Displaying items by tag: Huaxin Cement
Huaxin Cement plant named on National Green Manufacturing 2020 list
06 November 2020China: The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has named Huaxin Cement’s Yangxin plant in Hubei province on its National Green Manufacturing 2020 list. The list includes industrial facilities that have taken successful measures towards sustainability and pollution reduction.
The company said that the plants have together invested US$15m in “dust collection system transformation, rain and sewage separation projects, mill sound insulation and noise reduction treatment, kiln bypass air release and other large-scale environmental protection projects, supplemented by “greening and cleaning” and tree planting.” It added that the plant processes 219,000t/yr of refuse-derived fuel (RDF), saying, “This signifies our successful transformation from a traditional cement company to a green and environmentally friendly building materials company.”
Huaxin Cement’s nine-month sales and profit drop
29 October 2020China: Huaxin Cement’s sales in the first nine months of 2020 were US$3.04bn, down by 9.2% year-on-year from US$3.35bn over the corresponding period of 2019. Net profit also dropped by 17% to US$660m from US$800m.
Huaxin Cement predicts 44% nine-month profit drop in 2020
13 October 2020China: Huaxin Cement has published a figure for its predicted profit for the first nine months of 2020 of US$135m, down by 44% from US$241m in the first nine months of 2019. The company attributed the forecasted decline “mainly to the severe impact of the coronavirus epidemic in the first half of 2020 and the large-scale flooding in the River Yangtze in July.” It added, “The production and sales of the company’s leading products were greatly affected, and prices also fell, resulting in operating income decline.” The company noted that third-quarter profit is expected to increase by 5% year-on-year.
Huaxin Cement’s sales fall by 12.7% to US$1.84bn in first half of 2020
02 September 2020China: Huaxin Cement’s sales and profit fell in the first half of 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak. It said that the health situation, “resulted in grave insufficient demand in the markets of main products and rapid slump in price, coupled with restrictions on personnel flow and traffic, equipment maintenance plan was affected severely.” The cement producer disposed of medical waste for free at its Yangxin, Wuxue and Yichang plants before the market recovered in the second quarter.
Huaxin’s sales revenue fell by 12.7% year-on-year to US$1.84bn in the first half of 2020 from US$2.11bn in the same period in 2019. Its net profit dropped by 29% to US$330m from US$463m. Cement sales and concrete volumes declined by 8% to 32.7Mt. The company also started clinker production at its 2Mt/yr Jizzakh cement plant in Uzbekistan in June 2020.
Huaxin Tibet plants win Green Factory certification
16 July 2020China: The Tibet Autonomous Region Department of Economics and Information has awarded Huaxin Cement subsidiary Huaxin Tibet’s Shigatse Company Tibet Company cement plants with regional Green Factory status. The plants are among eight businesses across the autonomous region selected for their dedication to green development. The company says that it attaches “great importance to the protection of plateau ecology, the scientific development of mineral resources and the promotion of mine reclamation and greening.”
The Tibet Company circulates used cooling water from cement production into irrigation systems for mine reclamation. The Shigatse Company “strengthened the greening of mines and plant areas according to local conditions, and insisted on special environmental protection training for front-line employees and middle-level leaders,” improving environmental awareness across its operations, according to Huaxin Tibet.
Tanzania: Huaxin Cement subsidiary African Tanzanian Maweni Limestone has ignited the kiln and begun trial production of clinker at its newly upgraded 0.75Mt/yr Maweni Limestone clinker plant. Huaxin Cement acquired the subsidiary in May 2020 and begun upgrading the kiln line on 1 June 2020, in spite of the fact that only 14 Huaxin Cement management team colleagues remained in the country due to the company withdrawing staff to China prior to the coronavirus lockdown.
Huaxin Cement says that it will not upgrade the plant’s grinding unit “for various reasons.” The company said, “subject to the epidemic prevention and control situation, the company will send an excellent management team to implement advanced cement process technology and management. We are committed to turning Maweni Limestone into a benchmark industrial enterprise in Tanzania and promoting the local cement industry to achieve quality.”
Huaxin Cement ignites kiln in Uzbekistan
30 June 2020Uzbekistan: China-based Huaxin Cement has successfully ignited the kiln at its 2Mt/yr Jizzakh cement plant in Jizzakh Oblast. 200 employees attended the plant’ opening ceremony, which was streamed by video link to Huaxin Cement’s global headquarters in Wuhan Province. Huaxin Cement president Li Yeqing said, “Everyone has done a very good job, demonstrating the company's strength and personnel capabilities.” Trial operation had been due to begin in April 2020, but was delayed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Huaxin Cement burns drugs at Diwei plant
29 June 2020China: Huaxin Cement has announced that it burned 2.7t of seized opiates in its fuel mix at its Diwei cement plant in Chongqing. Representatives of the Chongqing Anti-Drug Committee, Public Service Bureau, Eco-Environmental Bureau and Procuratorate were in attendance. Huaxin Cement reports that the dangerous substances have been “safely disposed of.” The producer said that this is the largest single volume of drugs to have been combusted in a cement kiln. The plant previously burnt 1.22Mt of illicit substances in 2018.
Cement export shortcuts
10 June 2020Exports are the theme this week with news that the value of Turkey’s cement exports fell by 26% year-on-year in April 2020. Reporting from the Trend News Agency showed that the export market has been stable so far for the year to date, with some countries, like Kazakhstan, increasing exports and others, like France, decreasing exports. However the change in April may mark the start of a new trend.
As Tamer Saka, the chairman of the Turkish Cement Manufacturers’ Association (TÇMB), said earlier in the year, his country is one of biggest cement exporters in the world and among its most important markets are the US, Israel, Ghana and Ivory Coast. To look at one of these countries, United States Geology Survey (USGS) data shows that cement and clinker imports from Turkey to the US grew by 26% year-on-year to 1Mt for the first quarter of 2020 but that exports fell by 24% year-on-year to 0.11Mt in March 2020. Each of these countries is being affected in different ways by the coronavirus pandemic and at different times. Overall though, Saka’s and the TÇMB’s forecast in February 2020 that exports would rise by 15% year-on-year in 2020 is looking decidedly shaky. Any knock to the export market in Turkey is particularly unwanted given the poor state of the Turkish economy at the moment.
What would be useful to know here is how other major cement exporters are coping with the global situation. Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics shows that Pakistan’s cement exports dropped by 31% year-on-year to 0.36Mt in April 2020. Data from the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) for the same month tells a similar story. Its data shows a 57% drop in exports to 0.25Mt in April 2020, with a bigger share lost by plants in the north of the country than those in the south.
The other country to note is Vietnam. Here, data from the General Department of Vietnam Customs shows that cement exports fell by 9.7% year-on-year to 7.73Mt in the first quarter of 2020. This follows the announcement by Vietnam Cement Association (VCA) chair Nguyễn Quang Cung in May 2020 that all cement plant projects scheduled to begin in 2020 would be suspended. Luckily those currently being built avoided this fate. This has included a new line at Thanh Thang Group Cement’s integrated Bong Lang cement plant, which Germany’s Loesche has just sent a pair of clinker mills to this week.
These changes from the major cement exporters are bad for their host countries but the other side of the chain is how their destinations are affected. For example, Australia’s clinker imports nearly doubled between 2010 – 2011 and 2018 – 2019 to 4.1Mt. This compares to local clinker production of 5.6Mt in 2018 – 2019, according to the Cement Industry Federation and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. With this in mind, this week saw the resolution to a legal dispute between Wagners Holdings and Boral over a cement supply contract. Boral found a cheaper source of cement from Cement Australia in early 2019 and the two parties argued over their contract. This dispute may have nothing to do with foreign import levels but Wagners Holdings, Boral and Cement Australia all operate standalone clinker grinding plants and will all be subject to general market pricing trends. Higher international clinker levels may add pressure to pricing issues surrounding cement supply contracts in Australia and elsewhere.
Finally, cement trade flows aren’t the only commodity that has been affected by coronavirus disruption. The mass movement of workers home and then back to work is expected to complicate India’s return to business, as discussed in last week’s column. In this context it’s pleasing to come across one sign of normality. Local press in Hubei, China reported this week that workers from Huaxin Cement finally flew back to Uzbekistan. They were originally meant to commission a new plant in March 2020 but became stranded at home when they returned for the Chinese New Year. Commissioning of the plant is now planned for later in June 2020.
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Uzbekistan: Huaxin Cement has announced that 112 of its employees took the first charter flight from Hubei Province since the coronavirus lockdown began, arriving in Jizzakh, Jizzakh Oblast on 6 June 2020. Hubei Daily News has reported that Huaxin Cement’s upcoming 1.5Mt/yr integrated Jizzakh cement plant, previously scheduled for commissioning in March 2020, will now start operation in June 2020. Huaxin Cement thanked the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Civil Aviation authority for their support.