Displaying items by tag: GCW278

US: Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC) has completed its purchase of a selection of assets from Cemex for US$306m. The assets consist of a cement plant located in Odessa in Texas, two cement distribution terminals located in Amarillo and El Paso in Texas and concrete, aggregates, asphalt and building materials businesses in El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico. The acquisition comprises all facilities, equipment and inventories. The purchase was financed with internal funds and an unsecured loan of US$254m.

“This acquisition represents a significant advance in our strategy of sustainable cement growth in the US, in markets contiguous to those of GCC ́s geographic footprint. With these assets and colleagues joining the company, we will enhance the competitive advantage of our logistics system, expand our product portfolio and optimise our operations by sharing best practices,” said Enrique Escalante, chief executive officer of GCC.

Egypt: The Arabian Cement Company plans to spend US$5.7m on a new coal mill for its Suez cement plant. The upgrade is intended to increase production capacity at the site, according to the Daily News Egypt newspaper. At present the plant is operating at 60% capacity by using one coal mill. It imports coal from Europe, China and South Africa through the Dekheila Port of Alexandria and Adabiya Port in Suez.

The cement producer reported that its net profits fell by 36% year-on-year to US$8.97m in the first nine months of 2016 from US$14.1m in the same period in 2015. It blamed this on foreign exchange rates and a drop in sales due to technical problems at the plant.

India: Shree Cement has denied that it is in talks to buy a majority stake in Shiva Cement describing media reports as ‘purely speculative.’ Local media had reported that Shree was considering buying Shiva for around US$0.22/share.

Shiva Cement has a 0.2Mt/yr cement plant near Rourkela in Sundergarh district in Odisha with on-going plans to upgrade the site to 1Mt/yr. The company also has captive limestone reserves in the area and produces both Sumangal

Pakistan: The All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) has expressed concern over the effect that rises in the price of coal have had on the cost of cement production. Coal prices have nearly doubled to US$105/t from US$54/t in May 2016, according to the Nation newspaper. The cost of coal contributes more than 30% to the total production cost of cement manufacture. Coal prices have been rising since May 2016 when China started to limit its coal mining capacity. This has since been compounded by stricter local rules on coal transportation in Pakistan. The APCMA has urged the government to focus on the residential sector to diversify the construction industry.

Kenya: Savannah Cement has released further details on its plans to upgrade its Athi River grinding plant. It intends to increase the capacity at the site by 1.2Mt/yr to 2.4Mt/yr with the installation of a vertical roller mill. Additionally, new belt conveyors, a packing plant and dust filters will be added. It plans to have the upgrade commissioned by mid-2018, according to the Business Daily newspaper. It will be built from December 2016 to March 2018.

"We are hoping to issue the tender for the project in early 2017, possibly January or February. Being a second production line, construction work should take anything between 14 and 18 months, therefore we would have the plant up and running by mid-2018. Once we get the approvals we will immediately look to finalise the financing aspect of the project," said Savannah Cement managing director Ronald Ndegwa. The cement producer is adding production capacity to expand its range of cement, with a focus on its hydraulic road binder blend that is used in road construction.

Kenya: East African Portland Cement (EAPC) plans to lay-off over 1000 workers as part of plans to improve its efficiency. The company’s board has described the organisation as ‘severely over staffed’ and unable to compete with its rivals, according to Citizen Digital. At present it has around 2000 personnel and studies suggest that it only needs 500 of these workers to remain competitive.

Chairman Bill Lay said that high staff costs have contributed to the government-owned company’s financial problems. The management team is developing a voluntary early retirement program that will reduce staff levels. The company intends to spend US$19.6m towards the downsizing programme.

Nepal: The government will start certifying domestic brands of cement with quality grades by early 2017. Cement produced by local companies will be certified under three quality categories: 33-grade, 43-grade and 53-grade cement, according to the Himalayan Times. At present both domestically manufactured Ordinary Portland Cement and Portland Pozzolana Cement are labelled as 33-grade cement as the government provision doesn't allow producers to label their brands higher than grade 33. However, large-scale projects require higher grades of cement that have to be imported.

"We are in the last stage of finalising the draft of quality certification for domestic cement brands," said Bishwo Babu Pudasaini, director general of Nepal Bureau of Standards and Metrology (NBSM). Once NBSM finalises a quality certification draft, it will be sent to Nepal Standard Council (NSC) for final approval.

Ireland: CRH’s Europe Heavyside division’s sales have risen by 5% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2016. However, no exact figures were released by the group in a trading statement. Improved volumes and prices of cement were noted in the UK and a ‘limited’ impact so far by the British decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) was noted. In North America CRH’s Americas Materials division reported that proforma sales volumes of cement fell by 2% in the third quarter principally due to Canada. Its sales volumes have risen slightly by 1% so far in 2016. Overall, CRH’s sales rose by 6% to Euro20.4bn in the reporting period.

Morocco: LafargeHolcim, ArcelorMittal, Evonik and Solvay have formed a Low Carbon Technology Partnerships Initiative across the steel, cement and chemicals industries. This new partnership will look at the potential synergies that exist between the manufacturing processes of these three energy intensive sectors, and how these synergies could be harnessed to reduce CO₂ emissions.

As a first step, and following preliminary research, the innovative partnership will produce a study with the technical support of Arthur D Little to identify potential ways to valorise industrial off-gases and other by-products from their manufacturing processes to produce goods with a lower carbon footprint than through the fossil path. The preliminary research has already allowed identification of significant potential in selected trans-sector pathways.

The study is aimed at bringing a fact-based overview of carbon and energy sources from industrial off-gases (first at a European level), and evaluating the technical, environmental and economic feasibility of different Carbon Capture and Usage (CCU) pathways and their potential.

Initial findings from the first step already underway suggest that deploying cross-sector carbon capture and reuse opportunities on an industrial scale could reduce up to 3 GT/yr or 7% of global anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. Existing conversion technologies that could be deployed across the three sectors could utilise by-products in the off-gases to create building materials, organic chemicals and fuel. Increased availability and greater access to renewable energy sources would significantly boost net carbon reduction efforts by those three sectors, within a supportive legislative framework. Cross sector carbon capture and reuse should also result in job creation, to be further investigated.

The study, carried out at European level, is building the ground for similar investigation extended at global level and paves the way for identifying and assessing industrial scale projects on CCU at the interface between the sectors.

“Concrete offers the highest level of life-cycle sustainability performance and we are continuously developing new products and solutions for a low carbon society. This new ambitious partnership will support our mission to cut our net emissions per ton of cement by 40% towards 2030 (versus 1990) and to develop and further deploy low carbon solutions for the construction sector. But to make this a reality, we will need an enabling regulatory framework and support for innovation,” said Bernard Mathieu, Head Group Sustainable Development of LafargeHolcim.