Displaying items by tag: Cementos Fortaleza

Spain: Cementos Portland Valderrivas (CPV) has appointed Jaime Rocha Font as its chief executive officer (CEO). He succeeds Pedro Carranza Andressen in the post, according to Alimarket-Construcción. Rocha Font is currently the CEO of Mexico-based Elementia and he will continue to hold this position. Elementia owns a controlling share of Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), the parent company of CPV.

Rocha Font has been the head of Elementia since 2020. Prior to this he was the head of Elementia’s cement division, including subsidiaries Cementos Fortaleza and Giant Cement in the US, from 2015. He also held the position of president of the National Cement Chamber of Mexico between 2019 and 2022. Earlier in his career he spent over 20 years working for Holcim from 1992. He holds a degree in civil engineering from the Universidad Pontificia Católica de Chile and a master's degree in international economics from the Université Libre de Bruxelles amongst other qualifications.

Mexico: The local government in Santiago de Anaya has revealed that Cementos Fortaleza is planning to build a second production line at its integrated El Palmar plant in Hidalgo. The project is expected to cost US$210m, according to the El Sol de Mexico newspaper. Cementos Fortaleza currently operates a 1Mt/yr plant at the site.

El Salvador: Cementos Fortaleza is establishing a new 0.3Mt/yr cement plant at Acajutla in Sonsonate Department. The Diario El Mundo newspaper has reported that the subsidiary of Grupo Regalado and Mexico-based Elementia plans to commission the plant in eatly 2023. The company will invest US$40m in its construction. The plant will produce its cement from 20% El Salvadorean-produced raw materials and will primarily serve local consumption, with the possibility of also exporting some cement.

Grupo Regalado representative Marcos Regalado Nottebohm said “It is challenging to invest in a project of such magnitude. This has been a natural step between two large business groups of great renown.”

Costa Rica: Cemex has taken legal action to query a local 5% tax on the sale of cement in the provinces of Cartago, San José and Guanacaste. The issue is commercially relevant because its competitor Cementos Fortaleza operates a grinding plant at Salinas Esparza in Puntarenas where the tax is not liable, according to Diario Extra magazine. Cementos Fortaleza opened its unit in 2018. Cemex operates an integrated and a grinding plant in the country.

Mexico: According to figures from INEGI, Mexico’s national institute of statistics, sales of cement were worth US$1.21bn during the first quarter of 2019. This figure was 7% lower than during the first quarter of 2018. In volume terms sales fell from 11.89Mt to 10.91Mt, a fall of 8.1% year-on-year.

Market leader Cemex reported a sales fall of 15% in the analysed period despite a price increase of 4%. Cementos Fortaleza, owned by Elementia, posted a sales growth of 1% in terms of value, thanks to rising prices.

Swiss firm LafargeHolcim, through its subsidiary Holcim Apasco, saw total sales shrink by 7.4% in Latin America, with sales of cement falling by 2.6% as a consequence of the demand drop in Mexico and Argentina. Only Cementos Chihuahua registered significant growth, with sales increasing by 8% in during the quarter due to the construction of new industrial buildings and mining projects in the north of the country.

Cementos Fortaleza started building its new grinding plant in Merida this week. The 0.25Mt/yr unit is expected to open in July 2019. It marks the first new plant in the country in a while and it will be only the second in the south-eastern state of Yucatan, joining Cemex’s integrated plant. It follows a number of upgrades at existing plants over the last two years, such as various mill orders by Cruz Azul from European suppliers (as part of an upgrade at two of its plants) and Elementia’s upgrade to its Tula plant.

Note that Cementos Fortaleza is a subsidiary of Elementia, the building materials company partly-owned by ‘Mexico’s richest man’ Carlos Slim. The group has steadily been expanding with its purchase of the remaining share in Cementos Fortaleza in 2015, acquiring a controlling stake in Giant Cement in the US in 2016 and a project to build a grinding plant in Costa Rica in early 2018.

The other big news story this week with implications for the cement sector was the arrangement of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Although the exact details of the deal are still emerging, the consensus is that the cement industry in Mexico is unlikely to be affected much. The two points that might have implications for the cement industry are changes to rules of origin regulations and tariffs on imports made by low-wage workers. Both clauses are targeted at the automotive sector to protect US industry so it is unlikely that cement will be affected. In addition it is worth remembering that Mexico was the fifth largest exporter of cement and clinker to the US in 2017 after Canada, Greece, China and Turkey. And, all the major Mexican cement producers operate plants in the US, further protecting them from any potential negative consequences of the USMCA.

Graph 1: Mexican cement production, 2009 – 2017. Source: Camara Nacional del Cemento (CANCEM).

Back in Mexico, the graph above shows that production has been growing in fits and starts over the last decade. The last growth trend started in 2013 but it stalled in 2017. However, the Camara Nacional del Cemento (CANCEM) was forecasting growth of 2.5% year-on-year for 2018 in April 2018. The last time this column covered Mexico, back in early 2017, we produced a breakdown of the industry by company and production capacity. This is worth looking at for an overview of the production base.

Cemex, the largest local producer, reported Ordinary Portland Cement sales volume growth of 3% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2018 but flat growth for the first half of the year. This growth was supported by good activity in the formal residential sector with support from the industrial and commercial sector. LafargeHolcim released less detailed figures for the first half of 2018 but it attributed its strong performance in Latin America to Mexico. Overall cement sales for the region grew by 12.1% to 12.6Mt, in part due to large infrastructure projects in Mexico, such as the new Mexico City International airport. The third biggest producer, Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua, said that its cement sales volumes rose by 2.5% in the first half of the year, supported by rising prices.

As reported in early 2017, the Mexican cement industry is moving ahead with confidence. A modest amount of production capacity is being built, the steady market growth since 2013 looks set to continue after a minor blip in 2017 and the main producers are all reporting good performance so far in 2018. Finally, the USMCA looks unlikely to trouble Mexican producers much and their diversified holdings will certainly help them if it does. For the moment - bravo!

Mexico: Cementos Fortaleza has started to build a new 0.25Mt/yr grinding plant at Merida in Yucatan. The project has an investment of US$30m, according to the El Economista newspaper. The plant is scheduled to open in July 2019. It will create 50 direct jobs.

Costa Rica: Gebr. Pfeiffer is in the process of supplying a Ready2Grind modular grinding plant to Cementos Fortaleza’s new 300,000t/yr plant at Salinas Esparza in Puntarenas. The project is a joint venture between Mexico’s Cementos Fortaleza and fibre cement producer Plycem. Production is scheduled to begin in the first quarter 2018.

The project scope includes: a clinker mill feed system with four hoppers; a MVR 2500 C-4 roller clinker mill with classifier and ancillaries; process filters, hot gas generator and fan; electrical controls and drives; cement transport and three storage silos; packing plant and bulk loading systems; and monitoring and coordination of erection as well as commissioning of the grinding plant.

Costa Rica: Mexico’s Cementos Fortaleza and fibre cement producer Plycem will inaugurate a new plant at Barranca de Puntaneras by the end of September 2017. The two companies are part of Elementia, according to the La Nación newspaper. No value for plant has been disclosed.

Mexico/Qatar: Fives has released information on cement plant projects in Mexico and Qatar. It commissioned a second FCB Horomill unit on 31 January 2017 at the cement grinding plant of Cementos Fortaleza, as part of the new 3300t/day complete line under construction at the Tula cement plant in Hidalgo. The first unit was commissioned in early December 2016.

Fives FCB was awarded the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract from Cementos Fortaleza in mid-2015 for the design, supply, erection and commissioning of the cement production line. It includes a burning line using a FCB Kiln, FCB Zero-NO_x Precalciner, FCB Preheater and Pillard Novaflam burner; raw meal and cement grinding plants using FCB Horomill and associated FCB TSV™ Classifiers; and a petcoke grinding plant using a FCB B-mill and associated FCB TSV Classifier. The FCB Horomill raw meal grinding plant and FCB Kiln are scheduled for commissioned in the second quarter of 2017.

In Qatar, Fives commissioned a cement milling unit on 6 February 2017 for Qatar National Cement Co.'s fifth production line in Umm Bab. This follows the commissioning of another mill at the site on 25 January 2017.

The mills are part of a 5000t/day production line that Fives is building for the client covering raw material preparation to cement despatch. The equipment ordered includes one 6400 kW FCB B‑mill with a FCB TSV7500 Classifier for the raw meal grinding plant, one five-stage FCB Preheater and a FCB Zero-NO_x Precalciner, along with a FCB Kiln for the burning line, two TGT process filters and two 4200 KW FCB B‑mills with their FCB TSV4000 Classifiers for the cement grinding plant.