Displaying items by tag: Plant
Ambo Gnemer in talks to build cement plant in Ethiopia
19 April 2017Ethiopia: The Oromia state government has started negotiations with Ambo Gnemer about building a US$44m cement plant. The company owns land in the state and it intends to develop a site at Ambo, according to the Addis Fortune newspaper. Previous attempts to develop the plant failed due to a lack of capital.
India: Jaiprakash Associates’ (JAL) US$2.58bn sale of cement plants to UltraTech is likely to be completed by May 2017. Manoj Gaur, the executive chairman of JAL, said that the majority of the payment would be used to pay of debts, according to the Times of India. The cement producer is selling integrated cement plants with a production capacity of 17.2Mt/yr and grinding plants with a capacity of 4Mt/yr.
Indonesia: Semen Indonesia plans to start commercial operation of its Rembang cement plant in the first half of 2017. Rizkan Chandra, the chief executive, of the state-owned cement producer revealed the company’s plans, despite protests on environmental grounds by local residents, after a meeting with presidential staff in Jakarta, according to the Antara news agency. However the plant is waiting for environmental clearance that is expected to be released in April 2017. Previously a government minister said that the President Joko Widodo was expected to inaugurate the plant in mid-2017. However, in October 2016 the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the protesters and ordered Semen Indonesia to cease its activities.
Trying it on and liming it up
12 April 2017Unsurprisingly the European Commission blocked Duna-Dráva Cement’s (DDC) attempted purchase of Cemex Croatia this week. Merging the country’s biggest cement producer with its largest importer was going to be a challenge for the commission. Whereas in previous transactions the various parties offered business disposals to ease the commission’s concerns, here all they were got was access to a cement terminal in Metković in southern Croatia. And this facility on the Neretva river is currently being leased by Cemex! Clearly this didn’t give the impression of being a long term solution.
Compare this with the merger between Lafarge and Holcim in 2015 where multiple sales were proposed to make sure the deal went through. Or look at the acquisition of Italcementi by HeidelbergCement in 2016 where the parties sold Italcementi’s Belgian subsidiary Compagnie des Ciments Belges to Cementir to make the deal happen. In comparison to these deals the attempt by HeidelbergCement and Schwenk, through their subsidiary DDC, comes across as a calculated gamble designed to test the resolve of the commission. If the commission had somehow passed the proposed acquisition then the companies would have cornered the market. If it turned it down, as it has, then nothing would be lost other than putting together the bid. HeidelbergCement had its mind on bigger things as it bought and then integrated Italcementi.
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager summed up the mood of the commission: “For mergers between direct competitors, we generally have a preference for a clean, structural solution, such as selling a production plant. HeidelbergCement and Schwenk decided not to offer that. Instead they proposed to give a competitor access to a cement terminal in southern Croatia. Essentially, this amounted to giving a competitor access to a storage facility – without existing customers or established access to cement, without brands and without sales or managerial staff.”
Elsewhere, the other big story in the industry news this week was Votorantim’s decision to focus on the lime business in Brazil by adding lime units to some of its existing cement plants. Given the dire state of the local cement and construction industry, initiatives to break the deadlock have been expected. The alternative is plant closures and divestures, such as the ongoing talks by Camargo Corrêa to sell the other big local producer, InterCement. Votorantim plans to build lime units attached to the cement plants at Nobres in Mato Grosso, Xambioa in Tocantins, Primavera in Pará and Idealiza in Goiás. Unfortunately the agricultural areas of the country and ones with cement plants don’t overlay neatly. Cement production is mainly focused in the south-eastern states and Votorantim are targeting the Cerrado, in the centre of the country, for the lime business.
The scale of the project, at US$50m, the scale of the lime business generally and the addition of lime units at cement plants suggest that the pivot to lime can only be a sideline to cement and construction. Given the similarity of the cement and lime production processes the announcement would be much more significant were Votorantim set to convert clinker kilns into lime ones. A notable example of this was at Cement Australia’s Gladstone plant in Queensland, Australia. Here a mothballed FCB-Ciment clinker kiln was converted into a lime kiln in the early 2000s. At the time the cost of the conversion project was valued at just under US$20m. If Votorantim was seriously thinking of doing this at a few of their underperforming cement plants then one would expect the bill to be higher than US$50m. However, it’s early days yet.
US: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded CalPortland with a 2017 Energy Star Partner of the Year – Sustained Excellence Award for energy efficiency achievements. CalPortland’s accomplishments will be recognized by the EPA and the Department of Energy in Washington, DC on 26 April 2017.
Its key 2016 accomplishments include a reduction of its energy intensity by 1.1% in 2016 compared to business as usual in 2015 which resulted in over US$682,000 in savings and a reduction of 14,234Mt of CO2. The company initiated a new ‘CalPortland Energy Cup’ competition that compares and quantifies energy practices and performance of its three cement plants. All three CalPortland cement plants scored in the top quartile of the Energy Performance Indicators (EPI) benchmarking tool. The Rillito plant has been certified for the past five years in a row.
CalPortland has also completed several large energy saving projects including the installation of a new US$9m clinker cooler at the Rillito cement plant, a US$14m Anchorage terminal storage dome and a US$2m preheater duct replacement at the Mojave cement plant.
Uzbekistan: Uzqurilishmateriallari, with the Government of Uzbekistan, and Eurocement Group have signed a memorandum of cooperation in connection to joint projects including the construction of a cement plant. Filaret Galchev, Eurocement’s chairman of the board of directors, and Elyor Ganiev, the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, Investments and Trade, signed the agreement, according to Uz Daily. The deal includes cooperation towards building a 2.4Mt/yr cement plant with Eurocement’s local subsidiary Akhangarancement and plans for refractory and insulation materials projects. Altogether the investment is around US$220m. The agreement also includes cooperation in producing new ‘export-orientated’ building materials.
Cemex Dominicana inaugurates packing plant
07 April 2017Dominican Republic: Cemex Dominicana, the local subsidiary of Mexico’s Cemex, has inaugurated a packing plant at its cement plant in San Pedro de Macorís. Danilo Medina Sánchez , the president of the country, attended the event. The US$8.5m unit will allow the plant to increases its cement packing capacity by 1.5m bags/yr or 0.8Mt/yr. Other improvements include a new building to house the packing line, a 1275m2 warehouse for palletised cement and a new weighting system to speed up despatch. Carlos Emilio González, the president of Cemex Dominicana, also announced an investment of US$40m over the next two years in power generation, changes to the mill and other upgrades at the plant.
Votorantim to build lime units at cement plants
06 April 2017Brazil: Votorantim plans to spend US$50m towards building new plants and adapting its existing cement plants to produce agricultural lime in addition to cement. The cement producer intends to double its market share to 16% by 2021, according to the Valor Econômico newspaper. The focus on the lime business follows a contraction in the construction industry and the growth of agribusiness.
"With the expansion of the agricultural frontier, demand will grow, especially in the Cerrado savannah, where soil need more correction. Experience shows that agricultural lime also helps in the crop productivity," said Laercio Solla, general manager for agriculture at Votorantim.
The company plans to open new quarries and build additional lime units at its existing cement plants. The focus at first will be on the region of Matopiba, which includes Tocantins and parts of Maranhão, Piauí and Bahia. Votorantim will build lime units attached to the cement plants at Nobres in Mato Grosso, Xambioa in Tocantins, Primavera in Pará and Idealiza in Goiás. The lime part of Votorantim’s business will receive most of its minerals from the cement division but also some from Votorantim Metals, the group’s mining division. It will also build two new 0.5Mt/yr lime quarries in Pará and in the Matopiba region.
Lime represents a small part of the company’s business. In 2015 it produced less than 2Mt of agricultural lime compared to 65.8Mt of cement, mortar and aggregates. Agricultural lime production is also expected to be less susceptible to foreign currency exchange rates as its market its mostly domestic.
Eagle Cement to opens third line at Bulacan by 2018
06 April 2017Philippines: Eagle Cement hopes to open the third production line at its Bulacan cement plant by 2018. The new line will keep the cement producer on track to lead locally in terms of cement production capacity by 2020, according to the BusinessWorld newspaper. The new line will add 2Mt/yr to the plant’s capacity, increasing it to 7.1Mt/yr. Funding for the new line has been completed. Eagle Cement is also planning to start building a new plant at Cebu by the end of 2017. This plant is scheduled to start production in 2020.
Nepal: Arghakhanchi Cement has launched Arghakhanchi MP OPC Cement in new waterproof packaging. The cement producer says that the new packaging will protect the cement from moisture and prevent leakage of cement, according the Kathmandu Post. The new bags are also intended to ensure a standard weight for the product. The company plans to increase its production capacity from its plant at Mainahiya, Rupandehi to 60,000 bags/day from the end of 2017.