Displaying items by tag: Germany

Germany: Beumer Group has developed the Beumer Overall Operation Monitoring app, and mobile phone application that enables staff to maintain an overview of all the relevant parameters of their packaging line. The application shows the status of availability, performance and quality levels as well as the energy and compressed air consumption. The program can be adapted to customer-specific requirements. The development is intended to move Beumer Group’s products and practices towards the so-called Industry 4.0 with increased automation and data exchange for industrial processes.

Plenty to mull over this week in Cembureau’s newly published Activity Report for 2016. The association pulls together data from a variety of places including its own sources, Eurostat and Euroconstruct. For competition reasons much of it stops in 2015 but it paints a compelling picture of a continental cement industry starting to find its feet again.

Graph 1: Cement intensity of the construction sector in Europe, 2000 – 2015. Source: Cembureau calculation based on Eurostat and Euroconstruct in Activity Report for 2016.

The really interesting data concerns so-called cement intensity. This is the quantity of cement consumed per billion Euro invested in construction. Figures calculated by Cembureau from data from Eurostat and Eurocontruct show that cement intensity has remained stable in Germany, France and the UK but that it fell sharply in Spain and Italy from 2000 to 2015. In other words the pattern of construction changed in these countries. One suggestion for this that Cembureau offers is that construction moved from new projects to renovation and maintenance. These types of construction projects require less cement than new builds. Seen in this context the huge production over capacities seen in Italy and Spain in recent years makes sense as the local cement industries have coped with both the economic crash and a step change in their national construction markets.

Further data in the report falls in line with the impression given by the multinational cement producers in their quarterly and annual financial reports. Cement production picked up in the Cembureau member states from 2012 and in the European Union members (EU28) from 2013. Meanwhile, import and export figures disentangled from a close relationship at the time of the financial crash in 2008 with imports of cement declining and exports increasing markedly. Much of it will have originated from Italy and Spain as their industries coped with the changes. Cembureau then forecasts that cement consumption will rise in 2017 by 2.4% and 3.5% in 2018 in the 19 countries than form the Euroconstruct network. A key point to note here is that most of the larger European economies will see consumption consistently grow in 2017 and 2018 with the exception of France where it growth will remain positive but it will slow somewhat in 2018. This fits with last week’s column about France with the early reports from LafargeHolcim, HeidelbergCement and Vicat reporting slight declines in sales volumes so far in 2017.

Cembureau’s country-by-country analysis also provides a good overview of its member industries. Looking at the larger economies, residential construction was the main driver for cement consumption in France and Germany in 2016. In Germany further growth is hoped for from an increased infrastructure budget set by the Federal Government. Italian cement consumption fell in 2016 and further decreases are anticipated for 2017, particularly from the public sector. By contrast though the story in Spain is still one of declining cement consumption but one heavily mitigated by exports. Spain is the described by Cembureau as the leading EU export country. Finally, there’s little recent on the UK other than uncertainty concerns about the Brexit process and an anticipated rise in infrastructure spending by 2019. The sparse detail here is probably for the best given the current political deadlock in the UK following the continued fallout from the general election in early June 2017.

In summary, Cembureau’s data shows that modest growth is happening in the cement industries of its member countries. It’s not uniform and some nations such as Spain and Italy are coping with changes in the composition of their industries. Cembureau also highlights the unpredictable consequences of the UK’s departure from the EU as one of the biggest risks in 2017. Check out the report for more information.

Germany: Cemtec has successfully transported a 170t cement grinding mill from its headquarters in Enns, Austria to a client in Bavaria. The transported equipment had an internal diameter of 4.6m, an outside diameter of 5.2m and a length of over 17m. Due to the size of the mill the transportation could not be carried out on motorways and the engineering company was forced to use smaller roads and inland waterways include the River Danube. Extra challenges included using additional haulage vehicles to cope with inclines of up to almost 14%, temporarily removing electricity and telephone cables in certain locations, laying road slabs at crossroads and shutting a motorway while the mill crossed it. The total transportation time took eight days.

Germany: Michael Ambros has been appointed as the managing director of KA Schmersal, part of the Schmersal Group. Ambros is responsible for the Administration and Sales & Marketing divisions on a global basis. Fellow managing director Michael Mandel will run the technical divisions alongside Ambros. The company’s management team includes both Ambros and Mandel, plus two managing shareholders, Heinz and Philip Schmersal. The Schmersal Group develops and produces a range of switchgear and control devices.

Germany: Peter Feldhaus has been appointed as the new chief executive officer (CEO) of the Industrial Solutions business division of ThyssenKrupp. Feldhaus, aged 50 years, succeeds Stefan Gesing, who was the acting CEO of the division. Gesing remains as the chief financial officer of the group. The new CEO of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems will be Rolf Wirtz, currently CEO of Atlas Elektronik. Jens Bodo Koch, member of the management board of Atlas Elektronik, is to take over as acting CEO.

Germany: Susanne Fuchs has been elected to the supervisory board of Fuchs Petrolub in place of her father Manfred Fuchs. Manfred Fuchs, aged 78 years, resigned as deputy chairman of the board at the end of the group’s annual general meeting. The company’s chairman of the executive board is Manfred Fuchs’s son, Stefan Fuchs. Susanne Fuchs holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine and successfully completed her MBA at the Open University in the UK in 2016.

Germany: HeidelbergCement has suffered from poor sales in Asian and African markets as it continues to integrate assets from Italcementi into the group. Its pro forma sales revenue remained stagnant on a like-for-like basis at Euro3.78bn in the first quarter of 2017. Its cement sales volumes also remained static on a like-for-like basis at 27.8Mt. Although the group described its fortunes as ‘mixed’ in its emerging markets it reported sales declines in Thailand, Bangladesh and Egypt.

“We were able to almost offset the effect of higher energy costs, bad weather conditions and increased competition in some emerging countries in the most seasonally weak quarter of the year,” said Bernd Scheifele, chairman of the managing board. He added that the overall outlook for the global economy is positive despite ‘major’ macroeconomic and geopolitical risks. The group derives about 60% of its revenue from the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, countries in Northern Europe and Australia. As such it relies on the ‘good and stable economic development’ of these territories.

Overall the group’s cement sales volumes grew by 58% to 27.8Mt from 17.6Mt due to the acquisition of Italcementi in mid-2016. Its sales revenue from its cement business grew by 49% to Euro1.9bn from Euro1.3bn.

By region, sales in Europe and North America rose in the reporting period despite a strong comparison quarter in 2016 and poor weather. Falling prices in Indonesia and Ghana were described as the main cause for falling revenue in Asia and Africa. Results in Western and Southern Europe were also damaged by higher maintenance costs year-on-year.

Germany: Klaus Paul has been appointed as the Technical Managing Director of Schade Lagertechnik. His appointment is in response to the impending retirement of Karl-Heinz Fiegenbaum on 30 June 2017. Fiegenbaum has been Managing Director of the company since July 2011. He will be replaced by Christoph Seifert, who moves across to this position after having started with Schade as Technical Managing Director in February 2015.

Paul started his career in 1977 with Friedrich Uhde where he started working as a draughtsman at the age of 16. Following the competition of an engineering degree he stayed with the company, which eventually became part of ThyssenKrupp Group. From 2012, he was with Uhde OOO, a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp in Russia, first as Director of Project and Site Management, and later as one of the Managing Directors of Uhde / OOO ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions Russia.

Germany: Loesche has merged its activities in the combustion systems and drying systems sector into a central location at their main centre under the name Loesche Thermal Applications. Alongside the established hot gas generators, the business incorporates combustion systems for solid, liquid and gaseous fuels as well as complete drying systems for a wide variety of industrial applications, including the cement industry.

By uniting the core competencies in the thermal applications sector, the Loesche group seeks to strengthen its market position. Pooling marketing, project management, purchasing, processing technology and proactive development together with an individual burner test facility at the in-house test centre are also intended to raise efficiency. The business reorganisation will also see the merger of Loesche with A Tec Greco Combustion Systems Europe, a subsidiary that is currently based in Austria.

Germany: Currax is promoting its Integrated Drive System for use by conveyor belt systems in the raw material sector. The complete drive train uses components made by Siemens that are then tailored for a conveyor’s particular requirements. Parts of the system include: the Simotics FD Motor, a conveyor belt drive with a power range of 200 – 1800kW; the Flender B3SH Gear units that are avaialble in various sizes; and the Rupex Bolt coupling, an additonal element for conveyor belt drives that are use as elastic compensating couplings and that provides a torque range of 200 – 130,000Nm. Currax is an enginering company based in Hamburg that provides and distributes products for the drive chain.