Displaying items by tag: Plant

India: Adani Enterprises Limited subsidiary Adani Cement plans to establish a 5.0Mt/yr integrated cement plant at Shahbaj in Maharashtra’s Raigad district. BusinessLine News has reported that the company will invest between US$122m and US$135m in the project. It has acquired 10ha of land on which to build the plant.

Italy: Colacem is contemplating shutting down its Spoleto cement plant in Sant’Angelo, Mercole. The La Nazione newspaper has reported that a closure would result in the loss of 25 jobs. The producer acquired the integrated plant from Cemitaly in April 2019 and first suspended production later that month.

Croatia: Building materials producer Nexe Grupa invested a total of Euro15.3m in upgrades to its plants in 2020. This included subsidiary Našicecement’s capacity expansion at its Našice integrated cement plant. The producer also implemented alternative fuels substitution in the plant’s kiln line.

US: The US Green Building Council (USGBC) has granted its Regional Leadership Award to Titan America’s Pennsuco, Florida, and Roanoke, North Carolina, cement plants. The award recognises green building and sustainable practices. The Pennsuco plant implemented 16 zero waste and sustainability programmes. At the Roanoke plant, Titan America subsidiary Roanoke Cement Company (RCC) achieved TRUE Gold Zero Waste certification in 2020 and implemented environmental product declarations (EPDs).

RCC cement manufacturing vice president Zaklina Stamboliska said, "Through our zero waste programs we have implemented native landscaping and other biodiversity advances to our local ecosystems. We have entered into outreach with local universities to educate students and shared our knowledge among our industry, concrete producers and others through work with EPDs. We are building and spreading the word."

UK: A fire at Hanson UK’s Padeswood cement plant was reported on 15 June 2021. Firefighters from the North Wales Fire and Rescue Service attended the scene and the blaze was extinguished, according to Deeside News. David Quick, plant manager, said that an investigation into the cause of the fire will follow in due course.

The latest piece of China-based Huaxin Cement’s global ambitions slotted into place this week with the news that it is preparing to buy plants in Zambia and Malawi. Its board of directors has approved plans to spend US$150m towards acquiring a 75% stake in Lafarge Zambia and US$10m on a 100% stake in Lafarge Cement Malawi. The move will gain it two integrated plants with a combined production capacity of 1.5Mt/yr in Zambia, and a 0.25Mt/yr grinding plant in Malawi.

This latest proposed acquisition represents the next step for Huaxin Cement in Africa following its purchase of African Tanzanian Maweni Limestone from ARM Cement in mid-2020. The company has also been busy along the more traditional Belt and Road Initiative land routes in Asia. It started up the kiln at its new 2Mt/yr Jizzakh cement plant in mid-2020. Elsewhere in Central Asia it runs two plants in Tajikistan and one plant in Kyrgyzstan via various indirectly-owned subsidiaries. While in South Asia it runs a plant in Nepal and in South-East Asia it runs one in Cambodia. If the plans in Zambia and Malawi pay off then it will give the Chinese producer a growing presence in East Africa, with plants in three countries.

The China Cement Association ranked Huaxin Cement as the country’s fifth largest clinker producer in 2021 with an integrated capacity base of just under 63Mt/yr. Domestically, the company operates 57 cement plants and most of these are based in the Yangtze River Economic Belt region. In 2020 it reported cement and clinker sales of 76Mt, a small decrease from 2019. Its operating income fell by 6.6% year-on-year to US$4.58bn and profit dropped by 12% to US$1.2bn. This performance was blamed on the emergence of Covid-19 at the start of 2020 and then floods later in the year.

Compared to the other larger Chinese cement producers, Huaxin Cement roughly appears to be holding rank with its overseas expansions. The leaders, CNBM and Anhui Conch, hold subsidiaries with plants in South-East and Central Asia and CNBM’s engineering wing, Sinoma, has a far bigger reach, building plants all over the place. Information has been scarce since mid-2020 on the long heralded 7Mt/yr plant in Tanzania due to be built by Sinoma and local subsidiary Hengya Cement. At that time local residents in Mtimbwani, Mkinga District were reportedly being compensated for their land. Other than this, one of the other big players internationally is Taiwan Cement. In 2018 it invested around US$1.1bn for a 40% stake in Turkey-based Oyak Cement. As well as a presence in Turkey this also gave it a share of plants in Portugal in 2019 when Oyak completed its acquisition of Cimpor.

Elsewhere this week, carrying some of the themes above with expansion in Central Asia, two new integrated cement plant projects were announced in Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan respectively. Meanwhile, Italcementi said it will invest Euro5.0m to restart clinker production at its Trentino cement plant in Sarche di Madruzzo, Italy. The unit has been operating as a grinding plant since 2015. This might be viewed as an unexpected decision considering the high local CO2 price but it shows some level of confidence in the local market by Italcementi and its parent company, HeidelbergCement. The next step will be when or if a European producer decides to build a brand new integrated plant in Italy or elsewhere.

Bolivia: Empresa Publica Productiva Cementos de Bolivia (ECEBOL) has officially restarted cement production at its integrated Oruro cement plant in Caracollo. The La Razón newspaper has reported the cost of the restart at US$8.41m. The producer received a cash injection from the government in order to enable it to restock cement bags, pay outstanding salaries and have working capital, according to Bolivian President Luis Arce. The head of state alleges that the previous administration ‘paralysed’ many of the country’s public companies through mismanagement.

US: Colombia-based Cementos Argos is planning to export 0.4Mt of cement to the US in 2021. The cement producer’s exports to the country grew by 419% year-on-year to 135,000t in the first five months of 2021 from 26,000t in the same period in 2020. It says that it expects the US cement market to grow by 2.2% year-on-year in 2021.

The company is currently upgrading its integrated plant in Cartagena, Colombia and improving the associated port terminal. The US$40m project is scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2021. It is intended to support the export market to the US and elsewhere.

India: The state government of Telangana has renewed The India Cements’ mining licence for two sites in Guntur district until 2037. These are the Pondugula and Pulipadu mines, which supply the company’s Vishnupuram cement plant in Nalgonda district. The Times of India has reported that the producer first received its licence for the mines in 2000 and applied for the recent extension a decade later.

Morocco: LafargeHolcim’s Settat plant has been ranked as the second most efficient integrated cement plant in LafargeHolcim Group. The classification is based on industrial performance criteria in terms of efficiency, cost and sustainable development covering 129 of the group’s integrated plants around the world. Five of the six plants operated by LafargeHolcim Morocco are also reported to be in the Top 20 of this list. The 1.7Mt/yr Settat plant has also become a pilot in the group’s ‘plant of tomorrow" initiative whereby automation technologies, robotics, artificial intelligence and predictive maintenance will be used to improve its production efficiency further still.