Displaying items by tag: Bashundhara Group

Bangladesh: Bashundhara Cement has signed an agreement with China-based Fifth Major Bridge Engineering to supply cement for the Dhaka Ashulia Elevated Expressway. The 24km road will connect Shahjalal International Airport to the Dhaka Export Processing Zone, according to the Daily Sun newspaper. Chinese investors will fund 65% of the estimated cost of the project under Preferential Buyer’s Credit. Bangladesh will have to repay the costs within 20 years, with 2% interest rate and a grace period of five years. Bashundhara cement products are also being used in 14 large scale bridge projects, 11 power plants, and water and sewage treatment plants.

Bangladesh: Bashundhara Group has launched its new Bir brand cement. The promotion coincides with the 50th anniversary of Victory Day at the end of the Bangladesh Liberation War. The product joins Bashundhara Group's range, which includes King Brand cement and Bashundhara cement. The company says that its cements are currently in use in 25 major projects across the country.

Managing director Sayem Sobhan Anvir said “Bashundhara Group has always been involved in the development of Bangladesh and we’ll continue to do so in the future.” He added, “Bir Cement is the new addition of Bashundhara Group. This new brand cement will be used in building sustainable infrastructure in our country and for the future of Bangladesh.”

Bangladesh: Bashundhara Group has taken a loan of US$82.0, which it says will go towards the construction of a 4.0Mt/yr cement plant in eastern Bangladesh for a total investment of US$117m. The Daily Star newspaper has reported that the new plant will produce cement primarily for export to northeast India. Bashundhara Group’s two cement plants currently have the capacity to produce 5.1Mt/yr of its King Brand cement.

Bank Asia is the lead arranger for the syndicated loan, which it will provide along with Dhaka Bank, First Security Islami Bank, Pubali Bank, Social Islami Bank and United Commercial Bank. Full repayment is due in 2027.

Bangladesh: Bashundhara Industrial Complex will supply up to 45,000t of cement for the construction of a dual fuel-fired combined cycle power station at Meghnaghat in Narayanganj. It has signed a deal with China Energy Engineering Group Northeast No 1 Electric Power (NEPC) for the project. The power plant will have a net generation capacity of 590MW using regasified liquid natural gas or 541MW using high-speed diesel.

Bangladesh: Shahab Uddin, the Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, says that five cement plants near the Sundarbans mangrove forest region have been granted environmental clearance certification. The plants are Meghna Cement Mills, Bashundhara Cement Mills, Mongla Cement Mills, Dubai-Bangla Cement Mills and Holcim (Bangladesh), according to the New Nation newspaper. Uddin said that the units were all at least 6km away from the Sundarbans reserved forest area and that the Department of Environment was monitoring their emissions on a regular basis. In 1995 the government declared a 10km area around the Sundarbans Reserve Forest as a ‘critical’ ecological zone.

Bangladesh: Sayem Sobhan Anvir, the managing director of Bashundhara Group, has signed a cement supply agreement with Tao Jun, the project manager of the Padma Bridge Rail Link for China Railway Group. Bashundhara Group will supply over 0.7Mt of cement for the project, according to Daily Sun newspaper. The US$3bn train line will run for 225km between Dhaka and Jessore.

Bangladesh: Bashundhara Industrial Complex plans to spend US$53m towards upgrading its Mongola grinding plant to 3Mt/yr from 2.1Mt/yr at present. The upgrade is scheduled to be commissioned in 2020, according to the Daily Star newspaper. Bashundhara Group holds the second largest cement market share at 8.48% through its two brands, Bashundhara Cement and Meghna Cement. Once the upgrade at Mongola is completed is will have a total production capacity of 7.56Mt/yr.

The Bangladeshi cement industry has been busy over the last month. Both Vietnam and Iran have marked up the country as a major destination for their exports. No change there, but Saudi Arabia has also started to join them as its producers have started announcing clinker export deals to the country. Alongside this there have also been production upgrades announced from MI Cement, Chhatak Cement and a Saudi-led partnership. Also, just before Christmas, Shah Cement inaugurated the world’s largest vertical roller mill (VRM) with a 8.1m grinding table, supplied by Denmark’s FLSmidth, at its Muktarpur plant in Munshiganj.

Md Shahidullah, vice president of the Bangladesh Cement Manufacturers Association (BCMA), described 2018 as a good year for the local industry to local media. Cement sales rose to 33Mt and consumption grew by 12% year-on-year.

The country has an integrated production capacity of 8.4Mt/yr from eight plants according to Global Cement Directory data. The main plants are Chhatak Cement and Lafarge Surma Cement. Locally produced clinker accounts for about 20% of the country’s needs, with the other 80% imported from abroad. Hence, the action is really with the grinding plants and the country has over 30 of them. A market report by EBL Securities in mid-2017 reckoned that local cement production capacity was 40Mt/yr but that actual production was around 32Mt in the 2016 - 2017 reporting year due to problems with power supplies and so on. Given the focus on grinding it’s interesting to note imports of clinker. These rose by 9% year-on-year to a value of US$518m in 2017 - 2018, the highest figure since 2014 - 2015. Not all of this may be consumption related since the local currency, the Taka, depreciated against the US dollar in 2017 and 2018.

Back in 2016 the market leaders were Shah Cement, LafargeHolcim Bangladesh, Bashundhara Group, Seven Rings Cement and HeidelbergCement. They accounted for about half of the market share. Of these LafargeHolcim Bangladesh saw its revenue nearly double year-on-year to US$101m from US$58m in the first half of 2018. Its profit did double to US$6.3m from US$2.7m. The company is a joint venture between LafargeHolcim, Spain’s Cementos Molins and other partners.

Bangladesh suits a grinding-based industry due to its high level of navigable waterways and low levels of limestone. In some respects though the country is a glimpse of what future cement markets might look like. Its lack of raw materials means it focuses on grinding and a clinker-rich world plays right into this. This creates an oversaturated market full of lots of companies due to the lower cost of setting up a grinding business or cement trading. In theory this should be great for end consumers and the general development of the country. After all Bangladesh has a high population, of 164 million, and a low gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, US$4561, and similarly low per capita consumption of cement. The downside though is that reliance on external raw materials. Any changes to exchange rates or material supply puts the entire industry at risk or puts prices in flux. In the meantime though the interest by Saudi exporters adds an interesting dynamic to a crowded market.

Bangladesh: Masud Sheikh, a technician working at Bashundhara Group's Meghna Cement Mills, has died from inhaling ‘poisonous gas’ in an abandoned barge owned by Meghna Cement Mills at the port of Mongla. Sheikh, aged 42 years and a Bangladeshi national, was attempting to rescue a Chinese national who also died in the incident, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The Chinese employee of Sinohydro supporting the construction of the Padma Bridge was checking the barge prior to its sale.

Bangladesh: The largest ever vertical roller mill in Bangladesh's cement industry, owned by Bashundhara Group (BG), was inaugurated on Monday 12 November 2012 at a ceremony in Khulna.

Mayor of Khulna, Talukdar Abdul Khaleque, along with managing director of Bashundhara Group Sayem Sobhan and other guests inaugurated the factory. The VRM was supplied by the German cement mill manufacturer Loesche GmbH.

While addressing the ceremony, mayor Talukder Abdul Khaleque said that BG had opened a door of huge employment opportunities for the people of the region, especially in the Mongla Seaport area of Khulna Division.

The mayor added that other industrial entrepreneurs should come forward to start industrial production by following BG. He warned those yet to start industrial work at the plots allotted to them, that they would run the risk of having their space cancelled if they did not start industrial production in the near future.