Displaying items by tag: Joint Venture

Thailand: SCG’s cement business has delivered sales and earnings growth in 2019 despite problems with the company’s chemicals business. It attributed its cement sales performance to growing distribution and retail businesses. Its cement business sales revenue grew by 1% year-on-year to US$5.93bn and its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 3% to US$674m. SCG has also announced the creation of a retail joint-venture in Cambodia to sell building materials. Overall, the group’s sales declined by 8% to US$14bn in 2019.

Thailand: Siam Cement Group’s concrete and aggregates division SCC Concrete Products and Aggregates (CPAC) has entered into a joint venture agreement with Swedish digitisation specialist BIMobject for the formation of BIMobject Thailand Co., Ltd. (BIMobject TH) on a 51:49 basis in favour of CPAC. This will provide building information modelling (BIM) - a service platform for use in conceptual design, material selection, and construction simulation of customers’ projects. Siam Cement Group president and CEO Roongrote Rangsiyopash said, “This is in line with SCC’s strategic plan to extend its breadth of innovative construction solutions.” The joint venture will have US$170,000 registered capital.

UK: Breedon Southern, part of Breedon Group, plans to form a joint venture in London trading as Capital Concrete with Robert Brett and the Capital Concrete senior management. Three of Breedon’s existing ready-mixed concrete assets will be combined with those of Capital Concrete, Brett’s established ready-mixed concrete operation in London.

Capital Concrete currently operates seven ready-mixed concrete plants in Bow, Croydon, Romford, Rainham, Wembley, Silvertown and Staines. Breedon will contribute its plants in Cricklewood, Feltham and Enfield, together with Euro3.6m in cash, in return for a 43% interest in the joint venture. The remainder will be owned by Brett (43%) and management (14%).

“We have had a longstanding ambition to expand our footprint in the UK’s largest construction materials market. This joint venture enables us to secure immediate critical mass in Greater London, in collaboration with an experienced local partner, with the potential to develop a business of significant scale in the capital over the next few years,” said Pat Ward, group chief executive of Breedon.

Completion of the transaction is expected to take place on 1 December 2019.

Nepal: The parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has accused the Huaxin Cement Narayani plant being built at Benighat Rorang Rural Municipality in Dhading of ignoring the project’s Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report. Members of the committee visited the site two months ago following complaints, according to the Republica newspaper.

It found that an 11km access road to the site had encroached upon a river. The company had used sand and stones from the river and used the materials to build the road. The road’s construction has also disrupted local agricultural irrigation canals. A flood at the site of the cement plant was reported in July 2019. An irregular deal to lease land to the joint venture was also reported.

India: UltraTech Cement has created a joint venture with Amplus Energy to expand its solar power generation capacity. The cement producer has acquired a 26% stake in the Amplus Sunshine, according to VCCircle Network. Amplus Sunshine will set up a 15MW captive solar plant at one of UltraTech’s Cement’s plants for an investment of around US$10m. The cement producer has a capacity of 50MW from its solar power plants but it intends to increase this. Amplus Energy installs rooftop solar power plants for the industrial and commercial sector.

Uzbekistan: Uzbek-Chinese joint venture Titan Cement (unrelated to the Greek group of the same name) has commissioned a 0.2Mt/yr plant in the Korauzyak District of the Republic of Karakalpakstan. The project had an investment of nearly US$40m, according to the Uzbekistan Daily newspaper. The funding was comprised of US$19m in direct investment from the joint venture, US$17m from loans and US$2m in foreign investment. This plant was originally reported as having started operation in mid-2016.

Taiwan/Turkey: Taiwan Cement plans to spend up to US$1.1bn on setting up a new joint venture with Turkey’s OYAK Cement. Through a new subsidiary, Dutch TCC Holdings, it intends to create a new business that will be 60% owned by OYAK Cement and 40% by Taiwan Cement. It will hold talks with OYAK Cement and if an agreement is reached the new company will operate OYAK Cement’s business in Turkey giving Taiwan Cement its first presence outside of Asia.

OYAK Cement is owned by Ordu Yardimlasma Kurumu (OYAK), the pension fund of the Turkish Armed Forces. It operates 13 integrated cement plants in Turkey with a production capacity of around 12Mt/yr. It holds a 16% market share. The plans with Taiwan Cement follow OYAK Cement’s purchase of InterCement’s operations in Portugal and Cape Verde.

Taiwan Cement hopes to gain access to the local market and the wider Mediterranean region. It said that, although it holds a production capacity of 75Mt/yr in the Greater China Region, government peak production limits and market saturation had forced it to expand internationally.

China: Germany’s Refratechnik has signed a joint venture contract with Haicheng Guotian Mining and Yingkou Jinlong Refractories for the production of high-grade caustic calcined magnesia (CCM) and dead burned magnesia (DBM) at a new plant at Pailou near Haicheng in Liaoning. Yingkou Jinlong Refractories is a long-standing partner of Refratechnik in China and Haicheng Guotian Mining is an existing CCM and DBM producer in Haicheng with long-term secure access to magnesite ore.

Construction of the new plant has started and production at the site is scheduled to begin in 2019. The unit will manufacture 0.1Mt/yr of DBM and over 0.1Mt/yr of CCM. The joint venture is intended to secure supply for Refratechnik’s worldwide refractory production and to diversify and strengthen its international industrial minerals business.

Bolivia: The head of Sociedad Accidental Imasa Polysius, a joint-venture created by Polysius and Imasa, Zubim Andrade, says that a cement plant that company is building in Potosí is more than 45% complete. The half-way mark is expected to be met by the end of October 2018, according to the El Potosí newspaper. Over 900 people are working on the project and most of the equipment for the unit has arrived. The 1.3Mt/yr cement plant has a cost of around US$240m.

South Africa: Germany’s Haver & Boecker has entered into a joint-venture with Southport-based Portland Packaging. Through the joint venture, the Portland Packaging plant will start producing Haver & Boecker products and equipment alongside its own products, retaining the brands of both companies. The German company says that this is the first time a multinational full line packaging company has manufactured product for Africa, in Africa. It will be the minority partner in the joint venture.

Portland Packaging was founded in 2002 by Barry Buist, a former employee of a Haver & Boecker partner company in South Africa. It sells packaging machinery, parts and service to more than 100 customers across Africa and beyond, primarily in the cement industry.