Displaying items by tag: Meghna Cement Mills

Bangladesh: Bengal Cement has appointed Khandker Ataur Rahman Rifat as its chief operating officer. He has been working as the Group Chief Marketing Officer for Metrocem Group since 2019, according to the Business Standard newspaper. Prior to this Rifat, held roles with Hyundai Cement, Cemex, Meghna Group, LafargeHolcim Bangladesh and Aman Cement dating back to the mid-1990s. He holds a PhD in social science and business and a master of business administration qualification from the University of Dhaka.

Cement producers in Bangladesh received a surprise at the start of June 2023 when the government budget proposed increasing the duty on imported clinker. The Bangladesh Cement Manufacturers Association (BCMA) reacted this week by calling for the duty on clinker to be reduced, while also calling for the same for a non-adjustable advance income tax (AIT) applied to associated imports and sales.

During a press conference, reported upon by the Financial Express newspaper and other media, BCMA president Alamgir Kabir said that the customs duty on key raw materials for the sector had previously been around 5% of the import value. However, he argued that the new suggested increased tariff was “disproportionate” because it placed the burden at 12 - 13%. He urged the government to treat the cement sector as a "priority sector" given that it was facing higher prices generally due to the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, the energy shocks from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and negative currency exchange effects.

The BCMA’s latest lobbying call may sound familiar because it follows a similar battle against import charges from late 2022. A supplementary duty was introduced in November 2022 when the National Board of Revenue (NBR) changed the way limestone was coded in response to a significant increase in imports from 2020. At the time, the price of limestone imports reportedly nearly doubled. The BCMA may have won this battle because in March 2023 the NBR withdrew its supplementary duty. It did require that importers submit to further scrutiny including an updated Import Registration Certificate and various tax related requirements.

The timing of the NBR’s decision to relax the limestone duty is telling given that the previous month or so six of the country’s seven publicly listed cement producers reported either falling profits or losses for the second half of 2022 or the year as a whole. Only LafargeHolcim Bangladesh bucked the trend with an increase year-on-year in its annual profit after tax in 2022, although it attributed this to 95% volume growth in its aggregates business.

As discussed previously a characteristic of the cement sector in Bangladesh is that the country has no domestic limestone reserves. It all has to be imported. Arusha Ahmed Khan, Shun Shing Group presented a summary of the national industry at the Global Slag Conference that took place in early June 2023 in Düsseldorf. The country has two integrated cement plants and 36 grinding mills operated by 31 companies with a total capacity of 84Mt/yr. At present around 14Mt/yr of new cement grinding production capacity is planned by UK Bangla Cement, MI Cement, Confidence Cement and Dubai Bangla with commissioning dates expected from mid-2023 to mid-2025. Khan revealed that the government switched from British to European standards in the early 2000s leading to a high level (95%) of blended cements on the market. Use of slag cements has grown as more producers commission vertical roller mills and more uptake of slag and other blended cements using secondary cementitious materials (SCM) is expected in the future.

A key vulnerability for a grinding-heavy cement sector, like the one in Bangladesh, is any burden on imports such as logistic costs, currency exchange effects and government tariffs. Sure enough each of these examples has been reported locally. The government says that its proposed higher import tariff on clinker is the first such change in a decade. Cement producers have reacted, predictably, in a negative manner. Whether the authorities go ahead with the planned increase and how well the cement sector could absorb it remains to be seen. There may never be a good time for a tax rise but the BCMA has been able to present the current period as being especially bad.

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Bangladesh: Shahab Uddin, the Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, says that five cement plants near the Sundarbans mangrove forest region have been granted environmental clearance certification. The plants are Meghna Cement Mills, Bashundhara Cement Mills, Mongla Cement Mills, Dubai-Bangla Cement Mills and Holcim (Bangladesh), according to the New Nation newspaper. Uddin said that the units were all at least 6km away from the Sundarbans reserved forest area and that the Department of Environment was monitoring their emissions on a regular basis. In 1995 the government declared a 10km area around the Sundarbans Reserve Forest as a ‘critical’ ecological zone.

Bangladesh: FLSmidth has confirmed that is to supply a cement grinding production line for Meghna Cement Mills. The Danish equipment manufacturer has signed a contract with Meghna Cement Mills for engineering, procurement and supply of equipment for a 415t/hr Portland composite cement at 3800 Blaine grinding unit at it plant in Mongla in the Bagerhat District. No value for the deal has been disclosed.

The scope of the order includes an FLSmidth OKTM 54-6 mill, planetary gear unit from FLSmidth MAAG Gear, fabric filters from FLSmidth Airtech, weigh feeders from FLSmidth Pfister and a plant control system from FLSmidth Automation. The project is scheduled for completion by the end of 2018.

Bangladesh: Meghna Cement Mills has signed a contract with Denmark’s FLSmidth to install a vertical roller mill with a production capacity of 2Mt/yr. The contract has been valued at US$15.7m and it will be installed by mid-2019, according to the Daily Star newspaper. The cement producer is taking loans from the Infrastructure Development Company to pay for the upgrade. Meghna Cement Mills operates a 1.2Mt/yr plant at the Port of Mongla. It markets its cement under the King Brand Cement line.

Bangladesh: Masud Sheikh, a technician working at Bashundhara Group's Meghna Cement Mills, has died from inhaling ‘poisonous gas’ in an abandoned barge owned by Meghna Cement Mills at the port of Mongla. Sheikh, aged 42 years and a Bangladeshi national, was attempting to rescue a Chinese national who also died in the incident, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The Chinese employee of Sinohydro supporting the construction of the Padma Bridge was checking the barge prior to its sale.