Displaying items by tag: Plant

Spain: Tudela Veguín has shut the kiln down for 10 days at its La Robla integrated cement plant in Castile and León. It has blamed the high price of electricity for the stoppage, according to the Diaro de León newspaper. The company says it has sufficient stocks of cement to continue to supply customers during the shutdown. The plant has a production capacity of 1.2Mt/yr but it produces 0.3Mt/yr at present.

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement says a marine oil spill took place at its Kamiiso Plant in Hokkaido on 11 March 2022. The spill was reported after a ship had finished unloading at the plant’s pier. The cement producer has apologised for the incident and is conducting an investigation.

Pakistan: The Cabinet Committee on Legislative Business of the Punjab government has licenced the establishment of a new cement plant in the state. The News newspaper has reported that the committee also approved the expansion of two existing cement plants.

Türkçimento’s Volkan Bozay took to the airwaves last week to raise the issues that the war in Ukraine is causing for Turkey-based cement producers. The head of the Turkish Cement Manufacturers’ Association explained, to the local Bloomberg HT channel, that the dramatic jump in the price of Newcastle Coal posed a serious threat to the sector. The price jumped nearly US$100/t in a single day in early March 2022. Bozay said that the cost of cement from a plant using imported coal would consequently rise by around US$15/t. He added that the association’s members had an average of 15 – 20 days of coal stocks.

Graph 1: Price of coal, March 2020 – March 2021. Source: Trading Economics.

In a separate press release Türkçimento revealed that Turkey, as a whole, imported approximately US$1.5bn of coal from Russia in 2021. The cement industry imported about 5Mt of coal in 2021, from all sources, although the majority of this came from Russia. Coal shipments from Russia since the start of the war were reported as ‘very limited or even not possible.’ It was further explained that each US$10/t increase in the price of coal put up plant production costs by US$1.5/t of cement.

Naturally Bozay’s appearance on a television news show carried a lobbying aspect. He called for government import standards – such as the sulphur ratio, lower heating values and volatile matter limits - to be relaxed to allow coal to be imported more freely from sources such as Colombia, Indonesia and South Africa. There was also a push to let in more alternative fuels such as tyres and waste-derived fuels. The bit that Bozay didn’t mention though was how many of his members had long term coal supply contracts in place to cushion them, from short term price inflation at least. Yet, if coal shipments from Russia have simply stopped, then the price is irrelevant. A cement kiln configured to run on coal stops when it uses up its stocks.

Turkey was the world’s fifth largest cement producer in 2021 according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Türkçimento data shows that in 2020 it exported 145,000t of cement to Russia by sea. Overall it exported 16.3Mt of cement and 13.5Mt of clinker. The US, Israel, Syria, Haiti and Libya were the top destinations for cement. Notably, Ukraine was the sixth largest recipients of cement, with 752,000t imported, although anti-dumping legislation introduced in mid-2021 looked set to reduce it until the war started. Ghana, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Cameroon and Belgium were the principal recipients of clinker. Cumulative cement exports for the year to October 2021 were up by 3% year-on-year compared to the first 10 months of 2020. Clinker exports were down by 27% though. Overall domestic production and sales in Turkey rose by 9.5%, suggested an estimated production figure of 79Mt for 2021.

Other fallout in the cement sector from the war in Ukraine this week included Ireland-based CRH’s decision to quit the Russian market. It entered the region in 1998 through a subsidiary based in Finland and was operating seven ready-mixed concrete plants via its LujaBetomix joint venture. CRH says that all operations in Russia have now stopped. In 2021 it sold its lime business in Russia, Fels Izvest, to Russia-based Bonolit. Although selling concrete plants is not trivial, these are far cheaper assets than clinker production lines. Germany-based HeidelbergCement, Italy-based Buzzi Unicem and Switzerland-based Holcim each operate at least one integrated cement plant in Russia. So far these companies have publicly expressed dismay at the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Ukraine and made donations to the Red Cross.

Graph 2: European Union Emission Trading Scheme price, 2020 – March 2022. Source: Sandbag.

Finally, one more surprise this week has been a crash in the European Union (EU) Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) carbon price from a high of Euro96/t in early February 2022 to Euro58/t on 7 March 2022. As other commentators have stated, normally the carbon price would be expected to follow the energy market, but this hasn’t happened. Instead investors have pulled out, possibly to maintain liquidity for other markets.

With the US set to ban Russian oil, gas and coal imports and phase-outs to varying degrees promised by the UK and the EU in 2022, we can expect more turbulence from energy markets in the coming days. As the Turkish example above shows, all of this can... and will... have effects on cement production.

India: ISGEC Heavy Engineering has received an order from Shree Cement to supply a waste heat recovery (WHR) unit for the integrated 3.8Mt/yr Nawalgarh plant in Rajasthan. The scope of work includes design, manufacture and supply of the system. The supplier says that this will be one of the world’s largest steam-based WHR units by capacity. ISGEC previously supplied two WHR units for Shree Cement’s Raipur plant.

Algeria: The Entreprise des Ciments et Dérives d’Ech-Cheliff (ECDE) plant plans to export 1.5Mt of cement in 2022. Exports will be sent to countries in Europe, Africa and Latin America, according to the Algeria Press Service. The subsidiary of Groupe des Ciments d'Algérie’s (GICA) opened a third production line at the site intended solely for exports. The unit has a production capacity of 4.2Mt/yr.

Spain: HeidelbergCement is starting the Neuclicem carbon capture use and storage (CCUS) project at its integrated Arrigorriaga plant near Bilbao. Local electricity company Volbas and the Tecnalia Research & Innovation centre are participating in the initiative. The project intends to look at a process based on the mineralisation of alkaline waste, such as residual construction waste or steel slag, by accelerated carbonation using CO₂ from the flue gas at the plant. The resulting materials will then be used as additives in cement production or to reduce the use of clinker. The scheme will study its viability of the process on an industrial scale.

The Neuclicem project has an estimated duration of 14 months. Its results are intended to prepare the way for scaling up to a subsequent industrial prototype. The project is partially financed by Ihobe, an environmental management division of the regional Basque government.

Mexico: Cemex has successfully commissioned its new Line 2 at its Tapeaca, Puebla, cement plant.

Cemex’s Mexico regional vice president operations and technology Ernesto Felix said that the work ‘brought together a great team’ of Cemex colleagues.

Turkey: Medcem has appointed Ruhi Bilge as the director of its integrated Mersin cement plant. He has worked in the cement sector for over 20 years, most recently holding the position of production director for Kümaş Refractories. Prior to this he worked for cement companies including Bursa Çimento, Vicat’s subsidiary Baştaş Çimento and Norm Cement.

Turkey: Çimsa Çimento revenue grew by 80% year-on-year to Euro240m in 2021 from Euro133m in 2020. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 46% to Euro41.4m from Euro28.5m. The subsidiary of Sabancı Holding says that 54% of its sales in 2021 came from foreign sales. However, it noted that its production energy costs increased by 94%. It also reported that its alternative fuels substitution rate hit 15%.

“In July 2021 we took over the Buñol Factory in Valencia, Spain with Cimsa Sabancı Cement. With the addition of the Buñol Factory to our production and distribution network, we have strengthened our export network and expanded our sphere of influence in Europe, North Africa and South America,” said chief executive officer Umut Zenar. With the acquisition of the white cement plant in Spain, Çimsa Çimento says it has become one of the largest white cement producers in the world.