Displaying items by tag: Germany

Germany: Claudius Peters’ revenue rose by 7.5% year-on-year to Euro103m in 2018 from Euro95.6m in 2017. Its orders in hand fell by 31% to Euro56.8m from Euro81.8m. The company said that it remained profitable despite low volumes, with only China exceeding expectations. It also reported that a number of major projects were delayed, mainly in Russia and one in Germany. Overall, company owner Langley Holdings said that despite falling revenue and profit, it had experienced a ‘satisfactory’ year following a record year in 2017.

Italy: Buzzi Unicem’s net sales rose by 2.4% year-on-year to Euro2.87bn in 2018 from Euro2.81bn in 2017. Its cement and clinker sales volumes increased by 4.3% to 27.9Mt from 26.8Mt. Ready-mix concrete sales fell by 3.6% to 11.8Mm³ from 12.3Mm³.

It attributed cement and clinker sales increase to acquisitions in Italy and Germany and good market conditions in the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia. However, poor weather hampered business in the US and a ‘strong’ decrease in business levels was reported in Ukraine. In Italy the cement producer benefited from its acquisition of Cementizillo in the second half of 2017. In Germany it purchased Seibel & Söhne and noted demand for oil well cements.

Germany/Russia: Intercem has been awarded new orders in Germany and Russia. In Russia it will supply a high-efficiency separator ICS 143, as well as the associated plant aggregates to a new cement plant. The high-efficiency separator, an in-house development manufactured in the company workshop, has a capacity of 115t/hr at 3000cm²/g acc. to Blaine and a total output of 258t/hr. The volume flow classifying air is 143.000m³/hr. The scope of supply also includes the engineering for the complete grinding plant as well as the supervision of the assembly and the commissioning of the components included in the delivery.

In Germany it will supply silos for Zementwek Lübeck’s grinding plant. The order includes a silo unit consisting of four steel silos with a capacity of 1200m³ each. In addition, the bulk loading and the complex cement conveying via air slides and bucket elevators leading over the complete area of the plant are part of the scope of supply. The scope of supply also includes the engineering and associated plant components, such as support structure, catwalks, filters, bucket elevators, return lines, electrical equipment, as well as building application and dispatch automation. Completion is scheduled for the third quarter of 2019.

The German engineering company has also won a contract to optimise a secondary fuel dosing system at a German cement plant.

Oman: Raysut Cement has signed an agreement with Ayoki Engineering for upgrading its clinker cooler line three at its Salalah plant. The local engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor will source the equipment from Germany’s IKN, according to the Muscat Daily newspaper.

The existing grate cooler at the unit will be replaced by a 4000t/day IKN Pendulum clinker cooler with a guaranteed capacity of 3500t/day clinker production. The project scope includes related civil works, supply and installation works of mechanical and electrical works. Sourcing and installation of the refractory will also be under the responsibility of Ayoki Engineering through IKN. Final installation of the project is planned for the fourth quarter of 2019.

US/Germany: LafargeHolcim has acquired ready-mix concrete businesses in the US and Germany. On 1 February 2019 it acquired Transit Mix Concrete, a supplier of building materials in Colorado and subsidiary of Continental Materials Corporation, for US$27m. As part of the transaction, LafargeHolcim takes ownership of Transit’s seven concrete plants and a sand quarry. Transit Mix has more than 180 employees.

In January 2019, LafargeHolcim acquired the precast and ready-mix concrete businesses of Alfons Greten Betonwerk in northern Germany. Greten operates one precast and one ready-mix concrete plant in the state of Lower Saxony. Greten employs around 100 people.

“In line with our Strategy 2022 – Building for Growth, these acquisitions will generate synergies with LafargeHolcim’s existing operations. With these further bolt-on acquisitions we are delivering on our commitment to accelerate growth in the ready-mix concrete and aggregates segments,” said chief executive officer (CEO) Jan Jenisch.

Germany: HeidelbergCement has been awarded ‘A-‘ in the climate change category of CDP’s Climate A List. It also received the same score in the water security category. The result marked it as the highest-scoring cement company on the list beating other major international producers such as LafargeHolcim, Cemex and CRH. Notably, these other cement companies each received ‘F’ for water security due to a lack of sufficient information available. CDP analyses data from over 6800 large companies around the world.

“This is a strong confirmation that we are on the right track with our Sustainability Commitments 2030. The excellent result encourages us to further reduce our ecological footprint across all business lines and on a global level,” said Bernd Scheifele, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement.

Germany: E-nizing, a subsidiary of Schenck Process, has launched its E-nizing application. The software product offers to integrate all Internet of Things (IoT) machines collecting data from any machine, analytics or sensor. It is an open system, highly scalable and offers everything in one place, independently of its vendors. Non-IoT machines can also be retrofitted for the product.

The product also offers visualisation, analysis and action tools. Limits for every data point can be set and linked to triggers via telephone, email or application programming interface (API) call. For example, notifications can be set to notify a plant if there is a problem with a machine or to order spare parts or requisition maintenance automatically. E-nizing also says that the product is safe using end-to-end payload encryption, unique encryption keys, two-factor authentication and certified data security.

“On behalf of the team I am delighted to announce the launch of E-nizing. The market showed a need for what E-nizing offers for a long time and we are now providing the answer. E-nizing already supports many Schenck Process machines’ monitoring, with many more coming soon. We do, what everyone’s always talking about. Easy industry 4.0 is now becoming reality,” said Andreas Evertz, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Schenck Process and Managing Director of E-nizing.

Germany: Spenner has ordered a grinding plant from Christian Pfeiffer to be built at its main site in Erwitte. The unit will include a Ø 4.4 m x 14.0 m ball mill and a QDK 187-Z cross-flow rotating cage separator. In addition to the grinding plant, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) project also includes the planning of steel and concrete constructions as well as electrical switchgears.

Christian Pfeiffer is also responsible for the manufacture, delivery and optimum coordination of all associated components such as filter systems, bucket elevator, fans, chutes, samplers, reject transport and additional silos for additives. Staff training and performance test procedures carried out by the Christian Pfeiffer employees on site are also part of the commissioning of the plant.

Iraq: Germany’s MAN Energy has commissioned six MAN 18V32/40 generator sets for Kairat Al Abar Iraqi’s new cement plant in Samawa. The engines will supply 54MW of electrical energy for the plant. No value for the order has been disclosed.

More details from HeidelbergCement this week on its divestment strategy. It has sold its half-share in Ciment Québec in Canada and a minority share in a company in Syria. A closed cement plant in Egypt is being sold and it is working on divesting its business in Ukraine. Altogether these four sales will generate Euro150m for the group. Chairman Bernd Scheifele said that the company expects to rake in Euro500m from asset sales in 2018. It has a target of Euro1.5bn by the end of 2020.

In purely cement terms that is something like seven integrated plants. So the usual game follows of considering what assets HeidelbergCement might consider selling. The group offered a few clues in a presentation that Scheifele was due to give earlier this week at the Commerzbank German Investment Seminar in New York.

First of all the producer said that it was hopeful for 2019 due to limited energy cost inflation, better weather in the US, the Indonesian market turning, general margin improvement actions and sustained price rises in Europe. It then said that its divestments would focus on three main categories: non-core business, weak market positions and idle assets. The first covers sectors outside of the trio of cement, aggregates and ready-mix concrete. Things like white cement plants or sand lime brick production. Countries or areas it identified it had already executed divestments in included Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Syria and Quebec in Canada. Idle assets included depleted quarries and land.

The first obvious candidate for divestment could be the company’s two majority owned integrated plants in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These might be considered targets due to the political instability in the country. However, this is balanced by the potential long-term gains once that country stabilises. Alternatively, some of the plants in Italy seem like a target. The company had seven integrated plants, eight grinding plants and one terminal in 2018.

The presentation also pointed out the sharp rise in European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) CO₂ emissions allowances, from around Euro5/t in 2017 to up to Euro20/t by the end of 2018. In late 2018 Cementa, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement in Sweden, said it was considering closing Degerhamn plant due to mounting environmental costs. The group reckons it can fight a high carbon price through consolidation, capacity closure, higher utilisation, limited exports and pricing. It also pointed out that it is a technology leader in carbon reduction projects. It will be interesting to see how environmental costs play into HeidelbergCement’s divestment decisions.

Finally, a tweet by Sasja Beslik, the head of sustainable finance at Nordea, flagged up a few cement companies as being the worst companies for increasing CO₂ emissions between 2011 and 2016. HeidelbergCement was 19th on the list after LafargeHolcim and CRH. Sure, cement production makes CO₂ but it’s far from clear whether the data from MSCI took into account that each of these companies had expanded heavily during this time. In HeidelbergCement’s case it bought Italcementi in 2016. Cement companies aren’t perfect but sometimes there’s just no justice.