisation, for some of its related products in late 2016.
Actual examples of cement plants being attacked are hard to find. Low-level cyber intrusions are likely to be treated akin to, say, individuals trespassing on a plant grounds and more serious incidents are probably kept quiet. ThyssenKrupp’s Industrial Solutions division, that builds cement plants amongst other things, reported that it had data stolen in an online attack from somewhere in Southeast Asia in 2016. Data espionage is one thing. Physical damage to an industrial plant is quite another. Previous to this, an unnamed German steel plant was reported to have been damaged by a systematically planned attack in 2014. Another way hackers can mess up your day is via extortion attempts or so-called ransonware attacks where systems are shut down until a ransom is paid. Recent examples of this in the wider public sphere include attempts to extort the San Francisco Municipal Railway in November 2016 and the St Louis Public Library system in January 2017. Despite shutting down their systems neither organisation paid up.
From our perspective, the Global Cement website runs using a common content management system (CMS) that runs on commonly used server software. Due to this we constantly receive low-level hacking and exploit attempts from automated scripts attempting to find weaknesses in the setup. New exploits are found, hacking attempts occur, software is updated and the cycle continues. However, the key difference between the Global Cement website and a cement producer is the turnover. A cement plant operates in millions or hundreds of millions. In this way, for hackers the return on investment of hacking an industrial plant is far higher. even if it is using limited-run proprietary software and equipment. And even if critical parts of a plant’s system are security hardened, hackers may be able to find a way in via less secure areas and then work their way across. Staff smartphones accessing a local wifi network, contractors using insecure USB drives, and hackers using social engineering techniques such as confidence tricks to gain system logins by phone are just some methods that could grant intruders digital access.
A report by Ponemon placed the average annualised cost of cyber crime to the industrial sector worldwide at US$8.05m. Although the authors point out sample size issues with their calculation, industry is the fifth most affected sector in terms of losses after finance, utilities, technology and services. Networking innovations in industry such as the ‘internet of packaging’ are potential game changers as added value from the network effect and suchlike becomes factored in. The risk though is that these kind of innovations also offer opportunities to criminals and anarchists. It’s likely only a matter of time until a serious hacking attack at a cement plant becomes public knowledge.
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