Displaying items by tag: Upgrade
Aumund Brazil to supply conveyor to Votorantim’s Xambioá cement plant
02 September 2020Brazil: Aumund Brazil will supply a type BZB bucket apron conveyor to Votorantim’s Xambioá integrated cement plant in Tocatins. It will replace a pan conveyor being used to transport clinker from the cooler to the silo. The new conveyor will have a centre distance of 92m and a conveying capacity of up to 170t/hr. The upgrade is expected to reduce dust levels at the site. Supply and commissioning of the new bucket apron conveyor in Xambioá is due to take place in October 2020. The order follows a previous order to Aumund for a similar project at Votorantim’s at Vidal Ramos plant in Santa Catarina.
RHI Magnesita invests Euro30m in Brazil
02 September 2020Brazil: RHI Magnesita plans to spend Euro30m towards building a rotary kiln in its mining site at Brumado, Bahia. The upgrade is expected to increase the production at the unit by more than 30% as the kiln is designed to process up to 140,000t/yr. The announcement follows a planned investment of nearly Euro40m towards the construction of a new headquarters for its South American operations in Contagem, Minas Gerais that was revealed in 2019.
“This investment in the construction of a rotary kiln with innovative technology will enable us to develop a new portfolio of raw materials, in addition to those already available on the market. The new raw materials include noble sinters at very competitive costs on the international market. This will bring operational flexibility, the ability to offer differentiated value-added products to our customers in the Brazilian market, and will put us in an even more competitive position in the global environment,” said Francisco Carrara, president of RHI Magnesita in Brazil and South America. He added that the group was seeing a ‘considerable’ recovery in the steel and cement segments in Brazil.
DG Khan Cement hires Schneider Electric for electrical upgrade
01 September 2020Pakistan: France-based Schneider Electric will provide a ‘comprehensive electrification solution’ to improve the efficiency and sustainability of cement production at DG Khan Cement’s 3.2Mt/yr integrated Hub cement plant in Karachi, Balochistan. The Nation Newspaper has reported that the supplier’s ECOStruxure product will give operators ‘a full view of energy use across the plant,’ according to the company. Additionally, “artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software will help the company to take a predictive approach to maintenance,” it said.
Hub cement plant general manager Arif Bashir said, “Our goal is to monitor and manage power across our infrastructure efficiently, find electrical faults sooner, fix issues quicker and achieve a faster return on investment. Schneider Electric’s energy efficiency solutions that will improve our performance.”
Les Ciments Du Sahel hires Sinoma International Engineering and Sinoma Construction for Kirene cement plant upgrade
19 August 2020Senegal: Sinoma subsidiaries Sinoma International Engineering and Sinoma Construction have signed a contract with Les Ciments Du Sahel for the upgrade of its 3.0Mt/yr Kirene cement plant in Dakar Region. The Euro245m contract stipulates that a new 6000t/day capacity cement production line will replace the plant’s old third line. Sinoma says that the new line will grind its first batch of cement from clinker in February 2022 and produce its own cement and clinker from October 2022. The group said, “We believe that the contract ought to present no significant challenge for the company.”
India: Aditya Birla subsidiary UltraTech Cement said that it will spend US$200m in capital expenditure (CAPEX) during the 2021 financial year, which ends on 31 March 2021. The plans consist of a capacity expansion to 118Mt/yr from 115Mt/yr, including the completion of the 4.0Mt/yr Bara grinding plant in Uttar Pradesh and 1.2Mt/yr-worth of brownfield projects in Bihar and West Bengal. Solar and wind power capacity will increase to 350MW from 95MW, while waste heat recovery (WHR) capacity will increase to 185MW from 118MW.
Chair Kumar Birla said, “While 2021 will be a challenging year, Birla remains confident that the economy will revert to the 6 - 8% growth trajectory in 2022.”
Birla Corporation plans Durgapur grinding plant upgrade
10 August 2020India: Birla Corporation has shared details of its plans for a US$9.68m upgrade to its 1.3Mt/yr Durgapur, West Bengal grinding plant to expand the plant’s capacity to 1.5Mt/yr. The Times of India newspaper has reported that the company is planning to install a 0.2Mt/yr capacity vertical roller mill at the plant in response to “expected robust demand for premium slag-based cement in the eastern region.”
Birla Corporations recorded a profit of US$8.77m in the three months ended 31 June 2020, the first quarter of the Indian fiscal year, down by 53% year-on-year from US$18.8m in the corresponding period of 2019. Sales fell by 35% to US$163m from US$252m due to subdued demand during the coronavirus lockdown.
Dalmia Bharat cuts costs to build profits despite lockdown
07 August 2020India: Dalmia Bharat says that price rises and cost cutting helped it to improve its profits in the first quarter of the Indian financial year. Its income from operations fell by 22% year-on-year to US$263m in the quarter to 30 June 2020 from US$338m in the same period in 2019. Its cement sales volumes dropped by 20% to 3.66Mt from 4.55Mt. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) decreased by 8% to US$81.9m from US$88.9m. However, its profit after tax grew by 24% to US$25.1m from US$20.3m.
The group said that, once the coronavirus-related lockdown in April 2020 ended, cement demand picked up due to infrastructure projects and the residential sector, especially in east India, with an emphasis on rural markets. It also reported that the ongoing upgrade to grinding plants has been delayed by the health situation with completion rescheduled to December 2020.
India: Mangalam Cement has fully commissioned an 11MW waste heat recovery (WHR) unit at its integrated Morak plant in Rajasthan. About half of the capacity of the unit was previously commissioned in January 2020. Completion of the remaining portion was delayed from early 2020 due to coronavirus.
Japan: Taiheiyo Cement has installed three BWZ bucket elevators and a Louise TKF drag chain conveyor supplied by the Hong Kong-based subsidiary of Aumund at its new power plant at Ofunato. The cement producer uses both biomass and coal at the plant.
Two elevators and the drag chain conveyor are used to transport palm kernel shells (PKS) and palm empty fruit bunches (EFB), which are used as alternative fuels in the power plant. Each has a capacity of up to 150t/hr. The conveying concept is designed so that the different materials are kept apart and enter the silo buffer tanks separately. The third bucket elevator is used for coal handling. It is a gravity discharge type BWZ-S elevator with a capacity of up to 35t/hr.
Russia: Siberian Cement Holding Company (SibCem) subsidiary Iskitimcement produced 454,000t of cement in the first half of 2020, up by 7.8% year-on-year from 421,000t in the first half of 2019. Cement shipments over the period were 447,000t, up by 7% from 418,000t.
Iskitimcement said that its CEM-I Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) was its most in-demand product, constituting 53% of total production at 243,000t. Its new CEM-II Portland slag cement, launched on 28 April 2020, achieved production volumes of 4000t (1%). It said that the coronavirus outbreak caused a slowdown in June 2020, resulting in a 7% year-on-year drop in demand compared with June 2019. Managing director Vladimir Skakun said, “The general weakening of economic activity, the fall in oil prices and the exchange rate of the national currency and a decrease in the incomes of Russians are causing concern.”
The company completed the installation of a closed-circuit dynamic separator and bag filter produced by Germany-based Christian Pfeiffer into the Iskitimcement plant’s grinding unit 6 in June 2020. To date, the equipment has produced 114,000t of ultra-fine cement towards an annual target of 480,000t.