Displaying items by tag: Colombia

Colombia: Finland’s Wärtsilä has signed a further four-year extension to its operation and maintenance (O&M) agreement with Cemex Colombia. The original agreement was started in 1998 and it has now been extended to the end of 2023. Cemex’s integrated Caracolito cement plant uses a 26MW power plant operating on five Wärtsilä 18-cylinder 34SG engines in V-configuration running on natural gas. Wärtsilä employs 15 personnel in the running of the power plant, all of whom were hired locally.

Colombia: Switzerland-based construction materials producer Sika has invested an undisclosed sum in relocating production from a concrete admixture and mortar plant in Colombia to a larger facility in Barranquilla. Sika Americas regional manager Christopher Ganz said, “Our latest investment in Barranquilla will help us capture the potential of the dynamic construction market in the Caribbean region. Our aim is to grow more quickly than the construction market in this region.” The market grew by 15% in 2019.

Sika also manufactures building products for the Colombian market at facilities in Bogotá, Medellín and Duitama.

US: The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) has awarded Conservation Certificates to Cementos Argos’ 1.5Mt/yr integrated Newberry plant in Florida and 0.6Mt/yr Atlanta grinding plant in Georgia. Cementos Argos has installed a bat roost at the Newberry plant and planted bee and butterfly gardens with bird boxes for year-round resident bluebirds. The company said that the certification signals its ‘long-term commitment to managing quality habitats for wildlife.’

Colombia: Cementos Argos’ revenue in the three months to 30 September rose by 44% year-on-year to US$1.52bn for US$1.06bn. Lower sales across its cement and concrete sections caused the company’s three-month profit to drop by 65% year-on-year to US$10.3m over the period from US$29.6m. Higher costs also offset the income from the sale of the group’s Barranquilla natural gas power station to Glenfarne Group for US$420m in the quarter.

Colombia: Empresa Colombiana de Cementos (EcoCementos), a 50-50 joint venture between Colombian multinational Organizacion Corona and Spanish-based Cementos Molins, has announced the start of production at its new 1.5Mt/yr integrated cement plant at Sonson, Antioquia province. The plant, which was constructed with an investment of US$380m, mines limestone from its own quarry and will produce Alion brand cement for the Colombian market. The unit is increases Cementos Molins’ first in Columbia. It already produces and trades cement via its subsidiaries in Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay.

Guatemala: Colombia’s Ultracem has invested US$1.2m in a facility for packing cement in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, generating 16 jobs. The company has revealed that its next project in the country, where it currently sells 0.12Mt/yr of cement, will be production facilities. Prensa Libre has reported that Ultracem’s three-step entry into Guatemala, beginning in April 2019 with the import and distribution of packed cement, has entered its second stage. This consists of packing its Colombian cement, imported via Honduras, in Guatemala.

Ultracem hopes to have entered production in the country to compete with Cementos Progreso, whose three plants’ 5.3Mt/yr total output constitutes the entirety of domestic production, by September 2020. Ultracem’s administrative director Estuardo Solís has stated that ‘an aggressive marketing plan for expansion into Guatemala, Central America’s largest market’ is in place. Over four months the company has sold 40,000t of cement in the country, all of it in the east, centre and north-east.

Ultracem began its Central American expansion in 2018 with cement distribution to Panama, followed closely by Honduras, where it established a US$2m grinding plant in May 2019.

Colombia: The Regional Autonomous Corporation of Antioquia has reissued Cemex’s environmental clearance for its 1Mt/yr integrated cement plant in Macao. The certification marks the conclusion of a dispute over mining right in the course of which Cemex fired multiple executives for payment of US$25m to a private third party. La Republica reports that Cemex is now in a position to advance several licensing processes and to begin construction of connecting roads for the plant.

Colombia: Argos, the cement company of Grupo Argos, reported a 10.6% increase in revenue during the first half of 2019, driven mainly by higher cement volumes in the US and the start of price recovery in Colombia. Its consolidated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 4%.

The company earned US$1.42m in revenue, with a net profit of US$22m, 33.5% higher than in the first half of 2018. Its EBITDA in the US was US$262.4m. Cement shipments were close to 8Mt, 1.2% higher than in the first half of 2018, and concrete dispatches were 5Mm3, a decrease of 2.5% due to the impact of heavy rains in some regions of the US.

“In the first half of 2019 we continued to strengthen our operation and our presence in the United States with the execution of the BEST 2.0 efficiency plan, which, added to the best price dynamics that we began to see in Colombia, allowed us to compensate the pressure we experienced in energy costs,” said Juan Esteban Calle, CEO of Argos. “The significant progress of our divestment plan in non-strategic assets allows us to continue focusing on improving the competitiveness of the company and innovating in products, services and solutions to support the growth of our customers.”

In the US Argos earned revenues of US$781m, 3.5% higher than in the first half of 2018. Its US EBITDA was stable year-on-year at US$108m. Cement dispatches in the US increased by 6.9% to exceed 3Mt, but concrete dispatches decreased by 3.8%, mainly due to heavy rains in the south-central region. The profit in the US was US$11m.

In Colombia revenues during the first half of 2019 were US$352m, 3.3% higher than in the first half of 2018. EBITDA was US$72m, 4% lower year-on-year. Cement dispatches totaled 2.4Mt, a 2.5% reduction. On the other hand, concrete sales remained stable at 1.4Mm3. The company reported that its Argos ONE digital platform continued to give ‘great’ results. From January 2019 to July 2019, 63% of cement and 44% of concrete dispatches were made through this digital platform.

In the Caribbean and Central America, the company highlighted that operations in the Dominican Republic and Haiti continued to be positive, compensating for the challenging political environment that was evident during the period in Honduras and Panama.

In this region, revenues stood at US$286m, a 4.5% reduction year-on-year. EBITDA in this region came to US$79m dollars, 19.8% lower year-on-year. Cement dispatches were 2.5Mt and concrete dispatches were 194,000m3, 1.5% and 3% lower respectively year-on-year.

Colombia: Cementos Argos Colombia supplied around 220,000m³ of concrete and over 8000t of cement for the constriction of the Oriente Tunnel. The road infrastructure project near Medellín in Antioquia is scheduled to be commissioned in mid-August 2019. Work on the project started in 2015. The tunnel had an investment of around US$300m and it will be the longest operational road tunnel in South America when it opens.

Colombia: Cemex Latam Holdings has denied that it has an office dedicated to illegal activity following accusations of bribery in the local media. In a statement to the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia, the company said that its Enterprise Risk Management office “supports the decision-making process by anticipating and coordinating risk management that could make it difficult for Cemex to reach its strategic objectives and identify short, medium and long-term opportunities.” It addd that risk management was an institutional process followed by companies around the world to anticipate and mitigate potential business hazards.

Cemex Colombia has been linked by Semana magazine and other outlets to payments to political figures in return for preferential treatment on construction contracts. The cement producer has also faced a long running investigation by local and US agencies into unusual payments relating to its Maceo cement plant project in Antioquia.