Displaying items by tag: Belgium

Belgium: The Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) consortium partners and its external advisory board have held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its pilot Direct Separation Calciner unit at the HeidelbergCement cement plant in Lixhe. The project started commissioning the unit in March 2019. Testing is now set to start to validate the performance of the pilot.

Kuwait: Kuwait Cement has hired Belgium’s Magotteaux to modernise three of its cement mills. The project consists of closing the open circuit with fourth generation XP4i separators, installing new mill internals components, including diaphragms, and adapting a new ball charge gradation. The aim of the project is to increase the production rate, reduce the specific energy consumption and improve the product quality, by reducing the residue on 45μm by keeping the same Blaine value.

Italy: Cementir Holding’s sales revenue fell by 4.2% in 2018 on a like-for-like basis due to poor performance in Egypt and Norway. Military operations in the Sinai impacted production in Egypt between February and May 2018 and bad weather in Norway affected the first quarter. However, it noted good results in Malaysia, Belgium and China.

On an adjusted basis its revenue rose by 4.9% to Euro1.2bn from Euro1.14bn. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 7.1% to Euro239m from Euro223m. Grey and white cement sales volumes fell by 4.4% to 9.8Mt from 10.3Mt. Ready-mixed concrete volumes fell slightly to 4.9Mm³.

Greece: Titan Group’s share exchange offer between its subsidiaries has failed. It blamed this on a lack of ordinary shares being tendered despite the support of Titan’s core shareholders and its board of directors. The voluntary share offer was intended to help list its shares at exchanges in Brussels and Paris. The group said that its strategy remained focused on international growth. It added that broadening sources of funding and improving access to international capital and credit markets was an important priority.

Belgium: The European Commission has approved the acquisition of sole control over Cimpor Portugal by Turkey’s Oyak. The commission ruled that there are no competition concerns between the cement producers given that they operate in different geographic markets. The deal was announced in late October 2018.

Belgium/France: LafargeHolcim has appointed François Petry as the chief executive officer (CEO) of LafargeHolcim France and Head of France - Belgium. He succeeds Bénédicte de Bonnechose, who has decided to leave the group.

Petry has been the managing director of Aggregate Industries, a subsidiary of LafargeHolcim in the UK, since 2015. Prior to this he was the CEO of LafargeHolcim Romania since 2014 and the general manager for Aggregates in Holcim France since 2008. Before that, he held senior positions across the infrastructure, construction and waste industries in France.

He holds degree in Engineering from the École Nationale Superieure D’Arts et Metiers, ParisTech, as well as an executive MBA from the École des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris.

Greece: Titan Group has submitted a share exchange offer to help list its shares at exchanges in Brussels and Paris. Following the completion of the process, Belgium-based Titan Cement International will become Titan's ultimate parent company managed from Cyprus, according to Reuters. The group intends to list its shares at Euronext Brussels with secondary listings on the Athens Exchange and Euronext Paris. Titan says it wants to broaden its funding sources by improving access to international finance.

Brazil: Mineração Belocal, a subsidiary of Belgium’s Lhoist, has purchased L-Imerys, a lime producer that operates a plant at Doresópolis in Minas Gerais. L-Imerys is a subsidiary of France’s Imerys, according to the Diário do Comércio newspaper. The 0.4Mt/yr lime plant was inaugurated in 2013. The sales is depending on approval by the relevant competition bodies. No value for the acquisition has been disclosed.

Belgium: HeidelbergCement has hosted a ground breaking ceremony for the Calix carbon capture pilot at CBR’s cement plant at Lixhe. The ceremony itself took place at the Liège Oupeye Water Treatment Plant near Liège as part of the inaugural Innovation in Industrial Carbon Capture Conference. The two-day event, which took place on 7 – 8 February 2018, was organised by the Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) Consortium, a European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 backed research and innovation project.

Construction work on the pilot at the cement plant is scheduled to start imminently. The project will test Calix’s carbon capture technology for two years at an operational cement plant. The technology has previously been used in the magnesite calcining sector.

Over 130 delegates from industry, academia and government attended the conference. The agenda was designed to encourage discussion and knowledge sharing across key stakeholder groups with a strategic interest in innovation in carbon capture technology. As part of the programme, the wider challenges faced by the cement and lime sectors in Europe were also explored focusing on how EU industries can contribute to reaching climate change targets, the role of innovation and company entrepreneurship and a knowledge exchange fair on technology.

The LEILAC consortium, which consists of representatives from the lime and cement industries, technology and engineering providers and research institutes, has set up as an industrial project securing Euro12m in EU funding in order to demonstrate technology to reduce carbon emissions from cement and lime industries.

Belgium: Stefan Borgas, the chief executive officer (CEO) of RHI Magnesita, has started working as the new president of the World Refractories Association (WRA). He succeeds François Wanecq, the former CEO of Vesuvius.

The WRA was founded in 2014 by refractory industry associations and multinational companies. The WRA constitutes a forum to debate regulatory issues affecting global trade, circulate aggregated industry statistics, promote the interests of the worldwide refractory industry, and act as a counterpart to other world industry organizations such as the World Steel Association. The WRA is composed of continental associations including Europe (PRE), Latin America (ALAFAR) and North America (TRI) as well as national associations from China (ACRI), India (IRMA) and Japan (JRA). Multinational companies are also direct members.