September 2024
Redcliff cement grinding plant starts production 03 April 2017
Zimbabwe: China’s Livetouch Investments has started production at its 0.4Mt/yr cement grinding plant at Redcliff. Managing director and co-shareholder Dongning Wang said that the US$30m plant had started operation at 70% of its capacity, according to the Herald Business newspaper. The plant is expected to employ 200 workers once it is fully operational. The company markets its cement under the Diamond Masonry brand.
Although some work remains on the first phase of the project the second phase will see the construction of a clinker producing plant at the same site. The company is negotiating at present with the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development for access to limestone deposits. Work on the second phase is expected to start six to nine months after the mineral rights are secured.
Morocco: LafargeHolcim has inaugurated a new Construction Development Lab (CDL) in Casablanca. The CDL will be dedicated to the Moroccan and African construction markets and it will help the group develop construction solutions for the markets it serves. The laboratory is LafargeHolcim’s eighth laboratory in the world after those in Algeria, Argentina, China, France, India, Malaysia and Mexico. The 4000m² facility will house 50 engineers, architects and technicians and marketers. LafargeHolcim’s central research and development site is based in Lyon, France.
The new CDL will also aim to develop partnerships with start-ups, universities and other higher education institutions to promote research and development, test new ideas and reinforce relationships with building and infrastructure construction experts. It will organise specialised training for clients, influencers, product applicators and builders to enable them to use innovative solutions in their projects.
Loesche reports on DG Khan Cement project at Hub 31 March 2017
Pakistan: Loesche has released details on its order to supply three grinding plants for DG Khan Cement for a new 9000t/day clinker production line at Hub in Balochistan. The contract, which was originally signed in September 2015, includes one 654t/hr raw meal, one 445t/hr Ordinary Portland Cement mill with a COPE drive and a 66t/hr coal mill. Loesche says that the raw mill with a nominal capacity of 1050t/hr will be the biggest raw material mill in the world. Loesche is responsible for the full mechanical equipment and together with Loesche Automation for the electrical engineering package along with all hardware supply from steel structure to electrical equipment and automation.
Cemex to run Maceo cement plant at reduced capacity 31 March 2017
Colombia: Cemex Latam, the Latin American subsidiary of Cemex, intends to operate its Maceo cement plant project in Antioquia at a reduced capacity due to difficulties with its environmental clearance. The cement producer will continue building the 0.95Mt/yr plant but it will reduce its output to 0.25Mt/yr once it is operational, according to Reuters. The Colombian cement producer attempted to reverse the annulment of its environmental permits with the local body in late 2016.
In September 2016 Cemex fired several senior staff members in relation to the Maceo project and its subsidiary’s chief executive resigned. This followed an internal audit and investigation into payments worth around US$20.5m made to a non-governmental third party in connection with the acquisition of the land, mining rights, and benefits of the tax free zone for the project.
India: Sagar Cement has ordered a vertical roller mill from Gebr. Pfeiffer for grinding granulated blast-furnace slag and granulated blast-furnace slag cements. The mill will be used at a new 160t/hr slag grinding plant at the cement producer’s Bayyavaram Village unit near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. Delivery is scheduled to take place before the end of 2017. No price for the order has been disclosed.
The order is for a MVR 5000 C-4 mill equipped with a 4300kW-drive and four grinding rollers with active redundancy. The plant will grind granulated blast-furnace slag with a fineness of about 4,500 cm²/g acc. Blaine and it will also be able to grind composite cements from varying portions of granulated blast-furnace slag, fly ash and gypsum.
Core components of the mills, including the roller, tension system, grinding bowl and planetary gearbox, will be supplied from Europe. The mill foundation parts, the housing and the integrated high-efficiency classifier of the type SLS 4750 BC will be provided by Gebr. Pfeiffer India. The local subsidiary will also supply most of the equipment required to complete the grinding plant, including the plant fan and hot gas generator.
Mineral Products Association warns of cost burden of climate policy on UK cement industry 30 March 2017
UK: Pal Chana, the Executive Director of the Mineral Products Association (MPA), has warned of the cost burden from the implementation of climate change and energy related policies on the cement industry. He made the comments as part of the launch of the association’s 2016 Annual Performance Report.
"The report highlights that one of the greatest threats to the UK cement industry currently and in the near future is the considerable cumulative cost burden from the implementation of climate change and energy related policies, which we estimate are going to increase by 40% to 2020 even with the limited discounting provided by Government. If action is not taken to protect the UK cement sector from these rising costs, imports will increase, jobs will be lost and security of supply will be threatened,” said Chana. The MPA added that despite market improvements production is still 27% below the level it was in 2007.
In the report the MPA reveals that the cement industry has reduced its CO2 emissions by 23% against a 1998 baselines. However, both emissions from calcination and the combustion of fossil fuels rose year-on-year in 2015, the most recent year of reporting. Despite this, emissions of NOx, SO2 and dust were all reduced or stabilised and waste fuels usage showed improvement. The MPA also said it was concerned that policy drivers, such as those incentivising the use of biomass in other sectors, is increasing the competition for limited biomass resource. This could result in a market distortion with the potential to drive cement manufacture back towards coal use.
Philippines: APO Cement Corporation, a subsidiary of Cemex Philippines, has ordered a 4.5MW waste heat recovery unit from China’s Sinoma Energy Conservation. Sinoma will build and operate it. The new unit is expected to reduce the negative effects of power cuts, save energy costs and reduce the cement plant’s carbon emissions. No delivery date or cost of the order has been disclosed.
Philippine Competition Commission expected to complete investigation of cement industry in first half of 2017 30 March 2017
Philippines: Arsenio Balisacan, the chairman of the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC), says that the commission has 90 days in which to conduct an investigation into the local cement industry. It is expected to complete its probe in the first half of 2017, according to the Manila Bulletin newspaper. The investigation period follows the point at which the PCC found reasonable grounds of alleged violations of competitive practice. Potential fines the local industry could face are US$2m for a first offence and US$5m for a second.
The PCC announced in early March 2017 that was preparing to investigate the cement sector for alleged violations of competitive practice following a legal statement by Victorio Dimagiba, the head of Laban Konsyumer – a consumer rights organisation, accusing the Cement Manufacturers Association of the Philippines (CEMAP), LafargeHolcim Philippines and Republic Cement and Building Materials of engaging in anti-competitive agreements.
China embraces alternative fuels 29 March 2017
Lots of fascinating information has been emerging in recent weeks about changes in the Chinese cement industry as the larger producers have published their annual financial results. One example is the focus on using alternative fuels to fire up kilns. As explained below, the spotlight on co-processing is state-mandated and this is why the producers are now keen to promote their adherence. Even so, as ever with China, the scale of the change is staggering.
For example, Anhui Conch reported that it had completed 15 waste treatment projects and one sludge treatment project in 2016. In addition it had three projects still undergoing construction at the year-end. The group said that it co-processed 600,000t of domestic waste in its cement kilns in 2016. All of this was achieved by a company that says it only started co-processing municipal waste from its first project in 2010. China Resources Cement’s (CRC) progress was slower but it managed to start a co-processing project at its plant in Binyang County, Guangxi in December 2015 and a sludge project in Nanning City, Guangxi in July 2016. New projects at Tianyang County, Guangxi and Midu County, Yunnan are being built at present, with completion expected by the end of 2017.
Long held rumours about production overcapacity in China came to head in 2015 with the National Bureau of Statistics in China (NBSC) reporting that sales dropped in 2015 following a decade of steady growth. Then the results of most of major producers followed this by falling in 2015. CRC presented a good history of what happened next in the Chinese cement industry in its results report [LINK]. In brief, in 2016 the Chinese government implemented supply-side structural reforms focusing on production efficiency, reiterating attempts to stop new production capacity being built and pushing environmental reforms. Throughout the year various government offices released guidelines to encourage market consolidation, cut obsolete production capacity, increase co-processing rates and decrease the energy needed to produce each tonne of clinker.
Graph 1: Cement sales in China, 2012 – 2016. Source: National Bureau of Statistics in China.
Whether or not any of this has helped the Chinese cement industry to overcome the problems it faced in 2015 is unclear. As Graph 1 shows, Chinese cement sales started to rise again slightly to 2.35Bnt in 2016 from 2.31Bnt in 2015. Sales revenue from some of the major cement producers presents a more varied picture as can be seen in Graph 2. Anhui Conch’s revenue rose by 9.7% year-on-year to US$8.12bn in 2016, China National Building Material Company’s (CNBM) revenue rose by 1% to US$14.8bn and CRC’s revenue fell by 4.2% to US$3.3bn. CRC may have suffered here from its relative business concentration in southeast China. Both Anhui Conch’s and CNBM’s results seemed to look patchy in mid-2016 when they released their half-year reports, but both sales and profits seemed to pick up sharply in the second half of the year.
Graph 2: Sales revenue from selected major Chinese cement producers. Source: Company annual reports.
As the current set of structural reforms kick in within the Chinese cement industry it will be interesting to see what happens next. From plans to cut 10% of local clinker production capacity by 2020 to ambitious environmental aims the sector barely has time to catch its breath. The question is whether the major producers balance sheets are being helped more by a recovering local market or by the reforms. Either way the uptake of alternative fuels is encouraging.
Haiti: The government has held talks with a Belgian engineering company about plans to build a 2Mt/yr cement plant at Gonaives. The senator for the region, Carl Murat Cantave reported the meeting to the Le Nouvelliste newspaper. Everything is reportedly ready for the launch of the project and the engineering company is set to deliver a schedule of activities shortly. The US$300m cement plant was originally announced in 2015 and the Belgian companies TSE and TPF were lined up to build it.