Displaying items by tag: Spain

Ivory Coast: Jean-Claude Brou, the Minister of Industry and Mines, has inaugurated a new mill at LafargeHolcim Ivory Coast’s plant at Abidjan. The new mill has increased the unit’s production capacity to 2Mt/yr, according to the Agence Ivoirienne de Presse. LafargeHolcim Ivory Coast re-used a ball mill from a Spanish cement plant that was dismantled and shipped to Abidjan. The mill uses a 4.5MW motor and the cement producer says it is the largest horizontal ball mill in French-speaking West Africa. The project cost US$28.5m.

Spain: LafargeHolcim’s subsidiary Holcim España invested over Euro2m in its cement plant at Jerez during 2017. The work included environmental improvements, changes to the despatch areas and health and safety upgrades such as fire detection systems in its fuels storage zones. The plant also introduced a sulphate-resistant cement product (CEM IV/A (V) 42,5 R/SR) in May 2017 targeted for marine applications.

Spain: Cemex Spain’s Buñol cement plant has marked the 100th anniverary of the plant and the 25th anniversary of Cemex’s entry into the Spanish market. Pedro Palomino, the president of Cemex Spain, Juan Charquero, the plant manager, Juncal Carrascosa, the local mayor, and employees, customers and suppliers of the company atttended the event including the screening of a documentary about the cement industry, according to the Las Provincias newspaper.

Spain: Cement consumption is expected to have risen by 10% year-on-year to 12.3Mt in Spain during 2017. This represents the highest consumption by the sector since 2012. It is still massively down on the 25Mt/yr consumption seen during the building boom experienced by the country prior to the economic downturn.

Exports, which had been a ‘lifesaver’ for the sector during the crisis, fell by 7.6% year-on-year in the first eight months of 2017 to 5.8Mt. Spain exported 9.1Mt of cement in 2016.

Spain: Cementos Cosmos has stated its intention to ask the Castilla León Board for permission to burn tyres in the kiln at its plant in Oral Sarriana. The move has already been met with resistance from the local Bierzo Aire Limpio platform, which has raised concerns about the effects of tyre burning on the local agricultural sector as well as ‘the alarming rates of contamination, cancer and premature deaths in a region closed in by mountains.’

This is despite the plant already having permission to burn paper and plastic waste. The increase in alternative fuels, ideally up to a 70% thermal substitution rate, is intended to reduce the plant’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Spain: The Valencia Port Authority (APV) has blocked a request by Cemex Spain to expand its operations at the Port of Grau in Valencia. The port authority denied the cement producer because the port is being used for passengers, according to the El Mercantil Valenciano newspaper. However, the port is hoping to find another site for Cemex to use.

Cemex has used the nearby Port of Sagunto for cement and clinker exports since 2014. Exports have since represented 40% of its sales. Production from the company’s Buñol cement plant is exported to countries in the Mediterranean, especially in North Africa.

Spain: Vicente Pedro has been appointed as the new plant manager of Lafarge Spain’s Montcada i Reixac plant near Barcelona. He succeeds José Luis Coleto, who will take over the management of the Sagunto plant in Valencia, according to the Crónica Global newspaper.

Pedro trained as an industrial engineer at the Universitat Politècnica de València. He has worked for LafargeHolcim and its predecessor companies for over 30 years spending time at plants at Spain, Venezuela and Brazil. More recently he has managed the company’s capital expenditure projects in Spain.

Spain: Cementos Molins is moving its registered address from the town of Sant Vicenc dels Horts in Catalonia, to Madrid. Sources quoted by the Expansión newspaper say it is due to the legal uncertainty in Catalonia. The company will continue to operate its cement plant in Sant Vicenc dels Horts but the publicly traded company and the group's holding, through which it channels its foreign investments, will be moved.

The Catalan regional government approved an independence referendum held in early October 2017. The central Spanish government rules it illegal and has moved to impose direct rule on the region.

Spain: Oficemen, the Spanish cement association, has released its roadmap for reducing CO₂ emissions to 2050. The document highlights the potential of new technologies, including carbon capture and storage (CCS), which could decrease the CO2 footprint of the Spanish cement industry by up to 80% in 2050. Using existing the technology the association estimates it could reduce emissions by 35% from a 1990 baseline.

Europe: RHI and Magnesita have announced divestment agreements ahead of their proposed merger. RHI has signed a contract with a European refractories supplier for an undisclosed sum regarding the sale of its dolomite business in the European Economic Area. The sale consists of the production sites at Marone in Italy and Lugones in Spain. Magnesita has entered into a definitive agreement with Intocast to divest its business related to the production and supply of magnesia carbon bricks produced at the company's Oberhausen plant in Germany for Euro20.3m. Both sales were required by the European Commission as part of the merger process.

“With the sale of the two sites, the combination of RHI with Magnesita is also still right on schedule,” said RHI’s chief executive officer Stefan Borgas with regards to his company’s divestments “We expect the confirmation by the European Commission in the near future.”

RHI signed a contract in August 2017 to sell its production sites at San Vito in Italy and Sherbinska in Russia that produce fused cast refractories for the glass industry. Production at the company’s plant at Aken in Germany was stopped in the first half of 2017 for an indefinite period. RHI plans to sell or close the plant to maintain its production utilisation rate across the business.