Displaying items by tag: Plant

Tunisia: The National Chamber of Ceramics Manufacturers has expressed concern about the a shortage of white cement following the closure of the Société Tuniso-Andalouse de Ciment Blanc’s (SOTACIB) plant at Férien. The ceramics association has called for the government to speed up the import process, according to the L'economiste Maghrebin magazine. SOTACIB’s 0.65Mt/yr white cement plant closed on 19 January 2018 for a six-month period following a strike by workers in December 2017. Spain’s Cementos Molins is the majority shareholder in the company.

India: Nirma Group’s subsidiary Nuvoco Vistas plans to invest US$157m on captive power plants and waste heat recovery systems for three of its cement plants in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan. The cement producer plans to save around US$15m from the upgrades over the next two to three years, according to the Hindu newspaper. Nirma Group purchased three cement plants and two grinding plants from Lafarge India with a total production capacity of 11Mt/yr in 2016.

Pakistan: Mian Saqib Nisar, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, has said that the Supreme Court will prevent the construction of any new cement plants or upgrades to existing plants near Katas Raj Temples in Punjab. However, he said that no existing plants in the area would be shut down, according to the Business Recorder newspaper. The investigation by the court had been taken in response to media reports that the pond at the Hindu heritage site was drying out due to water consumption by nearby cement plants. The local government has also been taking steps to stop new cement plants being built in parts of the province.

France: Aumund has won an order to supply equipment for an upgrade at LafargeHolcim’s Martres-Tolosane cement plant. Aumund Fördertechnik is supplying a package including belt bucket elevators to feed the 96m tall heat exchanger and the raw meal silo at the plant. Two Aumund BWZ chain bucket elevators will be used to convey raw meal and filter dust, and for silo feed. An Aumund KZB pan conveyor with a vertical lift of 9m will be installed under the clinker cooler.

Seven Aumund Louise-type drag chain conveyors with short centre distances of 13 m and conveying capacities between 7 and 50t/hr will extract filter dust. Two Centrex machines (25 – 250t/hr) will be extracting a mixture of limestone and clay as well as iron ore from silos up to 7m high.

The Euro100m modernisation project at the Martres-Tolosane works is part of LafargeHolcim’s Euro300m investment project in France. Once upgraded, the plant will be equipped to burn alternative fuels, and energy consumption and CO₂ emissions will be reduced. Work on the project will start in the final quarter of 2018 and be completed by mid-2020.

Algeria: Entreprise des Ciments et Dérivés d’El Chellif (ECDE) plans to open a new 2Mt/yr production line at its plant in Chlef in June 2018. The project covers an area of 15ha and has been presented as a new cement plant, according to the El Watan newspaper. Overall the new line will increase the plants production capacity to 4Mt/yr. The company plans to increase its exports to make a return on its investment.

Democratic Republic of Congo: South Africa’s PPC has agreed with its lenders to reschedule debts from the construction of a cement plant in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The cement producer said that the total capital requirements for the DRC plant will now be limited to interest payments from January 2018 until January 2020, according to Reuters. The debt renegotiation has included an extension of the repayment period by an additional two years and a change to the interest rate.

PPC Barnet DRC is 69% owned by PPC, 21% owned by Barnet Group and the remaining 10% is owned by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The plant is 60% debt funded by the IFC and Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank.

Egypt: The Industrial Development Authority (IDA) has not received any requests for 11 cement plants licenses offered since early 2017. Sources quoted by the Al-Mal newspaper reveal that despite eight local and foreign companies purchasing statements of work by the end of 2017, there has been little interest in the licences.

The IDA offered 14 cement licenses in 2016 to build plants or expand operations in nine governorates. Three licences were sold to SVC, Elsewedy Cement and Egyptian Cement respectively for US$28m in 2016. The remaining licences for Minya, Sohag, Qena, Aswan, New Valley, Matrouh, Suez and South Sinai were re-offered in 2017. Oversupply of cement in the country is estimated to be 30Mt/yr.

Canada: Lafarge Canada, University of Calgary, Queen’s University, and Pembina Institute have started a study on the environmental benefits of introducing lower carbon fuels at the Exshaw Cement Plant in Alberta. Eight lower carbon fuels will be researched, including construction renovation and demolition waste, non-recyclable plastic, carpets and textiles, shingles, treated wood products, wood products, rubber and tyre-derived fuels. These sources of fuel have been successfully used at other LafargeHolcim cement plants in Canada.

“Lab simulations, environmental studies, economics and logistics reviews are already underway. All research will be finalised by December 2019 with regular updates provided to the neighbouring communities via a Public Advisory Committee,” said Jim Bachmann, the plant manager of Exshaw .

Additional research by the partners will measure the environmental components associated with the sourcing, processing and full-scale commercial operation of each lower carbon fuel compared to fossil fuels. The project will also measure the benefits of diverting materials from landfills and determine optimal points in the cement manufacturing process to inject each fuel.

In addition to Lafarge’s support, research funding is being provided by Alberta Innovates, Ontario Centres of Excellence, Emissions Reduction Alberta and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. It includes research by Millennium EMS Solutions Ltd., Geocycle, and WSP Global Inc.

As part of its 2030 Sustainability Plan, LafargeHolcim aims to replace 30 - 50% of fossil fuel use at its Canadian cement plants with lower carbon fuels by 2020.

Pakistan: Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjb, has approved summary legislation banning the installation of new cement plants in the province on environmental grounds. The summary will be passed to standing committees on legislation for deliberation and recommendations, according to the Nation newspaper. The region has 12 cement plants, of which eight are located in the Salt Range of hills, where local residents have become increasingly intolerant of new industrial plants due to damage to underground water tables and increased air pollution.

The summary will also examine expansion plans by existing cement plants in the province and it has hired a consultancy, Artelia, to study the situation. The Supreme Court of Pakistan also being looking at the issue separately. However, the local cement industry is in an expansion mode as it copes with resident and public sector construction markets and large-scale infrastructure projects driven by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative.

China: Six workers have been killed at a BBMG cement plant in Zhuolu County in Hebei. They were cleaning a storage unit when concrete slabs fell on them. The workers died later at hospital.