Displaying items by tag: Australia

Australia: James Hardie has revised its guidance for the quarter ending 30 June 2020, the fourth quarter of the Australian fiscal year 2020, following “improved housing market activity, particularly in North America.” Australian Associated Press – Financial News has reported that James Hardie has revised its North American fibre cement boards volumes growth estimate to 1% year-on-year from a 3% drop previously. It expects Australian volumes to remain constant year-on-year, as previously predicted, and European volumes in the quarter to fall by 13%, rather than by 16%.

Exports are the theme this week with news that the value of Turkey’s cement exports fell by 26% year-on-year in April 2020. Reporting from the Trend News Agency showed that the export market has been stable so far for the year to date, with some countries, like Kazakhstan, increasing exports and others, like France, decreasing exports. However the change in April may mark the start of a new trend.

As Tamer Saka, the chairman of the Turkish Cement Manufacturers’ Association (TÇMB), said earlier in the year, his country is one of biggest cement exporters in the world and among its most important markets are the US, Israel, Ghana and Ivory Coast. To look at one of these countries, United States Geology Survey (USGS) data shows that cement and clinker imports from Turkey to the US grew by 26% year-on-year to 1Mt for the first quarter of 2020 but that exports fell by 24% year-on-year to 0.11Mt in March 2020. Each of these countries is being affected in different ways by the coronavirus pandemic and at different times. Overall though, Saka’s and the TÇMB’s forecast in February 2020 that exports would rise by 15% year-on-year in 2020 is looking decidedly shaky. Any knock to the export market in Turkey is particularly unwanted given the poor state of the Turkish economy at the moment.

What would be useful to know here is how other major cement exporters are coping with the global situation. Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics shows that Pakistan’s cement exports dropped by 31% year-on-year to 0.36Mt in April 2020. Data from the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) for the same month tells a similar story. Its data shows a 57% drop in exports to 0.25Mt in April 2020, with a bigger share lost by plants in the north of the country than those in the south.

The other country to note is Vietnam. Here, data from the General Department of Vietnam Customs shows that cement exports fell by 9.7% year-on-year to 7.73Mt in the first quarter of 2020. This follows the announcement by Vietnam Cement Association (VCA) chair Nguyễn Quang Cung in May 2020 that all cement plant projects scheduled to begin in 2020 would be suspended. Luckily those currently being built avoided this fate. This has included a new line at Thanh Thang Group Cement’s integrated Bong Lang cement plant, which Germany’s Loesche has just sent a pair of clinker mills to this week.

These changes from the major cement exporters are bad for their host countries but the other side of the chain is how their destinations are affected. For example, Australia’s clinker imports nearly doubled between 2010 – 2011 and 2018 – 2019 to 4.1Mt. This compares to local clinker production of 5.6Mt in 2018 – 2019, according to the Cement Industry Federation and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. With this in mind, this week saw the resolution to a legal dispute between Wagners Holdings and Boral over a cement supply contract. Boral found a cheaper source of cement from Cement Australia in early 2019 and the two parties argued over their contract. This dispute may have nothing to do with foreign import levels but Wagners Holdings, Boral and Cement Australia all operate standalone clinker grinding plants and will all be subject to general market pricing trends. Higher international clinker levels may add pressure to pricing issues surrounding cement supply contracts in Australia and elsewhere.

Finally, cement trade flows aren’t the only commodity that has been affected by coronavirus disruption. The mass movement of workers home and then back to work is expected to complicate India’s return to business, as discussed in last week’s column. In this context it’s pleasing to come across one sign of normality. Local press in Hubei, China reported this week that workers from Huaxin Cement finally flew back to Uzbekistan. They were originally meant to commission a new plant in March 2020 but became stranded at home when they returned for the Chinese New Year. Commissioning of the plant is now planned for later in June 2020.

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Australia: The Queensland Supreme Court has ruled that Wagners must meet lower prices offered by a competitor in the market in its cement supply contract with Boral. Wagners suspended its supply of cement products to Boral for six months in early 2019 when Boral said it found cheaper cement from Cement Australia, according to the Australian newspaper. However, the court found that an October 2019 pricing notice for cheaper supplies from Cement Australia was ‘valid and effective’. Boral will continue buying cement from Wagners until 2031.

Australia: Boral has announced a planned three-week shutdown of the kiln at its 1.5Mt/yr integrated Berrima plant in New South Wales. The Financial Review newspaper has reported that Boral chief executive officer (CEO) Mike Kane said, ‘Revenues are down by 6% year-on-year in Australia in the first four months of 2020.’ He added that Australian cement volumes in the same period fell by 16% year-on-year and that there are fewer new orders than at the same stage of 2019 as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.

US: Boral North America has fully or partly suspended operations at four plants and made more than 1700 of its 6900 employees redundant. The Financial Review newspaper has reported that Boral North America chief executive officer (CEO) David Mariner will resign at the end of May 2020.

Australia-based Boral predicted a 3 - 5% year-on-year decrease in net profit in the first half of 2020. Boral chief financial officer (CFO) Ros Ng said, “Boral had US$839m of cash and undrawn liquidity at the end of April 2020.” The group announced a reshuffle of its debt facilities on 15 May 2020.

Australia/New Zealand/US: Ireland-based James Hardie has announced the planned closure of three of its fibre cement board plants. The Cooroy, Queensland plant in Australia, Summerville, South Carolina plant in the US and Penrose, Auckland plant in New Zealand will close permanently in mid-2020, resulting in a total of 375 job cuts. The NZ Herald newspaper has reported that the decision to shut the plants came about due to the impacts of the coronavirus outbreak on the global economic situation. James Hardie will now supply the New Zealand market from its Carole Park, Queensland and Rosehill, New South Wales plants. James Hardie also closed its Siglingen, Baden-Württemberg plant in Germany on a temporary basis, ‘in order to better match supply and demand in the European market.’

James Hardie revised its 2020 profit forecast to US$355m, down by 4.1% from US$370m.

Australia: Mideco’s Bat Booth 2.0 personnel de-dusting booth has given producers an edge in tackling the spread of coronavirus amongst employees by detecting a sign of infection, namely a raised temperature (over 37.8°C). A medically-calibrated infra-red sensor in the Bat Booth 2.0 takes the user’s temperature in under half a second, informing them of the need to isolate. Mideco says that the booth’s low-pressure compressed air dust removal feature further reduces the contamination risk from an infected person’s clothing. Mideco said, “At a higher level, senior management can track trends and monitor the wellbeing of their staff remotely.”

Australia: Germany-based Siemens subsidiary Flender has published plans for a drives production plant in the Tonkin Highway Industrial Estate, West Australia. The plant will serve the gear needs of the energy, minerals and cement industries. The unit is equipped with a 1.5MW test bench capable of testing drive systems of up to 6.6kV. Flender Australia chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director Kareem Emara said, “Western Australia has been an excellent market for us in the recent years. It’s only natural for us to reinvest in this key market and be where our customers are to offer them the combined brains trust of over 50 facilities worldwide through this new state-of-the-art centre.”

Australia: A paper published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling has reported that concrete made with treated slag is 8% stronger than standard slag concrete and 17% stronger than concrete made with conventional aggregates. A Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) team produced treated slag concrete using slag that had absorbed phosphate, magnesium, iron, calcium, silica and aluminium during use in wastewater treatment. Researcher Biplob Pramanik said, “The things that we want to remove from water are actually beneficial to concrete.” Pramanik said that the findings have promising implications for the water and concrete sectors within the circular economy.

Europe: Australia-based Calix has announced that construction will begin on its second low emissions intensity lime and cement (Leilac) carbon capture and storage (CCS) installation at a ‘European cement plant’ on 7 April 2020. ASX ComNews has reported that collaborators on the project, which has received Euro16m under the EU’s Horizon 2020 grant scheme, are Portugal-based Cimpor, Germany-based HeidelbergCement, Germany and France-based energy companies Ingenieurbüro-Kühlerbau-Neustadt (IKN) and Engie and Belgium-based minerals and lime company Lhoist. Calix has said that the 100,000t/yr process emissions capture facility will be operational in late 2024.
The company has appointed Emma Bowring Leilac-2 project leader.

The first Leilac installation was completed at HeidelbergCement’s 1.5Mt/yr integrated Lixhe plant in Belgium’s Limburg province in mid-2019.