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A couple of news stories have emerged from West Africa this week reminding Global Cement of the growth potential the region holds. First Ghacem announced that it had opened a new truck terminal at Sefwi Dwenase in Ghana. Then LafargeHolcim Ivory Coast inaugurated a new mill at its grinding plant in Abidjan. Then Cimburkina, a subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement, said that it was starting work on enlarging its grinding plant at Kossodo in Burkina Faso.

The other theme that received some coverage this week was another attempt by an African government to regulate its hastily growing cement sectors. Jean-Claude Brou, the Minister of Industry and Mines in Ivory Coast also found time to announce the creation of a commission to monitor the quality control of cement when he inaugurated the new mill in Abidjan. As building collapses due to substandard cement in Nigeria have shown, this kind of government monitoring is essential to protect the public in booming markets. Unfortunately, rightly or wrongly, these kind of bodies often seem to end up embroiled in rows about imports of cement competing with local producers.

Away from the cut and thrust of the market, the new mill at Abidjan is particularly interesting because it was imported and reinstalled piece-by-piece from its original home at a former Holcim plant in Spain. The move cost Euro23m and LafargeHolcim say that it is now the largest horizontal ball mill in French-speaking west Africa. The 1Mt/yr year mill was originally manufactured by Polysius (ThyssenKrupp) in 2006 and uses a 4500kW motor.

Data from the National Institute for Statistics in Ivory Coast reported a 39% rise year-on-year in cement production to 1.64Mt in the first half of 2017. This follows reports of cement shortages in early 2017. The government then took the action of importing 0.15Mt of cement to meet the shortfall until local production capacity caught up.

This is starting to happen now with the LafargeHolcim opening. Other projects that were in the pipeline include Cim Ivoire’s 2.6Mt/yr grinding plant, also in Abidjan, that was due to be completed by the end of 2017. This project is interesting because Cim Ivoire is a subsidiary of Burkina Faso’s Cim Metal Group. It also operates a grinding plant, Cimfaso, near the capital Ouagadougou. Similar to LafargeHolcim it is preparing its supply lines to the African interior. Finally, Nigeria’s Dangote Cement was also building a 3Mt/yr grinding plant near Abidjan. This unit was due to be finished by the end of 2017 but there has been little news about it in recent months.

Ghana’s cement industry has been consolidating itself and is facing an oversupply situation. The government placed production capacity at 8.5Mt/yr in 2016 versus demand of 6Mt. It has since made the headlines with spats between local producers and foreign companies like Dangote Cement. Unlike Ivory Coast, Ghana has two integrated plants that, no doubt, want to preserve their markets from imports. Despite this, Ciments de l'Afrique (CIMAF) and Diamond Cement both opened plants in late 2016. More recently two grinding plant projects have been announced near Tema.

Although the timing is fortuitous , we admit that these stories are fairly loosely connected at best. However, they do illustrate an inward development trend in the region. Bigger and more efficient grinding plants to process locally made or imported clinker, more terminal infrastructure to distribute the cement and then more grinding plants further inside the region geographically as the logistics situation permits. The Cimburkina plant, for example, is situated in landlocked Burkina Faso. Clinker for its mills will initially be supplied by HeidelbergCement’s integrated Scantogo plant at Tabligbo. The drive to develop these countries moves ever forwards and they demand cement.

India: Shri Sajjan Bhajanka has been appointed as the new Managing Director of Star Cement. He is a Commerce Graduate from Dibrugarh University, Assam. He has business and industrial experience of more than 25 years in the fields of plywood, ferro silicon and granite. He is the Managing Director of Century Plyboards (I) Limited, the largest producer of plywood, laminates and block-boards in India. Mr. Bhajanka is also the Chairman of Shyam Century Ferrous Ltd., one of the leading manufacturers of Ferro Silicon in India. He is also the President of the Federation of Indian Plywood and Panel Industry and All India Veneer Manufacturers Association.

Austria: Christoph Stotter has been appointed as the head of Development & Quality Assurance at w+p Zement. He succeeds Walter Steinwender, who had been working at the Wietersdorf plant since 2008. Stotter studied at the Montanuniversität in Leoben and has since gained experience in process engineering, research and development and product management.

Honduras: Colombian cement manufacturer Cementos Argos has reported a positive performance in Honduras. The company, which entered the domestic market in 2013, sold over 1.1Mt of cement in the local market in 2017, a record figure that was 15% more than the 0.95Mt that it sold in 2016.

India: Binani Cement is back on the market after its liabilities were revised upwards, according to sources close to the deal. JSW Cement had previously emerged as the winner of a very competitive bidding process earlier in 2018 with an offer of US$919m. The creditors have now sought fresh bids from interested parties, which previously included LafargeHolcim, HeidelbergCement, Ramco Cement, UltraTech Cement, Dalmia Bharat and the Bain Piramal Resurgence Fund. The resolution professional, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP partner Vijaykumar Iyer, has set a new deadline of 12 February 2018, extended from 5 February 2018.

The additional liability of around US$250m has emerged due to Binani Cement’s corporate guarantee for the acquisition of a fibreglass asset in Europe known as 3B in 2012 by group company Binani Industries. As one of the contacts close to the deal is reported to have said, ‘this is not a small amount.’

Uzbekistan: In 2017 Qizilqumsement JSC, the biggest cement plant in Uzbekistan, increased cement production to 3.6Mt, 1.9% more than in 2016. 60% of the production volume was sold through exchange trades, 23% to direct contracts with regulated prices, 15% was exported and 2% was sold according to direct contracts based on exchange quotations. According to the business plan of Qizilqumsement JSC, cement production is expected to be at least 3.5Mt in 2018.

There are five large cement facilities and several small ones with total capacity of 8.5Mt/yr in Uzbekistan. The country exports cement to Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Argentina: Cement producers in Argentina sold 1.03Mt of Portland cement in January 2018, including exports. This represented a 3.2% increase compared to sales in December 2017 and was 17.3% higher than sales made in January 2017, according to data from AFCP. Domestic sales, including imports, totalled 1.04Mt, 3.9% above the same sales in December 2017 and 19.4% higher than sales in January 2017.

Mexico: Cruz Azul has been forced to partially close its cement plant in Tula, Hidalgo due to a lack of an active environmental clearance certificate. Personnel from the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection made an inspection of the facilities at the cement plant. When verifying the documentation, they found that it lacked the current authorisation issued by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. In this situation, the temporary partial closure of the plant was imposed as a safety measure.

Bolivia: Itacamba plans exports of 119,000t of cement to Paraguay and Argentina in 2018. It will send over 60,000t to Argentina alone. It will also begin exports to Paraguay. Itacamba exported 4000t to Argentina and 158,000t of clinker to Paraguay in 2017.

Turkey: Dal Teknik Makina has completed an upgrade project on Kiln Line 1 at Nuh Çimento in Kocaeli. Key features of the project included increasing the line’s production capacity, decreasing its energy requirements, making savings on power consumption and lowering the exit temperature of the clinker. The work has increased the plant’s production capacity to 3400t/day from 2800t/day. Other benefits of the update include decreasing the specific heat consumption of clinker to 740kcal/kg clinker from 870kcal/kg clinker, reducing electrical power consumption by 7kWh/t and increasing the raw mill capacity to 185t/hr from 160t/hr. The exit temperature of clinker was also reduced to 55^oC plus the ambient temperature.

This project involved the design, manufacturing and erection of the pre-heater tower cyclones group, kiln feed transport system, clinker cooler, kiln hood, removing of dust cyclone at tertiary air duct, cooler vent fan modification, main bag filter duct modification and kiln inlet seal and commissioning of the system.

The first part of the upgrade project was the modification of the pre-heater tower, which as a result reduced the pressure drop, improved heat transfer and separation efficiency, and heat consumption. The second part of the project was the retrofit of the grate cooler. The clinker cooler, kiln hood, cooler fans and cooler vent fan were replaced by Fons Technology International. In this part, kiln hood, cooler vent, exit pipe of waste heat recovery (WHR) unit and tertiary air duct were modified as well. The third part was to replace the horizontal duct of main bag filter inlet with an inclined one in order to avoid dust accumulation. The last step was the replacement of the pneumatic kiln feed by bucket elevator.

The project followed Dal Teknik Makina’s Filter-To-Filter Pyro-Process Concept.