Displaying items by tag: Colombia

Colombia: Rafael Olivella Vives has been appointed as the Vice President of Legal and Institutional Affairs at Cementos Argos. He succeeds Juan Luis Múnera who has secured the role as vice president of Corporate Legal Affairs at Grupo Sura. Olivella trained as the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and the Universidad de los Andes before working for Ignacio Sanín Bernal & Cía. He joined Cementos Argos in 2008 and subsequently became the vice president of Corporate Affairs at Celsia, the energy business of the Argos Group.

Colombia: Cementos Argos has posted an 84.5% fall in its first half net profit in 2017 to US$19.3m. It made US$124.4m in the first half of 2016. It said that its operating revenues dropped by 3.9% year-on-year to US$1.42bn the first half of 2017, from US$1.48bn a year earlier.

Colombia: Cemex has opened its 300th store of its Construrama retail network. The network is present in 190 municipalities and it plans to reach 500 stores by 2020, according to the El Financiero newspaper. In 2016 the brand opened 130 branches in Mexico and 60 in Colombia. The network is also growing in other Latin American countries.

Colombia: The Office of the Attorney General is preparing to present charges against three individuals involved in the sale of property in Maceo, Antioquia to Cemex for a new cement plant project. They are Edgar Ramirez Martinez, the former deputy director of Planning at Cemex, Camilo Gonzalez Tellez, the former legal director of Cemex Colombia and Eugenio Correa Diaz, the representative of CI Calizas, which sold the property to the cement producer, according to the El Tiempo newspaper.

The former employees of Cemex allegedly paid US$13.7m to Correa, despite being aware of the fact that the property, which formerly belonged to the deceased businessman Jose Aldemar Moncada, was in the process of being expropriated over unpaid taxes. It is also alleged that the funds never reached the accounts of CI Calizas, having been primarily used to pay off debts of Aldemar Moncada.

Colombia: Cementos Argos reported net losses of US$15.6m in the first quarter of 2017, in contrast with a US$340m profit in the first quarter of 2016. The losses were influenced by the company's operations in Colombia, currency exchange losses and non-recurring expenses associated with implementing an efficiency plan, along with a depreciation of its assets in the United States.

The company's operating revenues also fell by 6% year-on-year to US$719m by the end of March 2017, while its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 35% to US$93.8m.

Colombia: Cemex Latam, the Latin American subsidiary of Cemex, intends to operate its Maceo cement plant project in Antioquia at a reduced capacity due to difficulties with its environmental clearance. The cement producer will continue building the 0.95Mt/yr plant but it will reduce its output to 0.25Mt/yr once it is operational, according to Reuters. The Colombian cement producer attempted to reverse the annulment of its environmental permits with the local body in late 2016.

In September 2016 Cemex fired several senior staff members in relation to the Maceo project and its subsidiary’s chief executive resigned. This followed an internal audit and investigation into payments worth around US$20.5m made to a non-governmental third party in connection with the acquisition of the land, mining rights, and benefits of the tax free zone for the project.

Colombia: Gebr. Pfeiffer has sold a Ready2Grind modular grinding system with a MVR 2500 C-4 mill to LafargeHolcim Colombia. The order consists of a Ready2Grind with a finished product storage area and a packing plant supplied by Claudius Peters. No value for the sale has been disclosed.

Colombia: Cementos Argos’s sales volumes of cement fell by 5.5% year-on-year to 3.44Mt in 2016 from 3.64Mt in 2015. Despite increasing its presence in the US with the acquisition of the Martinsburg, West Virginia cement plant, its sales volumes in Colombia fell by 19% in 2016, more than the market, due to its ‘higher exposure’ to the infrastructure and industrial segments and increasing volumes of imports. Despite this, its sales revenue rose by 7.7% to US$2.95bn from US$2.74bn and its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 8.7% to US$572m from US$526m.

“We are very satisfied with the results of the US regional division, as they ratify the visionary decision taken 11 years ago by the company, to enter with our value proposition into the largest economy and the most demanding market. Our diversification strategy allows us to balance different market cycles, drives our results and supports value generation for our shareholders,” said Juan Esteban Calle, chief executive officer of Cementos Argos.

The US became the cement producer’s biggest market in 2016 contributing about half of its revenue. By region, cement sales volumes grew in the US by 18.5% to 3.97Mt from 3.36Mt. Sales volumes in its Caribbean and Central American region rose by 4.7% to 4.95Mt from 4.73Mt. It added that it had decided to postpone the expansion of its Sogamoso cement plant in Colombia. Instead it plans to increase its production capacity by 1Mt at its Rioclaro and Cartagena plants in 2017 and 2018.

Colombia: A new cement plant to be built at Rio Claro in the Sonsón municipality of Antioquia for Empresa Colombiana de Cementos (EcoCementos) will have a production capacity of 1.35Mt/yr. The company is a joint-venture between Spain’s Cementos Molins and Grupo Corona. Cementos Molins and Grupo Corona originally started working together in September 2015 when they formed an alliance to develop their cement businesses in the country, according to the El Tiempo newspaper. The plant is expected to be completed in mid-2019 whereupon it is hoped that it will capture 7% of the market. Once operational the plant will create 450 direct and indirect jobs.

Colombia: FLSmidth has received an order from OHL Industrial for engineering, procurement and supply of equipment for a complete cement production line with a capacity of 3150t/day. The plant will be located in Rio Claro in the Sonsón municipality of Antioquia. The end client of the project is Empresa Colombiana de Cementos (EcoCementos), a company jointly owned by Cementos Molins and Grupo Corona, with whom OHL Industrial has an engineering, construction and procurement (EPC) contract.

The order includes a complete range of equipment from crushing to packing and loadout. Supply includes an ATOX 37.5 vertical mill for raw grinding, an ATOX 17.5 vertical mill for coal grinding, a ROTAX-2 rotary kiln with low NOx ILC calciner, a FLSmidth Cross-Bar cooler, a JETFLEX burner and an OK(TM) 39-4 vertical mill for cement grinding. The order is planned for completion in the first quarter of 2018.

"The project underlines FLSmidth's strength as a leading supplier of the most productive and energy-efficient equipment and technology - and our market leader position as a full scope plant provider," said FLSmidth Group Executive Vice President, Cement Division, Per Mejnert Kristensen.