September 2024
Cementos Cosmos Córdoba plant reports seven years injury-free 17 January 2020
Spain: Brazil-based Votorantim Cementos’ Spanish subsidiary Cementos Cosmos celebrated seven years, equating to 540,000 working hours, without injury at its 0.9Mt/yr integrated Córdoba cement plant in Andalusia on 15 January 2019. Cementos Cosmos Córdoba plant manager José de la Vega said, “This reflects the initiatives that the company has put in place to promote the safety of the workforce.”
Cemenco commissions cement plant 16 January 2020
Liberia: HeidelbergCement subsidiary Cemenco has commissioned a 0.3Mt/yr cement plant in Liberia following an investment of US$14m. The Daily Observer newspaper has reported that the plant is equipped with a 2000t silo, bulk truck unloading equipment and a bagging line, in addition to four Samson Eco Hoppers for dust-free delivery in the Port of Monrovia. Cemenco already operates a 0.8Mt/yr grinding plant on Bushroda Island in Monrovia.
Mangalam Cement installs 5.15MW WHR plant at Morak cement plant 16 January 2020
India: Mangalam Cement has completed the installation of a 5.15MW WHR plant at its 1.0Mt/yr Morak cement plant in Adityanagar, Rajasthan. Accord Fintech newspaper has reported that a further 5.85MW expansion to the power plant will be commissioned in early 2020.
Resident alleges insufficient checks made on use of glass at Holcim Süddeutschland Dotternhausen plant 16 January 2020
Germany: A Zollernalb, Baden-Württemberg resident who mounted legal action against Tübingen Council in June 2019 over LafargeHolcim subsidiary Holcim Süddeutschland’s use of waste glass in cement production at its 1.1Mt/yr integrated Dotternhausen plant has submitted ‘extensive reasoning’ for the challenge. The Schwarzwälder Bote has reported that Holcim Süddeutschland allegedly did not complete the proper tests before introducing glass to cement production at Dotternhausen in late 2017. The claimant ‘noticed a rise in heavy metal levels.’
At a subsequent council meeting, a Holcim Süddeutschland employee bore witness to the presence of a defective bag filter. By receiving glass ground to grains of a certain fineness, the claimant alleges that Holcim Süddeutschland was able to bypass federal waste regulations necessitating contaminant checks. They said the company was ‘taking citizens for idiots.’
Chettinad Cement Corp. Pvt. Ltd. orders Gebr. Pfeiffer mill 16 January 2020
India: Gebr. Pfeiffer has announced that it has received an order for one MVR 6000 C-6 roller mill for Chettinad Cement Corp. Pvt. Ltd.’s upcoming 2.0Mt/yr Vishakapatnam granulated blast-furnace slag (GBFS) and slag cement
Grinding plant in Andhra Pradesh. Gebr. Pfeiffer said the mill will grind slag and cement to a fineness of between 3000 and 3800 blaine at a rate of between 235t/hr and 340t/hr. It says the mill improves plant availability by the active redundancy of the grinding rollers, enabling mill operation with reduced rollers in the event of maintenance work or a malfunction.
Building materials as a service 15 January 2020
Here’s a fun idea: providing building materials as a service. Instead of the owner of a building possessing all the materials in it forever, they simply rent them. It would be like a music or television streaming service. A ‘Netflix’ or ‘Spotify’ for the construction industry. ‘Rentacrete’ if you will…
The Guardian Cities series has been discussing the idea this week in a feature on whether buildings should be demolished at the end of their lifetime. The feature largely looks at the ideas of Dutch architect and commentator Thomas Rau, the author of Material Matters. He talks about his ‘materials passport’ concept whereby all the materials in a building are logged with their properties to highlight their value when the structure is demolished. This is a refinement of the Building Information Modelling (BIM) system. Rau has put his passport premise into action for a couple of projects through his firm and the Madaster Foundation promotes its use.
The next steps that he envisages are buildings where the materials that constitute it are simply rented from the manufacturer. Since the material owners would now become companies they would have an interest in efficiency where the materials can be refitted, such as lighting, and/or recycled for when the building is torn down. In Rau’s view these companies would be in a better position to recoup the value of these materials when a building is demolished. He estimates that 18% of a building’s original construction cost can be preserved in this way. Suddenly, sustainability becomes much easier by changing one’s perspective on who owns what exactly in a building.
How this idea would work in practice raises all sorts of questions. For example, most buildings in the developed world last for as least as long as humans do. Which companies could be relied on to hang around this long? Building materials as a service might work for soft materials that are replaced more often, such as lighting and other interior fittings, but could this extend to a structure’s shell? One answer to this is that people invest in pension schemes and use banks quite happily over long periods time, so why not a building’s very fabric? Another issue is of liability and whether a manufacturer would want to take on additional responsibilities for its products decades later. This, and the idea in general, have similarities to the extended product responsibility strategy. Obviously someone needs to try out building materials as a service for real to tackle these questions and many more.
Building materials as a service is compelling but one reason that the construction industry has proved resistant to the digital revolution across the entire business, so far, is because it ultimately deals with physical products that people need permanently. Consumer digital renting services for media, like Netflix and Spotify, are ‘disposable’. Hence, the mindset is different. That’s not to say that building materials as a service is impossible just that it is a harder shift in thinking. A country with a high level of residential renting, for example, might find it easier to move to this model than one with high levels of home ownership.
One more thing to consider is that the media renting companies mentioned above are dependent on other companies producing the content. Due to this they have moved towards vertical integration as the producers themselves, notably Disney in 2019 which has started to set up its own online rental platform. The point here being that in a product rental environment, whoever produces the product, holds a large amount of influence. Building materials manufacturers take note. Building materials as a service might just be a talking point on the lecture circuit along the road towards sustainability in the construction industry. Yet if it did happen at any scale then the producers of concrete, mortar, bricks, steel and all the rest would be well placed to benefit from it.
Ivory Coast: LafargeHolcim Ivory Coast has appointed Serge Gbotta as its new managing director. He succeeds Xavier Saint-Martin-Tillet, who has become the head of the West Africa region of the group. Gbotta was previously the Commercial and Logistics Director at LafargeHolcim Ivory Coast since 2015. Prior to this he has worked at Maersk, Air Liquide, DHL and ADM. Gbotta trained as a civil engineer at the ENSTP Yamoussoukro in Abijan. He also holds an MBA from the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).
China: West China Cement has appointed Chu Yufeng as its chief financial officer (CFO). He suceeds Chan King Sau, who has been appointed as a financial controller of the company and will continue to be the company secretary.
Chu Yufeng, aged 41 years, joined Yaobai Special Cement Group (Shaanxi Yaobai), a subsidiary of the West China Cement, as deputy chief financial officer in 2012. He was the deputy administration, finance and control director of Fuping Cement, another subsidiary of West China Cement, from 2010 to 2012. In 2014, Chu was appointed as the chief financial officer of Shannxi Yaobai and he has been responsible for financial management and audit matters of Shaanxi Yaobai and its subsidiaries for over five years. Prior to joining the group, Chu was a finance manager in a software company and an electric equipment manufacturer, both in China.
Chu holds a master’s degree in business administration from an international business program jointly organised by Maastricht School of Management (MSM) of Netherlands and Independent University of Bangladesh in 2005. He also graduated with a bachelor’s degree in commerce in international accounting from Xi’an JiaoTong University in 1999. He is a member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.
Carol Jackson begins presidency of World Refractory Association 15 January 2020
Belgium: Carol Jackson, the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of HarbisonWalker International (HWI), has started a two-year term as president of the World Refractory Association (WRA). She suceeded Stefan Borgas, the CEO RHI Magnesita, who led the organisation since January 2018.
Jackson, aged 47 years, became CEO of HWI in 2017 following three years as its Senior Vice President and General Manager. She has spent over 20 years of her career in the paint, coatings, chemicals, glass, ceramic materials, and specialty steel industries, serving automotive, industrial, consumer, and construction markets. Before joining HWI in 2014, she served as Vice President of the bar, wire, and strip business units of Carpenter Technology Corporation. She also held various roles at PPG Industries, where she rose to became Director of Global Raw Materials Purchasing.
Jackson is a licensed attorney in Pennsylvania, US and she holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business. She earned her undergraduate degree from Duquesne University.
Uzbekistan: Chinese investors have announced the launch of a 0.9Mt/yr integrated cement plant in the Fergana region of Uzbekistan as a result of a total investment of US$113m. Trend News has reported that a second phase of work beginning in May 2020 will further increase the cement plant’s production capacity. This is one of five upcoming Chinese-owned integrated plants in Uzbekistan, with a shared capacity of 6.0Mt/yr.