September 2024
Cementos Portland Valderrivas makes loss of Euro225m in 2016 07 February 2017
Spain: Cementos Portland Valderrivas (CPV) has made a loss of Euro225m in 2016. It increased from a loss of Euro62m in 2015. It reported that its sales fell by 7.6% year-on-year to Euro536m in 2016 from Euro580m in 2015. It attributed this to the sale of its US subsidiary, Giant Cement, falling sales in Tunisia, a decrease in the value of the Tunisian dinar and rising fuel prices.
The cement producer’s sales volumes of cement fell slightly to 7.2Mt in 2016. However, once sales from Giant Cement are removed then, its sales volumes rose by 1.6% due to a 49% increase in exports from Spain. This compensated for declining markets in Spain and Tunisia.
The cement producer said that overall cement consumption in Spain fell by 3.1% to 11.1Mt in 2016, although this was partially offset by exports rising by 5.6% to 9.8Mt. Reduced domestic demand and rising exports have led to clinker production rising slightly in 2016 to 17Mt. It added that cement consumption increases were slowing down in the US, although the regions its subsidiary Giant Cement operates in reported above average increases of almost 11% to November 2016 in the South East, Mid Atlantic and New England regions. In Tunisia it reported that the market fell by 3.9% to 7.2Mt and that exports to Algeria and Libya had fallen.
Greenbank supplies feeder system to Hanson Cement’s Padeswood plant 06 February 2017
UK: Greenbank has supplied a GWF feeder system to Hanson Cement’s Padeswood plant in Flintshire. The system is designed to feed raw materials into the processing plant at a predetermined rate. The upgrade is part of a recent series of expansions.
“The constant and reliable feed rate of the GWF feeder is achieved by having a shear gate to set a constant material bed depth for the given particle size combined with an inverter drive to control the feeder belt speed,” said Rod Molyneux, Product Sales Engineer at Greenbank.
Greenbank Group has previously supplied the plant with wear-resistant pipework and a pipe system for a new shredded refuse fuel line into a processing kiln.
Corporacion Socialista del Cemento expects 6Mt output in 2017 06 February 2017
Venezuela: The Corporacion Socialista del Cemento expects to produce 6Mt of cement in 2017 to meet national demand. Marco Tulio Diaz, president of the construction federation Federación Bolivariana de la Construcción, said that distribution channels are to be reinforced, according to the El Universal newspaper. He added the country expects to export 0.3Mt of cement in 2017. In 2016 about 55% of cement production despatched to the popular housing program Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela and 45% was reserved for the private sector.
Headwaters shareholders approve acquisition by Boral 06 February 2017
US: The shareholders of Headwaters have approved the acquisition of the company by Australia’s Boral. Over 98% of the votes cast were in favour of the deal. Boral will now continue to seek regulatory approval for the purchase and it plans to complete the deal by mid-2017. Headwaters’ Construction Materials division is one of the largest marketers of fly ash in the US.
Vietnam cement exports drop to 14.7Mt in 2016 06 February 2017
Vietnam: Data from the General Department of Vietnam Customs has shown that exports of cement fell by 7.1% year-on-year to 14.7Mt in 2016 and by 16% year-on-year to US$561m in value. Bangladesh and the Philippines remained the major importers of cement and clinker from Vietnam in 2016, according to the Vietnam News newspaper. The Philippines imported 3.8Mt of cement and clinker worth US$185m from Vietnam in 2016 and Bangladesh imported 4.7Mt worth US$141m, accounting for 33% and 25.1% respectively of the country’s total clinker and cement exports in 2016. Increased competition in export markets has been blamed on rival products from Thailand and China.
Pakistan: The UK’s Asian Precious Minerals has announced plans to build a US$400m cement plant in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Asian Precious Minerals’ chief executive officer (CEO) Nadim Khan, Executive Director Peter Frost, Country Manager Irshad Ali Khokhar and Jason Mumtaz of the British High Commission met with provincial Chief Minister Pervez Khattak to discuss the plans, according to the Express Tribunal newspaper. The project hopes to take advantage of infrastructure demand being driven by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
ACC sales drop in 2016 06 February 2017
India: ACC’s net sales have fallen by 4% year-on-year to US$1.63bn in 2016 from US$1.70bn in 2015. Sales volumes of cement fell by 2.7% to 23.0Mt from 23.6Mt and operating earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 7.5% to US$211m from US$229m. However, profit after tax rose by 2.7% to US$90m from US$87.5m. The company described the market conditions in 2016 as ‘challenging.’ It added that the economic slowdown following demonetisation was easing.
“The highlight of the year was strong cost saving measures, especially on fuel flexibility and raw materials. Focusing on our high quality, high performance product portfolio played an important role in the overall performance for the year. We are encouraged by the government's plans to invest in infrastructure," said Neeraj Akhoury, Managing Director and chief executive officer of ACC.
The cement producer’s 1.35Mt/yr grinding plant at Sindri, Jharkhand was commissioned at the end October 2016, joining a 2.79Mt/yr integrated plant at Jamul, Chhattisgarh which was commissioned earlier in 2016. The new plants are expected to strengthen ACC’s market presence in the east of the country.
Cementos Bio Bio to sell minor stake at auction 03 February 2017
Chile: Cementos Bio Bio plans to sell a 5.38% share in its business at auction on 3 February 2017. The cement producer hopes to raise US$16.8m in the transaction, according to La Tercera newspaper. The transaction will be handled by Credicorp.
Siam Cement Group to build third cement plant in Cambodia 02 February 2017
Cambodia: Thailand’s Siam Cement Group (SCG) is preparing to open its third cement plant in Battambang province in 2018. Chan Sophal, the governor of Battambang, said that SCG started building the plant in 2016 and has almost completed it, according to the Khmer Times newspaper. SCG is a majority shareholder in local producer Kampot Cement. Once operational the plant will have a production capacity of 1.8Mt/yr.
The internet of cement 01 February 2017
Last 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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