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Algeria has been steadily building up cement industry interest over the past few months. In late 2013 Lafarge opened its fourth world research laboratory in Algiers. Then this week South African producer PPC confirmed its intention to enter the local market with a new plant and German construction firm ThyssenKrupp announced an order to build a cement plant for Groupe Industriel des Ciments d'Algérie.

According to United States Geological Survey (USGS) data, Algeria saw its cement production more than double from 9Mt/yr in 2002 to 20Mt/yr in 2011. At present Global Cement Directory 2014 figures places the country's cement production capacity from 21Mt/yr with 30Mt/yr a reasonable estimate for 2017. Throw in similarly rising gross domestic product per capita, US$7500 in 2013, with infrastructure investments of US$286bn planned and Algeria appears to be a promising investment for the cement market.

Lafarge, which holds minority stakes in two cement plants in the country, reported that market demand was high in 2012. Its cement sales rose by 9% year-on-year in 2013. The other major foreign player, ASEC Cement, reported in its 2012 financial report that Algeria consumed 21Mt of cement in 2012 but that it had to import 3Mt that year. ASEC was planning to build a 3.16Mt/yr plant at Djelfa to plug that market gap. Yet news reports in early 2013 reveal that the project was paused due to financial issues at ASEC with the suggestion of a possible downgrade to a 1.5Mt/yr production capacity instead.

The decision by PPC to build in Algeria is the first big project by one of Africa's international sub-Saharan cement producers north of the Sahara. It steps away from PPC's expansion strategy so far of building projects out from South Africa. Hodna in Algeria is a long way from Johannesburg! It will also cause tension between PPC and whoever is supplying imported cement to Algeria, most likely indebted southern European producers. Both PPC and its Nigerian competitor Dangote are used to fighting foreign imports to their core markets. Data from the Algerian customs office show that the value of cement imports to Algeria in 2013 rose by 26% year-on-year to US$395m. That's a market worth fighting for.

Switzerland: Holcim's board of directors plan to nominate Jürg Oleas for election as a new board member at the company's annual general meeting on 29 April 2014.

Oleas, aged 56 and a Swiss national, holds an MSc in mechanical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He is the CEO of GEA Group AG, a Dusseldorf-based mechanical engineering company listed on Germany's MDAX stock index. Before joining the GEA Group, he spent nearly 20 years with ABB and the Alstom Group, where he held several management positions.

The Holcim board of directors also intend to propose the election of Wolfgang Reitzle as the new chairman. He will be proposed to succeed Rolf Soiron, who has been the chairman for the past 11 years and a member of the board of directors for 20 years.

UK: The Minerals Product Association (MPA) has published its first Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). The EPD declares the UK cement industry's life cycle environmental impact and covers 100% of domestically produced cement. It builds on 10 years of sustainability information published in annual sustainability performance reports.

"Our new EPD demonstrates that we are meeting UK stakeholder and supply chain expectations by providing a detailed level of environmental footprint information," said Executive Director MPA Cement, Pal Chana.

The EPD is a standardised way of quantifying the embodied environmental impacts of a product or system over its lifetime. The information declared includes data on the environmental impacts of raw materials acquisition, energy use and efficiency, content of materials and chemical substances, emissions to air, soil and water and waste generation. Institut Bauen und Umwelt, the Institute for Construction and Environment, Europe's leading EPD programme operator, has independently verified and approved the UK Average Portland Cement EPD.

The publication of the UK average cement EPD is will allow the future production of EPDs for concrete products. The concrete industry will also be able to provide designers, contractors and clients with concrete EPD information to use in their project environmental assessment.

Spain: Cementos Molins has reported 77% fall year-on-year in its profit in 2013 to Euro10.1m. The company blamed the decline in profit to a lack of one-off items on its balance sheet. Revenue fell by 9.4% to Euro832m and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 18.3% to Euro158m.

Kazakhstan: Karcement JSC, a subsidiary of Steppe Cement, has successfully completed the commissioning of its new dry-process Line 5. The new kiln line will increase Steppe Cement's total cement production capacity by 1.5Mt/yr.

China: The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has set a timetable for eliminating out-dated cement plants. The MIIT has requested that local governments in China work out structural adjustment plans for the cement industry before the end of March 2014 and propose detailed treatment measures towards on-going and finished contravening cement projects before the end of June 2014, according to the Xinhua Chinese news agency.

Hebei province has been asked to cut its cement production capacity by 60Mt/yr by 2017. Jiangsu province is to cut its production capacity by 10Mt/yr and Jiangxi province must cut its capacity by 5Mt/yr. The MIIT expects that cement production utilisation will be improved to over 75% by the end 2017 after the cement industry follows its measures. Emissions of dust and nitrogen oxide will be cut by more than 40% and the cement industry's average profit margin should be no less than the manufacturing industry's average.

Zambia: Lafarge Zambia is building a cement depot in Chipata District, Eastern Province with an investment of US$0.7m. The depot will have a storage capacity of 3000t. Emmanuel Rigaux, managing director of Lafarge Zambia, said that Lafarge had decided to build the depot due to high demand for cement. However, he added that this new storage capacity would not be enough for the whole province and that the company would increase its number of warehouses depending on demand.

Ivory Coast: King Mohammed VI of Morocco, with Ivorian Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan, has launched a Euro12m cement packing plant in Abidjan. The plant has a bag production capacity of 80Mt/yr that can be extended to 160Mt/yr. The Africa-Cote d'Ivoire Cement company plant (CIMAF-Cote d'Ivoire), a subsidiary of Addoha Moroccan group, will supply bags for the group's cement projects in Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea Conakry, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Niger and Mali.

As part of the delegation the Moroccan King and Duncan also visited a 0.5Mt/yr Addoha clinker plant in Abidjan. This unit has been operational since July 2013 and it imports clinker from the Addoha-subsidiary Ciment Atlas (CIMAT), which has two cement plants in Morocco.

Algeria: ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions has received an order to build a 6000t/day cement plant for Société des Ciments de Ain El Kebira (SCAEK), a subsidiary of Groupe Industriel des Ciments d'Algérie (GICA). The cement plant will be built in Ain El Kebira with start-up planned for 2016.

The order includes the supply of components for raw material processing, clinker manufacture and cement loading, the installation of a laboratory automation system for quality assurance and monitoring and the turnkey handover of the plant to the customer.

The key components are a 2000t/hr crusher for limestone and marl, a 500t/hr crusher for aggregates and a 50,000t capacity circular blending bed. Raw materials will be ground in two Polysius QUADROPOL QMR2 roller mills, with a throughput 350t/hr and a 30,000t homogenising silo will be used to store raw meal.

The kiln line comprises a five-stage, two-string PREPOL AS preheater, a 5.2 x 78m rotary kiln and a Polysius POLYTRACK cooler with intermediate crusher. Cement grinding will be carried out in three ball mills with high-efficiency SEPOL separators (5 x 14.5m, 6000kW central drive). Four storage silos each with a capacity of 20,000t of cement, four packaging lines, and six automatic and two manual loaders round out the plant. The Polysius POLAB laboratory automation system will be installed for quality monitoring and control.

Indonesia: Hazemag & EPR has won a contract to supply a large crushing plant for a Sinoma International Engineering cement plant project on behalf of PT Cemindo Gemilang. The completed cement plant will have a production capacity of 10,000t/day and will be situated in Bayah, Java. Delivery of the plant is scheduled for the end of 2014.

The crushing plant to be supplied consists of a large apron feeder and a wobbler feeder for pre-screening. The impact crusher, with a rotor diameter of 2.5m and a rotor width of 3.0m, is the largest impact crusher that Hazemag produces. The crushing plant also includes a smaller apron feeder to allow two different raw materials to be processed at the same time. The crusher is equipped with a GSK-rotor and a hydraulic impact apron support system HAZtronic®. The total plant capacity is 2500t/hr.