Displaying items by tag: Loesche
Update on Mexico
23 October 2019Interesting news from Holcim Mexico this week with the announcement that it is planning to invest US$40m towards building a 0.7Mt/yr grinding plant in the state of Yucátan. The unit will be supplied with clinker from Holcim Mexico’s Macuspana and Orizaba integrated cement plants. This follows the news in August 2018 that Elementia’s cement company, Cementos Fortaleza, had started to build a new 0.25Mt/yr grinding plant at Merida in Yucatan. That project has a budget of US$30m.
These two projects offer a contrast to comments made by the head of Cemex Mexico, Ricardo Naya Barba, who was lamenting the state of the market to local press at the start of the month. He said that sales volumes of cement, concrete and aggregates had fallen by 12 – 15% in the first seven months of 2019. He blamed the decline partly on falling national infrastructure investment. This marked a slight improvement on Cemex’s Mexican results for the first of 2019 where sales, sales volumes and earnings were all down. At this time as well as slowing infrastructure projects the situation was also attributed to a residential sector hit by the slower-than anticipated start of the new programs.
Elementia’s Mexican cement business, Cementos Fortaleza, reported a similar picture in the second quarter of 2019. Its net sales fell by 6% year-on-year to US65.4m from US$69.7m. This was attributed to a market contraction affecting all of Elementia’s businesses in the country, as well as the redefinition of its core products for the Building Systems business unit. Earnings fell also and this was further attributed to mounting energy and freight costs. Cementos Moctezuma faced many of the same issues. Its cement sales fell by 13% to US$147m in the second quarter of 2019. It is expecting a similar picture for the remainder of the year.
Data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) shows that the value of cement sales in Mexico fell by 7% year-on-year to US$1.21bn in the first quarter of 2019 from US$1.30bn in the same period in 2018. Cement sales volumes fell by 8.2% to 10.9Mt from 11.9Mt. This was the lowest figure since 2014.
The one larger Mexican cement producer that doesn’t seem to have been overly troubled so far in 2019 is Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC). Earlier in the year the company was considered to be the Mexican cement producer most at risk from potential US tariffs due to higher reliance on exports than its competitors. Yet Mexico’s National Chamber of Cement (CANACEM) publicly said that that it didn’t consider US tariffs a significant barrier to the local industry. GCC reported growing net sales and cement sales volumes in the second quarter of 2019 due to industrial warehouse construction, mining projects and middle-income housing at the northern cities.
Two new grinding plants in a particular region of Mexico don’t necessarily reflect the state of the country’s industry as a whole. Yucatan may suit the grinding model due to a lack of raw materials or strong shipping links. The region may also be defying the gloomy national state of affairs in the construction sector. Alternatively, producers may be chasing low-cost and low-risk expansion plans in a tough market. The grinding model wins out over the clinker producing one in this scenario. In the wider picture in August 2019 Cemento Cruz Azul ordered two petcoke grinding mills from Germany’s Loesche and Austria’s Unitherm Cemcon said it had been awarded the supply of an MAS DT burner to an unnamed cement plant. These suggest that, although the sector may be having a bad year so far, things are expected to get better.
Two Loesche mills for La Cruz Azul
16 August 2019Mexico: Installation of two Loesche petcoke grinding plants will be installed at La Cruz Azul’s cement plants Lagunas and Hidalgo later in 2019.
Both mills are LM 41.4 D type coal mills, the largest of their type. They will form part of new production lines at each of the two plants. In addition to the mills, which both have a capacity of 50-65t/hr, Loesche will also supply process gas filters, mill fans, inerting units, explosion vents, cyclone separators, conveyor augers and drag chain conveyors, as well as the complete electrotechnical equipment. The scope of supply also includes the complete detail engineering for the steel and concrete construction.
The equipment has already been fully dispatched. Installation is planned to start in December 2019 in Hidalgo. Installation of the grinding plant in Lagunas has already begun.
UK: Hanson Cement says that the first phase of a Euro27m upgrade project to its integrated Padeswood plant in Wales has been completed. The upgrade has included the installation of a 0.65Mt/yr cement grinding mill as well as enhancements to production capacity and efficiency gains. The plant can now, with the aid of existing ball mills, match cement grinding with its kiln capacity.
“The nearly new Loesche vertical roller mill, housed in a 34m-high building, started its life at a grinding plant in Bilbao. It had only 7000 operational hours on the clock and was in excellent condition. After dismantling it piece by piece, specialist contractors moved it to the UK where it was reassembled on site at Padeswood,” said Jim Claydon, Hanson UK cement managing director.
Other improvements at the site include the installation of three new rail cement silos that have been installed alongside the existing railhead. This will allow up to three trains a week to be loaded for deliveries to Hanson depots in London, Bristol or Glasgow. The new silos will reduce the transportation of cement produced at Padeswood to customers by road. In addition to the increase in grinding capacity, other recent capital investment at Padeswood include the installation of a plastic packing machine, and the re-commissioning of an existing paper packaging machine and an upgrade in the capability to use recycled paper and plastics as fuel.
Mexico: Cruz Azul has launched the construction of a fifth production line at its Oaxaca cement plant in Lagunas. State governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa presided over the ceremony. The new line has an investment of over US$130m and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2020. It will also be able to co-process alternative fuels up to a rate of 40%. Previously, Germany’s Loesche and France’s Fives sold grinding mills for the upgrade.
Guangdong Tapai orders two coals mills from Loesche
17 October 2018China: Guangdong Tapai has ordered two coal mills from Germany’s Loesche for its two 10,000t/day clinker production lines in Jiaoling, Meizhou in Guangdong. This is a repeat order, following an order for two LM 35.3 D coal mills that was made in 2015. The 3-roller mill grinds 50t/hr of pulverised coal to a fineness of 3% with a sieving residue of 0.08 mm. The installed power is 1200kW. The order has been placed through Loesche Shanghai and the two newly ordered coal mills are expected to be delivered in April 2019.
China: Lubao Cement has ordered three vertical roller mills from Germany’s Loesche for a new 4500t/day plant that is being built at Bei Liu in Guang Xi. The project is being handled by Sinoma (Suzhou) Construction, part of Sinoma International Engineering and China National Building Material Group (CNBM) in turn.
Loesche is supplying three mills for the project, one each for raw material, coal and clinker/slag. One four-roller mill with a capacity of 450t/hr will be used for grinding cement raw material to a fineness of 12% with a sieving residue of R 80μm. Another mill with a throughput of 200t/hr will be used for the subsequent grinding of cement clinker to a fineness of 3400 - 3600 Blaine. A large three-roller mill with a capacity of 42t/hr will be used for grinding fuel coal to a fineness of 2% and a sieving residue of R 80μm.
No value for the order has been disclosed.
Flying Cement orders mill from Loesche
25 September 2018Pakistan: The Flying Cement Company has ordered a vertical roller mill from Germany’s Loesche for a new 7000t/day production line in Lahore. The raw material mill will be used at Flying Cement’s plant at Mangowal, where it will grind 600t/hr. The plant is mainly used to produce Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC).
Along with the mill, the scope of supply also includes a Hurriclon system from A TEC, a member of the Loesche Group, for separating finished material from the gas flow leaving the mill.
Commissioning is expected to take place at the end of 2018.
San Miguel Northern Cement order two mills from Loesche
18 September 2018Philippines: San Miguel Northern Cement has ordered two mills from Germany’s Loesche for a new 5000t/day production line at its Sison plant in Pangasinan. The scope of supply includes two complete grinding plants: a type LM 56.4 mill for cement raw material and a type LM 35.3 D for sub-bituminous coal.
Loesche will supply a majority of the electro-technical components for the line and the automation systems including its LM Master product. It will be responsible for the plant engineering and the supply of filters and blowers. The new line will use also A-Tec’s Hurriclon technology for de-dusting the raw mills.
Delivery of the order is scheduled for the start of 2019.
Loesche coal mill for Ewekoro plant
03 September 2018Nigeria: Lafarge Africa Plc, part of LafargeHolcim, is erecting a new coal grinding plant at its cement plant in Ewekoro, Nigeria, with Germany’s Loesche GmbH as the supplier. The plant previously used natural gas as its main fuel but inadequate local supplies meant that a change to coal was necessary. The order was made by the project’s general contractor, China’s CBMI Construction Company.
Local lignite and petcoke will be used as grinding materials. The grinding capacity for coal is 23t/hr at 23% R90µm and for petcoke it is 16t/hr at 3% R90µm.
The engineering, the core components of the mill and of the classifier with central feed, the rotary gate and the mill gearbox with a nominal power of 450kW are all included in the scope of service. Naturally, the reliable coal mill type corresponds to the ATEX standard to ensure safe operation. This is in line with LafargeHolcim's declared goal, defining health and safety as an overarching value.
Kohat Cement orders four Loesche mills
16 August 2018Pakistan: Kohat Cement Company Ltd. has ordered four vertical roller mills (VRM) from Germany’s Loesche in order to expand its cement plant in Kohat, 160km west of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.
The order comprises a 4-roller raw material mill with a material throughput of 500t/hr and two cement mills each with a grinding capacity of 210t/hr of Portland cement. The order is finally complemented by another vertical roller mill for grinding 50t/hr of anthracite. They will all be used on the same cement production line, which Kohat Cement is in the process of building. The lead time for the mills will be eight months.
The plant’s production capacity is currently around 2.8Mt/yr of Portland and white cement. When the new line enters production, the plant’s capacity will rise by 2.2Mt/yr to reach 5.0Mt/yr.