Displaying items by tag: Italy

Russia: Italy’s Sibilia has supplied vacuum units to Eurocement’s Voronezh and Peterburgcement plants. In connection to the order workers at the plants also underwent three days of associated training. The cement producer also plans to use equipment from Sibilia at different plants in the country.

US/Europe: US refractory manufacturer Plibrico has entered into a distribution partnership with the Pli Group Europe, a refractory distributor contractor based in Vienna, Austria. Under the new alliance, Pli Group Europe will provide full-service distribution of Plibrico’s Plico brand refractories in Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria, with immediate effect.

“Adding Pli Group Europe to our ranks of Pli Partners allows Plibrico to reinforce its expertise, enhance its service offering and strengthen the value chain offered to customers throughout Europe,” said Brad Taylor, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Plibrico.

Italy: Giulio Bozzini has been appointed as the chief financial officer (CFO) of Tenova. He will report to chief executive officer (CEO) Andrea Lovato.

He holds 30 years of financial and operational experience working for multinational companies. Since 1994, he has worked in Saipem, eventually becoming chief financial and strategy officer. From 2012 to 2016 was the executive vice president planning and control for Eni, an oil and gas subsidiary of Saipem. Bozzini graduated in Business Administration from Bocconi University in Milan.

We said to expect more consolidation in Italy. Well, today it happened. Last time Global Cement Weekly covered the country, in June 2017, it reported upon the Buzzi Unicem deal to buy Cementizillo. Today, HeidelbergCement announced that it is going to buy Cementir Italia from Cementir Holding for Euro315m.

Our first reaction is that the deal seems cheap. The agreement covers five integrated cement plants and two cement grinding plants with a total capacity of 5.5Mt/yr, as well as the network of terminals and concrete plants. HeidelbergCement is buying all of this for Euro57/t. This suggests a downward trend given that Buzzi Unicem paid Euro80/t for the Cementizillo units in mid-2017. Although, Cementir only paid Euro38/t when it purchased Sacci in mid-2016.

Cementir’s acquisition of Compagnie des Ciments Belges (CCB) boosted its sales revenue, volume and operating profit in 2016 and in the first half of 2017. However these figures suffered on a like-for-like basis due to falling revenue in Turkey and Malaysia. Overall revenue rose in Italy for the company in 2016 due to a growing ready mix concrete business. However, with this removed, its sales revenue would have fallen by 14% year-on-year due to a 13.5% decrease in the sales volumes of cement.

Cementir Holding chief executive officer (CEO) Francesco Caltagirone has framed the sale of Cementir Italia in terms of improved financial leverage. He’s placed it at close to 0.5x by the end of 2018. This, he says, will allow the group to “…take the opportunities arising in the future, as it has happened during the last twelve months.” By this he likely means the purchase of CCB. Given the low cost for what Cementir picked up the bankrupt Sacci, it makes one wonder whether their plan all along was to leave Italy and they just happened to pick up a bargain along the way.

Meanwhile, HeidelbergCement has framed its acquisition in terms of preparing its presence in the Italian market for the future when the recovery kicks in. The usual talk about synergies is also there and Italian workers for both Italcementi and Cementir Italia will be wondering what this means for their jobs. Given that the group’s overall sales have struggled to grow so far in 2017, the company may be telling the truth when it says it’s banking on the medium to long term in Italy. After all, in its half-year report for 2017, it described the Italian economy as subdued and reported cement sales volumes as ‘stable.’

Once the deal completes, Cementir Holding will be an Italian-based cement company without any production facilities in Italy. Unless the group is planning to re-enter its home market at a later date, it does suggest a certain lack of confidence at home. Let’s see if HeidelbergCement has the nerve to stick it out.

Buzzi Unicem strengthened its position in Italy this week with a deal to buy Cementizillo. The agreement included Zillo Group’s two integrated cement plants at Fanna and Este in the northeast with a combined production capacity of 1.4Mt/yr. The sale price appeared to be low at a maximum of Euro104m plus 450,000 shares in Buzzi. However, the interesting part of this transaction is a variable portion of zero to Euro21m based on the average price of cement achieved by Buzzi in Italy between 2017 and 2020.

Buzzi hammered home the point in its acquisition statement that the local cement sector suffers from, “…significant surplus of production capacity coupled with permanently reduced sales volumes.” No doubt this was a prominent part of the deal negotiations given that, with a rough calculation of Euro10m for the shares, Buzzi has picked up the new cement production capacity at about Euro80/t or US$91/t. In July 2016 this column commented that Cementir’s purchase of Compagnie des Ciments Belges’ assets for Euro125/t seemed fairly low globally. Yet even this seemed high when Cementir picked up Sacci’s cement business, including five cement plants, for Euro125m or Euro38/t. Although it should be noted that Sacci was bankrupt at the time and being run by its liquidators.

As ever all these transactions were complicated by assets other than clinker production lines but the problems facing the Italian cement industry are clear. Following on from last week’s column about changing patterns of cement consumption in southern Europe, the cement intensity of the construction sectors in Italy and Spain has dropped significantly since 2000 suggesting that the mode of construction has moved from new projects to patching up old ones. Throw in the financial crash in 2007 and, strikingly, cement production in Italy fell from 49Mt in 2006 to 21Mt in 2015. Anecdotally, looking through the Global Cement Directory 2017, 13 of the country’s 56 integrated cement plants were listed as idled, mothballed or closed at the start of the year. Cembureau, the European Cement Association, reckons that consumption fell year-on-year by 4.7% in 2016 with a further drop of 3% forecast for 2017. Surprisingly though estimates from the Associazione Italiana Tecnico Economica Cemento (AITEC) suggest that cement exports have not increased dramatically since 2007. Since hitting a low of 1.6Mt in 2011 they rose to 2.5Mt, a similar figure to that of before the crash.

This kind of environment suggests consolidation and that’s exactly what has happened with Buzzi buying Cementizillo this week, Germany’s HeidelbergCement’s purchase of Italcementi in 2016 and Cementir’s purchase of Sacci in the same year. Earlier in 2014 Austria's Wietersdorfer & Peggauer picked up a plant in Cadola from Buzzi.

Financially, the story is in line with what the declining production and consumption figures suggest. Buzzi reported that its net sales in Italy fell by 16% to Euro375m in 2016 and Cementir said that its sales would have fallen by 14% had it not benefitted from the new revenue from Sacci.

HeidelbergCement presented Italy as a territory ripe for ‘substantial’ recovery potential at a shareholders event in the autumn of 2016. It highlighted opportunities in further rationalisation of the industry, recovery in cement consumption from a low base and optimisation of the country’s distribution and depot network. It probably will not be publicly released but if Buzzi Unicem pays out the full amount of its variable payment to Cementizillo then the industry may be picking up again. Until then expect more acquisitions.

Italy: Paolo Zugaro has been appointed as the General Manager of Cementir Holding. He has also become the group’s chief operating officer with effect from 1 May 2017. Zugaro, aged 52 years, holds a degree in electrical engineering from Tor Vergata University, Rome. He has worked in a variety of managerial roles for both Caltagirone Group and Cementir Group since 1997. Notably he has been the head of the Nordic & Baltic Region of Cementir Group, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Aalborg Portland and CEO of Unicon. In his recent posting as the head of the East Mediterranean Region, he was the CEO of Cimentas in Turkey, Vice President of Sinai White Portland Cement in Egypt and the CEO of Recydia, a company which operates in the waste and recycling management business in Turkey and the UK.

Last week’s Global CemFuels Conference in Barcelona raised a considerable amount of information about the state of the alternative fuels market for the cement industry and recent technical advances. One particular facet that stuck out were reports from cement and waste producers, from their perspective, about Morocco’s decision to ban imports of waste from Italy in mid-2016. The debacle raises prickly questions about how decisive attempts to reduce carbon emissions can be.

Public outcry broke out in Morocco in July 2016 over imports of refuse derived fuel (RDF) imported from Italy for use at a cement plant in the country. At the time a ship carrying 2500t of RDF was stopped at the Jorf Lasfar port. Local media and activists presented the shipment in terms of a dangerous waste, ‘too toxic’ for a European country, which was being dumped on a developing one. Public outcry followed and despite attempts to calm the situation the government soon banned imports of ‘waste’.

What wasn’t much reported at the time was that RDF usage rates in Europe have been rising in recent years and that the product is viewed as a commodity. As Michele Graffigna from HeidelbergCement explained at the conference in his presentation, its subsidiary Italcementi runs seven cement plants in Italy but only two of them have the permits to use alternative fuels like RDF. Italy also has amongst the lowest rates of alternative fuels usage in Europe, in part due to issues with legislation. This is changing slowly but the company has an export strategy for waste fuels from the country at the moment. Italy’s largest cement producer wants to use waste fuels in Italy but it can’t fully, so it is exporting them so it (and others) is exporting them to countries where it can.

In the Waste Hierarchy, using waste as energy fits in the ‘other recovery’ section near the bottom of the inverted pyramid, but it is still preferable to disposal. Waste fuels may be smelly, unsightly and have other concerns but they are a better environmental option than burning fossil fuels. HeidelbergCement engaged locally with media and local authorities to try and convey this. It also arranged visits to RDF production sites in Italy and German cement plant that use RDF to present its message. Looking to the future, HeidelbergCement now plans to focus on local waste production in Morocco with projects for a tyre shredder at a cement plant and an RDF production site at a Marrakesh landfill site in the pipeline. Graffigna didn’t say so directly, but the decision to focus on local waste supplies clearly dispenses with historical and cultural baggage of moving ‘dirty’ products between countries.

In another talk, at the conference Andy Hill of Suez then mentioned the Morocco situation from his company’s angle. His point was that moving waste fuels around can carry risks and that a waste management company, like Suez, knows how to handle them. It is worth pointing out here that Suez UK has supplied solid recovered fuel (SRF) to the country so it has a commercial interest here. He also suggested that despatching a bulk vessel of waste to a sensitive market did not help the situation and that it heightened negative publicity.

Morocco’s decision to ban the import of waste fuels in mid-2016 is an unfortunate speed bump along the highway to a more sustainable cement industry. It raises all sorts of issues about public perceptions of environmental efforts to clean up the cement industry and where they clash with commercially minded attempts to do so by the cement producers. A similar battle is playing out in Ireland between locals in Limerick and Irish Cement, as it tries to start burning tyres and RDF. These are not new issues. Meanwhile in the background the amendment to the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme draws close with a vote set for mid-February 2017. It could have implications for all of this depending on what happens. More on this later in the month.

Italy: HeidelbergCement, the sole shareholder of Italcementi, has appointed a new board of directors its subsidiary at a shareholder meeting on 19 October 2016. The new members are Luca Sabelli as chairman, Dominik von Achten as executive vice president, Lorenz Näger as executive vice president and Roberto Callieri as chief executive officer.

On 12 October 2016, HeidelbergCement purchased the remaining Italcementi shares that had not been tendered in the mandatory tender offer. From this date HeidelbergCement became the sole shareholder of Italcementi and owns 100% of the share capital. Italcementi shares were delisted from the Italian Stock Exchange on the same day.

Italy: Cementir has appointed Paolo Bossi as the chief executive officer of Cementir Italia, Cementir Sacci and Betontir. The new appointment follows Cementir’s acquisition of Sacci and is the start of a rationalisation process of the Cementir group in Italy, according to a company statement.

And the winner of the Italcementi assets in Belgium is… Cementir. The Italian multinational cement producer picked up Compagnie des Ciments Belges for Euro312m this week. The deal included all of Italcementi's cement, ready-mix and aggregates assets in Belgium, Italcementi's stake in an existing limestone joint-venture with LafargeHolcim and a portion of HeidelbergCement's limestone quarry in Antoing. It was offered by HeidelbergCement to the European Commission to ensure approval of its acquisition of Italcementi.

The assets from Compagnie des Ciments Belges comprise one 2.5Mt/yr integrated cement plant, three terminals and 10 ready-mix concrete plants. As ever, the add-ons confuse the final price but the deal values the cement production capacity at Euro125/t or US$138/t. This figures seems low compared to the other big sale this week of Holcim Lanka to Siam City Cement. There, the Thai producer picked up an integrated cement plant and a grinding plant with a combined cement production capacity of 1.6Mt/yr for US$400m. That values the cement production capacity at US$250/t.

Increasing its presence in western Europe makes a lot of sense for Cementir. It’s one of the smaller European multinational cement producers with 14 cement plants, often white cement producers, in Italy, Turkey, Denmark, Egypt, the US, China and Malaysia. Altogether this comes to 15.1Mt/yr in cement production capacity. In its press release, Cementir described Gaurain-Ramecroix, the cement plant it is buying, as the largest integrated cement plant in France-Benelux, region with ‘state-of-the-art’ technology and long-life mineral reserves.

Italcementi reported a 2.9% year-on-year fall in cement and clinker sales volumes in Belgium in 2015, noting a general reduction in cement consumption in all areas of the construction industry. The mineral reserves were confirmed at least as environmental clearance as granted and work began at the new Barry quarry at Gaurain-Ramecroix.

Cementir has rebuilt its revenue since hitting a high of Euro1.15bn in 2007 although it dipped again in 2014. Despite this ordinary portland and white cement sales volumes have been slowly falling from a high of 10.5Mt in 2011 to 9.37Mt in 2015. That said though its businesses in Scandinavia generated just under half of its operating revenue in 2015. So far in 2016, total group revenue rose by 2.8% to Euro210m in the first quarter of the year, with a fair portion of that attributable to Scandinavia. Bolting on a cement and concrete business in (relatively) nearby Belgium makes sense in this context provided the construction market eventually rallies.

Yet, another on-going Cementir acquisition back home in Italy may make the company reflect on the risks of buying assets in Belgium. Cementir is drawing closer to purchasing the cement and concrete arm of Sacci as it plans to pick up five cement plants and assorted ready-mix concrete assets for the bargain price of Euro125m, following a protracted bankruptcy. Cementir may remember that Lafarge sold some of these assets to Sacci for Euro290m in 2008 before the situation deteriorated. The top brass at Cementir must be praying that the Sacci’s fate doesn’t await them in Belgium.