Displaying items by tag: Electricity

Ghana: The Cement Manufacturers Association of Ghana (CMAG) is lobbying the government against a recent fumigation levy of US$0.50/t on imported clinker by the Ministry of Health. At a recent meeting the association discussed this tax and others negatively affected the cement sector, according to the Business and Financial Times newspaper. It is also unhappy about more longstanding charges, including a VAT restructuring levy of 5%, and a 2% special tax as well as a new 11% electricity tariff and a proposed increase in the cost of a certification licence from the Ghana Standards Authority and impending. CMAG is also complaining to the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority about imports.

Ethiopia: Electricity rationing has been restricting the production of cement companies since it started in April 2019. Under a program implemented by Ethiopian Electric and the Ministry of Water and Energy, cement producers are only allowed to operate for 15 days per month, according to the Reporter newspaper. They say this has increased their production costs because cement production is a continuous process that requires start up and stoppage time. The Ministry of Trade has asked that cement producers do raise the price of cement despite the increase in production cost. Input and transport costs have also risen.

“There is a huge waste of resources when we start up and stop running our plant. Continuous production has cost benefits. We spend 24 hours warming up the plant. There is wastage of coal and electric power,” said Mesfine Abi, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Habesha Cement. He added that the company is facing growing maintenance costs as its machines fail to cope with repeated power cuts.

The national electricity power restrictions have been caused by water shortages at hydroelectric dams. Rainwater has started flowing back in the dam reservoirs but power rationing is not expected to be rescinded until early July 2019.

Saudi Arabia: Arabian Cement says that the National Electricity Transmission Company plans to complete an expansion to a high-voltage plant in Rabigh by the third quarter of 2021. The project has been delayed but the cement producer said that this will have no financial impact, according to Mubasher. Arabian Cement originally signed an agreement with the National Electricity Transmission Company to supply electricity to its Rabigh plant in 2015. In November 2018 it said that an upgrade to its cement mills was 80% complete.

Colombia: Cementos Argos is switching its trucks in Medellín to electric-powered vehicles. The new trucks will be powered by 600v batteries and be capable of carrying 4t of cement, according to the La Republic newspaper. The cement producer is planning to expand the electric-powered trucks to other cities subsequently.

Nepal: Cement producers including Narayani Cement, Kalash Cement and Bishwokarma Cement have reported damage from a heavy thunderstorm that has hit the south of the country. At least 30 people were killed in the bad weather and other 600 people were injured, according to the Kathmandu Post newspaper.

Umesh Chandra Thakur, manager at Narayani Cement, said the storm had knocked down walls, a roof and power lines at the plant, leading to a halt in production. Kalash Cement also reported that the roof of its plant had been blown off. The storm has also caused widespread disruption to the electricity distribution system in Bara and Parsa districts.

Vietnam: A 8.36% rise in electricity prices in late March 2019 is set to cause an increase in the price of cement. The Vietnam Cement Industry Corporation (VICEM) said that cement producers had also been hit by an increase in coal prices, according to the Vietnam News Agency. The rise in the price of coal follows a lack of supply from the Vietnam National Coal and Minerals Industry Holding Group (VINACOMIN) leading to producers to import coal. Cong Thanh Cement has not raise its retail prices but has charged distributors more. Nguyen Quang Cung, chairman of the Vietnam Cement Association, said that producers were not surprised by increase in electricity prices and had been preparing for it.

Philippines: Holcim Philippines has ordered power monitoring equipment from CMR Philippines for its 2.3Mt/yr Lugait cement plant in Misamis Oriental. It includes the development, delivery, installation, testing and networking of the electrical installation at the unit. Current and voltage transformers are to be supplied as part of a package of engineering support that also sees CMR completing the integration and connection of plant wide power monitoring to Siemens PCS 7 process control technology.

“Winning the Holcim contract reflects the expertise we can bring to successfully delivering complex and technologically advanced industrial projects,” said Rojel Rivera, general manager at CMR Philippines.

CMR Philippines is part of the CMR Group, which designs, manufactures and commissions automation, control system and turnkey project solutions for global industrial and renewable energy sectors, alongside specialist instrumentation for high power diesel engines.

Cameroon: The electricity supply in parts of central and southern Cameroon has been disrupted whilst a substation at Nomayos near Yaoundé is connected to the main network. The disruption is necessary ahead of the commissioning of Cimencam’s Nomayos cement grinding plant, which is scheduled for the first quarter of 2019, according to Business in Cameroon. The new plant will have a production capacity of 0.5Mt/yr. It has an investment of around US$40m.

Nepal: Udayapur Cement’s production is being reduced due to power cuts. The plant has a production capacity of 800t/day of clinker but at times it has been reduced to only just 100t/day, according to the Republica newspaper. The cement producer says that the cuts have cost it over US$0.4m.

The electricity outages have also damaged machinery such as gears in cement-packaging equipment and raised general costs through repeated start-ups. The unit suffered 62 power cuts from 15 January to 2 February 2019 lasting a total of 23 hours. As many as six stoppages in a single day have been reported.

The Nepal Electricity Authority supplies electricity to the plant. It has blamed the ‘incompetence’ of officials at a substation.

Sweden: HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary Cementa has completed a feasibility study into electrifying its cement plant at Slite in Gotland as part of its Cemzero project. A report from the first phase of the project has been submitted to the Swedish Energy Agency.

The study found that using electricity to supply heat during the clinker production process is possible using plasma technology, although this needs to be tested on a larger scale. Using an electrified process was found to be competitive compared to other options for achieving high reductions in carbon emission. The production cost of cement would be doubled approximately but the research suggested that this might only mean a small percentage increase to the end cost of a building or an infrastructure project. Finally, the study reported that any future electrification of the Slite plant would work well with a planned expansion to wind turbine generation at the site. It would improve the energy balance and reduce the maximum power surplus that might occur.

Cementa and energy company Vatenfall will now look at how to build a pilot plant.