Displaying items by tag: Product

UK: Aggregate Industries has launched its Lafarge Endure SR, a CEM II blended cement product that uses fly ash. It says that the product has a lower embodied CO₂, has improved plastic and hardened properties when used in concrete and has enhanced suitability for all ground types. Lafarge Endure SR is resistant to sulphates, allowing contractors and suppliers to scope a wider variety of projects. It also uses 10% less water than CEM I products to reach a workable consistency and offers improved pumpability and mixing efficiency.

“As its name suggests, Lafarge Endure SR is designed to dramatically increase the longevity of the concrete it forms a part of. It is a great solution for contractors that want to reduce the environmental impact of their build while simultaneously improving its life span,” said Steve Curley, Commercial Director at Aggregate Industries.

Mexico: Cemex says it has completed the global deployment of its digital platform Cemex Go. The product is available in 21 countries with 96% of the company’s total recurring customers using it. 45% of Cemex’s total global sales are processed through the platform, over half a million payments are completed through it per year and 1.5 million deliveries use the system annually.

“We are incredibly proud that our vision of providing a superior customer experience enabled by digital technology has been deployed to our customers around the world. Cemex Go has proven itself as a game changer, an established and essential tool for our customers, accessible anywhere, any time to help them run their businesses with increased efficiency,” said Fernando A Gonzalez, chief executive officer (CEO) of Cemex. He added that platform was only part of the ‘initial’ stages of the company’s digital transformation plans.

India: Ramco Cements has launched a new premium blended cement, Ramco Supercrete. The company says that Ramco Supercrete is packed in Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene bags (BOPP) bags to ensure no spillage and thus ensure a cleaner environment. Ramco Supercrete will be targeted at the ‘premium’ section of the cement market.

Ramco Cement also reports that it has invested US$500m in various expansions that are underway. The company's new capacity in West Bengal is already on stream. The company's Odisha plant is expected to be commissioned by October 2019, its Vizag plant expansion will be completed by December 2019, its Jayanthipuram expansion by July 2020 and work on its Kurnool plant will be finished by March 2021.

Peru: The Supreme Court has upheld a fine of nearly US$2m by the National Institute for the Defense of Free Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (INDECOPI) on UNACEM. The penalty was levied due to UNACEM and its distribution network refusing to allow retailers to sell cement made by its competitor, according to the Gestión newspaper. INDECOPI said that in 2014 UNACEM and its collaborators refused to allow retailers to stock its Sol brand of cement if they were selling the rival Quisqueya brand produced by Mexico’s Cemex.

Peru: UNACEM has launched Andino Forte, a cement product targeted at markets in the Amazon regions of the country. The product is designed for construction projects in the jungle and highland regions, according to La Region newspaper. The cement producer says it offers high resistance against salt in the medium and long term.

Antarctica/UK: Hanson has transported 125t of bagged cement from its Ketton plant in the UK to the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera Research Station in Antarctica. Construction company BAM Nuttall is upgrading a wharf at the site to improve ship and boating operations and allow it to accommodate the RRS Sir David Attenborough as well as to reduce manual handling cargo loading/unloading time.

The subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement worked with BAM Nuttall and civil engineering company Keyline to set the technical specification of the cement. Each of the 25kg bags were vacuum sealed and double shrink wrapped onto heat-treated pallets to reduce the risk of contaminating Antarctica’s environment with foreign organisms.

Denmark: FLSmidth has launched ECS/UptimeGo, a downtime analysis product designed to increase plant uptime by identifying the causes of plant and equipment failures. Real-time dashboards and key performance indicators (KPIs) enable the measurement of the real impact of machine failures interrupting the production. In addition, ECS/UptimeGo provides Pareto charts and the ability to monitor maintenance and reliability KPIs to give operators a picture of a downtime event and its causes.

ECS/UptimeGo can be integrated with existing process control systems and can be paired with FLSmidth ECS/ControlCenter for an automated process to gather all production stoppages. It also features a graphic interface that allows operators to document and analyse stoppages.

Germany: Flender has increased the torque of its N-Arpex coupling product range with two new designs featuring eight and ten bolting points. N-Arpex now covers a diameter up to 988mm and a torque up to 2MNm. The compact design and enhanced bore capacities also enable a leap in size. A smaller coupling transmits a higher torque compared to the predecessor model. The steel disc coupling is suitable for use in drive applications including pumps, fans, compressors, generators, turbines, and paper and printing machines.

Other improvements include a more compact Flender conical bolt connection for the plate packs. With the two new N-Arpex couplings, Flender has introduced a modular system that increases the number of available types as well as reducing the number of components required. The three standard series of the predecessor Arpex merge into one N-Arpex series. The new series of couplings has also been designed for use in potentially explosive environments as defined in directive 2014/34/EU and fulfil the requirements of API610/ISO13709 and API671/ISO10441.

Vietnam: SCG Vietnam has launched its SCG Super Cement product. The product is intended as a ‘premium’ multi-purpose cement for home owners, developers, contractors and architects, according to the Vietnam Economic Times newspaper. It can be used in a variety of applications including brick-laying, plastering and concrete work for structure and foundations.

US: Rockwell Automation has launched the FactoryTalk Analytics LogixAI module, an update to its Project Sherlock software product. It is intended to detect production anomalies and alert workers so they can investigate or intervene. The add-on module for the company’s ControlLogix fits directly into a control chassis and streams controller data over the backplane to build predictive models. It can continuously monitor a production operation, detecting anomalies against its derived understanding.

The FactoryTalk Analytics LogixAI module is the newest addition to the FactoryTalk Analytics portfolio from Rockwell Automation. The portfolio includes FactoryTalk Analytics for Devices, which learns about an automation system’s structure to tell workers about problems with individual devices. The LogixAI module expands on this by learning about an automation system’s application and helping identify anomalies with its overall function.