Displaying items by tag: Plant

Vietnam: The government of Quang Ninh Province has ordered the closure of two cement plants in Ha Long, the 2.0Mt/yr Ha Long cement plant and 2.3Mt/yr Thang Long cement plant, to close in 2030. The Viet Nam News newspaper has reported that the closures aim to protect the local environment and nature as part of the city’s move towards becoming a tourism and service hub centred on Cua Luc Bay. In 2014 the provincial government advised the cement plants to stop expanding and relocate before 2030.

Spain: Against a backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, staff at Cementos Portland Valderrivas’ Alcalá de Guadaíra cement plant spent the working week of 16 – 20 October engaged in workshops and attending talks as part of the plant’s second annual Healthy Week. Workshops including stretching and health-affective communication, while talks covered areas including balanced diets and quitting smoking. The company says that throughout the week staff competed to offer the Best Healthy Proposal, by developing “ideas to implement actions that reinforce safety within the plant facilities and improve the factory in the field of health.”

Canada: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s serious crime unit has launched an investigation into the death of one person at Lafarge Canada’s Richmond, British Columbia integrated cement plant on 19 November 2020. The Vancouver Sun newspaper has reported that the incident caused the plant to be evacuated.

Spokesperson Jill Truscott said, "We are in shock and are extremely concerned about the impact to this individual's family and friends. Steps have been taken to protect all employees on site and the surrounding community."

WorkSafe British Columbia is conducting a separate investigation.

Sri Lanka: Tokyo Cement Company (Lanka) has announced that it expects to sign an agreement to increase the production of OPC and other hydraulic cement products by 1Mt/yr. The investment will be made at its existing cement grinding plant in Trincomalee on the north east coast of Sri Lanka.

Tokyo Cement said that the project would cost approximately US$12m. Global Cement notes that this amount is fairly low for such a large increase in cement capacity and therefore may represent increases in cement handling capacity, rather than grinding capacity. Tokyo Cement said that it expects the project to be completed within 24 months.

France: HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary Ciments Calcia plans to stop clinker production at two plants as part of a Euro400m investment and reorganisation programme for several of its sites in France. Around Euro300m of this will be spent at the integrated Airvault cement plant. The company also intends to: convert its integrated Gargenville cement plant into a grinding plant and shut down its kiln systems and quarry operations; convert its integrated Cruas white cement plant into an automated cement terminal for the distribution of white cement; and adapt the organisation at its French headquarters at Guerville. The plan will cut 162 jobs and create 20 new ones.

“As part of our global business excellence initiative, we intend to further optimise effectiveness, processes and structures of our French sites,” said Dominik von Achten, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement. “We want to considerably speed up the modernisation of our plants in order to enhance our performance in France, while ensuring alignment with the goals of the Paris agreement. This is why we focus our initiatives on the main CO₂-emitting plants in France.”

Germany: The Catch4Climate project has moved into the planning stage of its oxyfuel pilot plant at the Mergelstetten cement plant. The group, comprising Buzzi Unicem’s subsidiary Dyckerhoff, HeidelbergCement, Schwenk Zement and Vicat, signed a letter of intent with the state’s prime minister and transport minister in Stuttgart in mid-November 2020.

The consortium intends to build and operate its own demonstration plant on a semi-industrial scale, to use the oxyfuel process to capture CO₂. In the future, the captured CO₂ will be used to produce so-called ‘reFuels’, climate-neutral synthetic fuels such as kerosene for air traffic, with the help of renewable electrical energy.

The cement producers formed CI4C – Cement Innovation for Climate in late 2019. The aim of the Catch4Climate project is to create the basis for a large-scale application of CO₂ capture technologies in cement plants enabling the later use of CO₂ as a raw material in other processes such as a carbon capture and utilisation/storage.

Mozambique: China-based Sino Energy has signed a non-legally-binding memorandum of understanding with Hong Kong Construction Group in which it agreed to buy a 65% stake in a 0.4Mt/yr cement plant in Northern Pemba City, Cabo Delgado Province. Sino Energy will conduct due diligence and further negotiations on the proposed acquisition over the next four months. No value for the proposed purchase has been disclosed.

Sino Energy’s main business is manufacturing and selling of casual footwear, apparel and related accessories in mainland China. The company is also developing petrol station operations.

Bolivia/Paraguay: The Bolivian-Paraguayan Binational Chamber of Commerce & Industry is working with Bolivia-based Fábrica Nacional de Cemento (Fancesa) to export cement to Paraguay via the Parana – Paraguay Rivers Inland Waterway. The organisation is also trying to promote exports from the new Empresa Publica Productiva Cementos de Bolivia’s (ECEBOL) integrated cement plant at Caracollo in Oruro, according to the Agencia Boliviana de Información. Local Bolivian cement producers faced production stoppages from March to May 2020 due to coronavirus-related restrictions.

Germany: Dyckerhoff has reopened a railway siding at its integrated Amöneburg cement plant. The additional transport link joins road and water connections at the site. The company said that reusing the railway siding made sense given low water levels in the River Rhine, that made parts of the waterway unnavigable in 2018, as well as adding a sustainable transport route. The railway tracks at the site have not been used actively since the mid-2000s. The cement producer has repaired the tracks on its site and a related signalling system.

India: Shree Cement has ordered two vertical roller (VR) mills from Germany-based Gebr. Pfeiffer for the upcoming clinker line at its Raipur cement plant in Chhattisgarh. The supplier says that one of the mills will grind raw materials and the other will grind coal.

A MVR 6000 R-6 type raw mill will grind 800t/hr of raw material and have a drive power of 8700kW. Gebr. Pfeiffer said, “The grinding rollers of this mill can be equipped with roller tires for raw meal grinding as well as for cement grinding, provided that they have been designed according to the same force module. This saves money, because the identical components of rollers, tensioning system, roller arms, etc. mean that customers can reduce their spare parts inventory, since the same spare parts can be used for a raw meal mill and for a cement mill.” The mill will be equipped with an SLS 6000 VR high-efficiency classifier.

A MPS 2800 BK type mill will be used to grind coal with a capacity of 28t/hr, a drive power of 720kW and be “equipped with the latest design of the integrated SLS 2900 BK high-efficiency classifier optimised for MPS mills.”

The supplier said, “While the core components of the mills as well as the drive units will be supplied by Gebr. Pfeiffer from Europe, the Indian subsidiary Gebr. Pfeiffer (India) will provide components such as the mill and classifier housings, the steel foundation parts as well as internal parts of the classifiers.”