September 2024
Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua on the lookout for acquisitions in Central and South America 18 September 2015
Mexico/US: Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC) is ready to grow its operations in the USA and make an acquisition in Central and South America after refinancing its debt and improving its earnings margins via a cost cutting programme, according to local business daily El Universal.
Luis Carlos Arias, director of corporate treasury at GCC, explained that the company currently has only one syndicated bank loan of US$194m, which has been refinanced. As such, it has a more flexible credit structure, which allows it to take advantage of different growth opportunities.
In the US, GCC will invest US$90m in 2015 - 2018 to boost production capacity at its plant in South Dakota by 60% to 1.2Mt/yr. GCC has six cement plants, 117 concrete plants and 21 distribution centres from the north of Mexico to the north of the USA.
According to Arias, GCC is looking for opportunities to expand its business to Central and South America in order to have alternative revenues during the harsh winter in North America, which does not allow production during the coldest months. The company has not decided in which country it could make an acquisition as the cement market is highly concentrated in a few big companies. "There are not many opportunities, we are looking at the region as a whole," said Arias.
Jammu Department of Legal Metrology raids Ambuja Cement 18 September 2015
India: The Jammu Department of Legal Metrology has registered a case against Ambuja Cement and seized a large quantity of cement bags.
The minister for Consumer Affairs and Public Destruction (CAPD), Choudhary Zulfkar Ali, said that the Department of Legal Metrology had received various complaints about the abuse of Ambuja Cement's dominant position by selling cement at different prices across the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The department said that it could not get a 'satisfactory' response from Ambuja Cement. As a result, a team of officers inspected Ambuja Cement's depot at Kunjwani and booked Ambuja Cement for gross violation of the Legal Metrology Act and Rules. They were also found to be in violation of the Competition Act of 2002 by selling their products deliberately at the predated price to sabotage the local competition. Zulfkar Ali said that, during the inspection, it was found that Ambuja Cement was selling the same batch of Pozolana Portland Cement in different coloured bags marked with different prices for Jammu and Kashmir. The bags were also found to weigh 400 – 600g less than the 50kg label, while mandatory declarations were also not marked as per the provisions of the Packaged Commodity Rules.
A seizure memo has been issued and the cement sales have been stopped until Ambuja Cement provides the reasons for the discrepancies, according to Zulfkar Ali.
Cementos Pacasmayo starts commercial cement production from Piura plant 18 September 2015
Peru: Cementos Pacasmayo has begun commercial production from its new Piura cement plant. According to the company, the Piura plant will be the most modern cement plant in Latin America and features a multi-fuel kiln. Its final capacity will be 1.6Mt/yr of cement and 1Mt/yr of clinker.
"I am delighted to announce the beginning of commercial operations at the Piura plant, an important milestone for Cementos Pacasmayo and the Peruvian cement industry," said Humberto Nadal, CEO of Cementos Pacasmayo. "Piura will offer our clients high-quality cement, with improved logistics, while simultaneously lowering our cost of production. We continue to execute this project on time and under budget, demonstrating our expertise in large-scale, advanced facilities. We look forward to moving the plant along its production curve, creating value for all stakeholders."
Cable maker CMI acquires FLSmidth’s Haryana plant 17 September 2015
India/Denmark: Specialty cable manufacturer CMI Ltd has acquired one of Denmark-based FLSmidth's manufacturing plants in Bawal, Haryana to cater to the growing demand of its products.
CMI plans to invest US$3.02m on the acquisition, which is expected to significantly augment the company's production capacity. The company intends to start production in the new facility within the current financial year. The facility possesses all the necessary clearances and equipment required for industrial production. CMI's net profit rose by 168% to US$429,133 in the quarter that ended on 30 June 2015 and its revenues were US$20.7m.
CMI, which was formerly known as Choudhari Metal Industries, was incorporated in 1967. The company was initially engaged in copper metal trade and copper melting and rod casting and later diversified to the cables business. It currently makes different types of cables to meet the demand of core infrastructure sectors in India like telecommunication, railways, shipbuilding and petrochemicals.
Vortex announces Mespo as new representative in Denmark 17 September 2015
Denmark/UK: Vortex has appointed Mespo ApS as its exclusive agent in Denmark. Mespo sells high quality components, machines and customised solutions for powder handling manufacturers like cement producers.
"We are very pleased to add Mespo to our line of representatives," said Laurence Millington, Vortex's director of international business. "Mespo has a great cooperation with many manufactures of powder processing equipment around Europe. With its convenient location in Ringsted on Zealand, Mespo can respond to our Danish customer needs in a short amount of time."
Ecuador: Gebr. Pfeiffer Inc, a subsidiary of Germany's Gebr. Pfeiffer SE, was recently contracted to supply a complete grinding unit to replace aging ball mills at the Hormicreto clinker plant in Ecuador.
The new grinding unit helps reduce energy consumption and improves the overall grinding efficiency, allowing the plant to increase production from a single mill. Gebr. Pfeiffer supplied the following components of the new grinding station:
• MPS 2500 BC swing mill with 'Lift and Swing' technology;
• SLS 2250 BC classifier;
• Bucket elevator;
• Reject conveyor belt;
• Chutes and divert chutes;
• Reject silo;
• Weigh feeder;
• Dedusting unit;
• Metal detector;
• Separator;
• Rotary locks;
• Bag filter;
• Mill fan;
• Ducting, expansion joints and dampers;
• HML 1250 Pfeiffer hot gas generator;
• MCC, control and instrumentation;
• Related engineering services.
Delivery of the grinding unit is expected to be complete by December 2015.
Argentine cement sales set to grow in 2015 despite setbacks 16 September 2015
Cement shortages have been reported again in western Argentina this week. The story has been simmering over the summer in Mendoza and San Juan Provinces with local construction firms becoming irate with delays to their projects.
The cause is reported by local media to be a broken raw mill at Holcim Argentina's Capdeville cement plant north of the city of Mendoza. Production has been reduced by 2400t/month of cement from the 0.66Mt/yr capacity plant. Unfortunately, cement plants in neighbouring states have lowered their deliveries. Subsequently prices are estimated to have risen by 8 – 10% in July and August 2015 alone..
To put some perspective on the cement shortage, the Cuyo region of Argentina (comprising Mendoza, San Juan and San Luis Provinces) consumed just over 1Mt of cement in 2014 compared to 11Mt for the entire country. However all three provinces in the region are above the national mean cement consumption of 271kg/capita.
Despite the bottleneck in the provinces, the Asociacion de Fabricantes de Cemento (AFCP) recently revised its cement sales forecast for 2015 upwards to over 12Mt, the highest level on record. It attributed the rise demand to public infrastructure projects, house building and the Argentina Credit Programme (ProCreAr). Total despatches to the end of August 2015 were 7.99Mt, a rise of 8.73% or 641,664t from 7.35Mt in August 2014.
This followed a poor year in 2014 when national cement consumption fell by 3.5% year-on-year according to local press. The AFCP reported a fall in production by 4.1% to 11.4Mt.
Notably for the current news story, San Juan Province saw one of the biggest sales drops in 2014 at 10.5%. As InterCement (through its subsidiary Loma Negra) commented in its annual report, the country suffered both a gross domestic product (GDP) contraction of 1% in 2014 and instability in its financial markets that adversely affected consumption. Both the other major cement producers, Cementos Avellaneda (a subsidiary of Cementos Molins) and Holcim Argentina, also reported poor sales in 2014. Under these conditions it is unsurprising that consumers have angered due to localised cement shortages. There should be lots of cement available!
Into 2015, Holcim reported increased cement volumes in the first half of 2015 due to high demand in the Cordoba Province that neighbours Mendoza Province. By contrast, InterCement forecast in its 2014 annual report that it expected sales to remain lower than the high set in 2013. However it also expected continued demand for cement to reflect a response to the economic situation in Argentina with private investors moving to real estate for security.
InterCement and the rest will be monitoring Argentina's economy very closely for the remainder of 2015. Presidential elections are due in October that may change the current scenario. For the moment though the country remains in recession but it has managed to bring in foreign investment. Regardless of this though, the quicker Holcim Argentina and the others address the shortage in Mendoza the better. Demand may not last forever.
Zambezi Portland Cement on the backfoot following Dangote launch 16 September 2015
Zambia: Zambezi Portland Cement (ZPC) says it has been losing US$2.5/bag (50kg) of cement it has sold since Dangote Cement entered the market. Operations director Daniele Ventriglia said that, despite maintaining its market share, the competition in the cement business was stiff.
Ventriglia said that ZPC would invest US$4m in new state-of-the-art block-making machinery, which will provide a higher proportion of value-added products. "The machines are expected to arrive from Italy in the next three months, before the year ends. Production of blocks will increase by 20%. An additional 25 people will be employed," he said. Ventriglia added that ZPC had remained competitive in block production because its product was of high quality and at an affordable price.
Sengileevsky Cement sends first cement batch by barge 16 September 2015
Russia: Sengileevsky Cement Plant has begun sending cement by barge. The company sent its first batch of 1700t of cement to a distribution centre in Cheboksary during the last week of August 2015.
"Our company is developing further opportunities to ship, not only cement in bulk, but also bagged cement by water transport," said Mikhail Skorokhod, President of Eurocement.
The Sengileevsky Cement Plant is situated on the bank of the Volga River, making it easy to transport cement to the Ulyanovsk region and surrounding areas, as well as further afield. Shipping by barge is relatively low cost, which should help to stabilise cement prices.
New general director of Kavkazcement 16 September 2015
Russia: Igor Nikolenko has been appointed the new General Director of CJSC Kavkazcement, part of Eurocement. A Eurocement statement stated that the new appointment was highly qualified with a 'deep knowledge of Eurocement group's business processes and long experience in the field of construction materials.'
Igor Nikolenko was born in Belgorod in 1965. Having graduated from Belgorod Technological Institute of Building Materials in Mechanical Engineering in 1990, he came to work in the Belgorod cement plant. He worked as a Deputy General Director and Technical Director of Balcem, a General Director at Savinskiy cement plant and Deputy General Director and Technical Director of Eurocement Ukraine. Most recently he was the head of Mikhailovcement plant from 2012 until 2015.