Displaying items by tag: Syria

Syria: Parts of the Arab Cement Company’s integrated plant in Aleppo are being renovated. Ayman Nabhan, the Director General of the General Establishment for Cement and Building Materials, said that the unit had suffered ‘heavy’ damage from terrorists, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency. The government says that industrial plants in the region are being repaired and returned to production. It took back control of the city from opposition forces in late 2016.

France: The Ministry of Culture has refused a sponsorship of Euro0.2m from Lafarge intended for the Musée de Cluny in Paris. The ministry said that the sponsorship was paid in 2015 and then returned in 2018, according to the Agence France Presse. However, the ministry did not say why the money has been rejected. In 2017 the Paris City Council ended a partnership with Lafarge for the supply of sand for an urban beach project due to allegations of the building material manufacturer’s conduct in Syria during the civil war. A legal case examining Lafarge’s conduct in Syria between 2011 and 2014 is on-going.

France/Syria: The Court of Appeal in Paris will decide on 24 October 2019 whether charges of financing terrorism and crimes against humanity will be upheld. Lafarge and its former executives Bruno Lafont, former chief executive officer (CEO) of Lafarge, former safety director Jean-Claude Veillard, and one of the former directors of its Syrian subsidiary, Frédéric Jolibois have challenged the indictments, according to the Agence France-Presse. The legal case is investigating Lafarge’s conduct in Syria between 2011 and 2014. It has been accused of financing terrorism through indirect payments to extremist groups to keep its Jalabiya cement plant operational after the outbreak of war in Syria.

France/Syria: Lafarge SA and three of its former executives are appealing against accusations of crimes against humanity. The Court of Appeal is expected to address the indictment in late June 2019, according to the Agence France Press. The former executives involved include Bruno Lafont, former chief executive offcier (CEO) of Lafarge, former safety director Jean-Claude Veillard, and one of the former directors of its Syrian subsidiary, Frédéric Jolibois. The Presecutor General has supported some arguments of the defence team.

If the appeal is succesful the legal case will focus instead on the financial aspects of Lafarge’s conduct in Syria between 2011 and 2014. It has been accussed of financing terrorism through indirect payments to extremist groups to keep its Jalabiya cement plant operational after the outbreak of war in Syria.

Syria: Russian companies have met with representatives of the Syrian Ministry of Industry to discuss restoring and upgrading the Al Arabiya cement plant in Aleppo. During the visit to Syria representatives of the company also held talks about building a new cement plant, Muslimiya, according to the Prime News Agency. Negotiations were also held about renovating a steel plant in Hama province.

France: Eric Olsen, the former human resources chief of Lafarge says that charges of financing a terrorist organisation by have been dropped against him. French prosecutors have been investigating Lafarge’s conduct in Syria, according to the Agence France Presse. In late 2017 Olsen and two other former executives were charged with ‘financing a terrorist organisation’ and ‘endangering the lives of others’. The second charge still stands against Olsen although he is reportedly challenging it.

The investigation is attempting to determine whether LafargeHolcim’s predecessor company Lafarge Syria paid terrorist groups in Syria during its civil war and how much managers knew about the situation.

More details from HeidelbergCement this week on its divestment strategy. It has sold its half-share in Ciment Québec in Canada and a minority share in a company in Syria. A closed cement plant in Egypt is being sold and it is working on divesting its business in Ukraine. Altogether these four sales will generate Euro150m for the group. Chairman Bernd Scheifele said that the company expects to rake in Euro500m from asset sales in 2018. It has a target of Euro1.5bn by the end of 2020.

In purely cement terms that is something like seven integrated plants. So the usual game follows of considering what assets HeidelbergCement might consider selling. The group offered a few clues in a presentation that Scheifele was due to give earlier this week at the Commerzbank German Investment Seminar in New York.

First of all the producer said that it was hopeful for 2019 due to limited energy cost inflation, better weather in the US, the Indonesian market turning, general margin improvement actions and sustained price rises in Europe. It then said that its divestments would focus on three main categories: non-core business, weak market positions and idle assets. The first covers sectors outside of the trio of cement, aggregates and ready-mix concrete. Things like white cement plants or sand lime brick production. Countries or areas it identified it had already executed divestments in included Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Syria and Quebec in Canada. Idle assets included depleted quarries and land.

The first obvious candidate for divestment could be the company’s two majority owned integrated plants in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These might be considered targets due to the political instability in the country. However, this is balanced by the potential long-term gains once that country stabilises. Alternatively, some of the plants in Italy seem like a target. The company had seven integrated plants, eight grinding plants and one terminal in 2018.

The presentation also pointed out the sharp rise in European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) CO₂ emissions allowances, from around Euro5/t in 2017 to up to Euro20/t by the end of 2018. In late 2018 Cementa, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement in Sweden, said it was considering closing Degerhamn plant due to mounting environmental costs. The group reckons it can fight a high carbon price through consolidation, capacity closure, higher utilisation, limited exports and pricing. It also pointed out that it is a technology leader in carbon reduction projects. It will be interesting to see how environmental costs play into HeidelbergCement’s divestment decisions.

Finally, a tweet by Sasja Beslik, the head of sustainable finance at Nordea, flagged up a few cement companies as being the worst companies for increasing CO₂ emissions between 2011 and 2016. HeidelbergCement was 19th on the list after LafargeHolcim and CRH. Sure, cement production makes CO₂ but it’s far from clear whether the data from MSCI took into account that each of these companies had expanded heavily during this time. In HeidelbergCement’s case it bought Italcementi in 2016. Cement companies aren’t perfect but sometimes there’s just no justice.

France/Syria: A group of Yazidi women have applied to become ‘civil parties’ in a criminal case brought in France against Lafarge and several of its executives for complicity in crimes against humanity and financing a terrorist organisation. The women survived rape and slavery at the hands of the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria, according to the Agence France Presse. Lafarge allegedly made multi-million dollar payments to IS in order to continue operations at one of its cement plants in northern Syria in 2013. Lawyers on behalf of the Yazidi said that the case would allow the women, "to have their voices heard in a court of law."

Lafarge Syria is suspected of paying nearly Euro13m to IS and other militant groups to keep the Jalabiya plant running. Payments by the cement company were considered a ‘tax’ in exchange for which militants allowed free movement of the company's staff and goods inside the warzone, according to investigators.

France/Syria: A judicial investigation has seized Euro4m from former Lafarge executives, including former chief executive officer (CEO) Bruno Lafont, as part of a probe into the company’s conduct in Syria. Sources quoted by the Agence France Presse said that Euro2.5m was confiscated from Lafont’s leaving package of Euro8.4m as Lafarge merged with Holcim to form LafargeHolcim. Funds were also taken from Bruno Pescheux and Frédéric Jolibois, the former directors of Lafarge Cement Syria, and from Christian Herrault, a dormer deputy general regional manager with overview of Syria.

Lafarge SA, a subsidiary of LafargeHolcim, has been placed under judicial investigation over its actions in Syria between 2011 and 2014. It has been accused of complicity in crimes against humanity and financing terrorism. A panel of three judges in Paris has ordered Lafarge to pay over Euro30m as a security deposit ahead of the trial. Eight former executives, including Lafont, have been charged in connection to the investigation.

Turkey: İsmail Bulut, the head of the Turkish Cement Manufacturers Association (TÇMB), says that the local industry exported US$124m of cement in 2017. He told the Daily Sabah newspaper that the sector has a production capacity of 81Mt/yr. TÇMB data shows that it exported 7.98Mt of cement in 2017 to nearly 100 countries. The top destinations for Turkish cement included Syria, the US, Israel and Ghana. It also exported 4.93Mt of clinker led by Ghana, Colombia, Ivory Coast and Guinea. Despite the high levels of exports, the country also imported relatively small amounts of clinker for Greece and Bulgaria in 2017.