Displaying items by tag: ThyssenKrupp

Denmark: Equipment manufacturer FLSmidth has launched new corporate strategies for its cement and mining sectors. The so-called ‘pure play’ plans are intended to further focus on technology, products and services and sustainability. The group says it is also simplifying its operating model to reduce risks, improve efficiencies, ensure stronger execution and improve profitability and quality of earnings. The announcement was made at the same time as the group’s latest investor event.

Mikko Keto, the chief executive officer at FLSmidth, said “We must prioritise our efforts on our core business, reduce risk and execute with excellence. We have already started to fundamentally transform our business to ensure stronger strategy execution and to achieve our long-term ambitions to the benefit of our stakeholders.”

In the cement sector the group’s ‘Green 26’ plan aims to make the company the preferred service supplier for the industry. It added that it has a “clear commitment to drive the green transition in the cement industry.” It has set a target of reaching an 8% earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) margin by 2026. For the mining sector the target is a 13 - 15% margin.

In provisional financial results for 2022, FLSmidth revealed that it had an EBITDA margin of 3.3% for cement and 7.6% for mining. Group revenue rose by 24% year-on-year to Euro2.93bn in 2022 from Euro2.37bn in the 2021. Revenue from the cement and mining sectors grew by 7% to Euro847m and 29% to Euro2.03bn respectively. The group said that the short-term outlook for the cement industry remained impacted by overcapacity and that a potential recession is expected to impact market demand negatively over the coming period. Its mining sector revenue was inflated by the acquisition of ThyssenKrupp Mining in 2022.

Germany: Aumund has appointed Mari Kuijs as General Manager After Sales. He previously spent over 30 years working for ThyssenKrupp Group holding jobs in Germany, the Netherlands, Turkiye and the Middle East. He holds qualifications in energy technology, business administration and management studies.

Vietnam: ThyssenKrupp Polysius’ Asia Pacific division has secured an order for two Polflame-type main burners for an unnamed cement plant. The equipment supplier has highlighted the ability of its burner product to cope with low-grade coal and support high alternative fuel substitution rates as key selling factors. The order follows the purchase of an Impact Crusher by the same customer previously.

Lukas Schoeneck, the chief executive officer of Polysius Asia Pacific, said "We are very proud to add burners number 17 and 18 to our installed base in Vietnam which ensures our market leader position. Now we have to put our focus on the delivery and installation of the burner - in time and quality.”

Indonesia: Thyssenkrupp Polysius Indonesia has inaugurated its new offices in Jakarta's Tempo Scan Tower. The supplier said that the new headquarters will bring a stronger business focus to its decades-long presence in Indonesia by providing a broader scope of local service-driven solutions. Thyssenkrupp Polysius Indonesia country manager Ridwan Setiawan will head the new office.

Asia Pacific Regional head of cement Lukas Schoeneck said “With this new office, we are celebrating the return of the name and brand Polysius in one of the most important and energetic markets in the Asia Pacific region. We look forward to reshaping our focus in the cement industry and on building a sustainable future together with our clients, especially in transforming the cement industry with our #grey2green initiative."

Saudi Arabia: Yamama Cement has commissioned its second cement plant, with 20,000t/day in capacity across two clinker lines. The producer invested US$1.25bn in the plant's construction, which was carried out by Germany-based ThyssenKrupp. The facility is equipped with seven raw materials crushers, a 3.7km-long limestone conveyor belt, 110,000t of storage capacity, four Quadropol roller mills, two Dopol preheater towers, two Polro rotary kilns, two Polytrack clinker coolers, three 100,000t clinker silos, four Polycom high-pressure roller mills, six 22,590t and 25,000t cement silos and 22,000m³
in water storage basins. The new plant is situated in the eastern Arabian Desert, 80km from Riyadh.

Yamama Cement also operates the 6.4Mt/yr Al Karj Cement plant, 70km from Riyadh.

France: Heidelberg Materials' subsidiary Ciments Calcia has laid the foundation stone for its construction of a Euro285m CO₂ emissions-reducing upgrade to its Airvault cement plant in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Ciments Calcia first published its plans for the installation of a new 4000t/day production line to replace both existing lines at the Airvault plant in 2021, with commissioning scheduled for mid-2024.

Germany-based ThyssenKrupp secured the order to supply a 1200t/hr double-shaft hammer crusher, a longitudinal blending bed, a 370t/hr Quadropol QMR² 45/23 vertical roller mill, a 10,000t raw materials tangential blending silo, a single-string, five-stage Dopol cyclone preheater with integral calciner for alternative fuels (with the possibility of conversion to oxyfuel), a Polytrack clinker cooler, a solid recovered fuel preparation line and dedusting systems for the project.

France: HeidelbergCement subsidiary Ciments Calcia plans to lay the first stone of a major upgrade project at its Airvault cement plant on 5 October 2022. The event will mark the start of the construction phase of a new 4000t/day clinker production line, according to La Nouvelle République newspaper. The Euro300m project will be built by Germany-based ThyssenKrupp.

India: ThyssenKrupp Industries India has reported information on recent orders with UltraTech Cement, Shree Cement and Hills Cement.

Its Polysius division has secured an order from UltraTech Cement for the design, engineering and supply of two 10,000t/day pyro processing lines with Polycom rolls for raw materials grinding.

Shree Cement has ordered pyro processing equipment including a Polytrack clinker cooler for a new cement plant at Guntur in Andhra Pradesh. ThyssenKrupp Industries India noted that it was the “maiden plant order” from Shree Cement and of “great strategic importance to us.”

Hills Cement has also made a first order with ThyssenKrupp. In this case it has requested pyro processing equipment including a clinker cooler for the second production line at its plant in Meghalaya.

Congratulations are due to the National Cement Company of Alabama and Vicat for the inauguration of the new production line at the Ragland cement plant in Alabama. The event took place on 21 July 2022.

The US$300m project was originally announced in late 2019. It then took two years to build with construction starting in January 2020. Key features include a raw vertical grinding mill, a new roller mill, a five stage preheater tower, an automatic clay storage system, a 78m tall homogenisation silo, an alternative fuels storage area for tyre-derived fuel, sawdust and wood chips, a laboratory and a new control room. The new kiln was previously reported to have a clinker production capacity of 5000t/day and it will add up to 2Mt/yr of cement production capacity to the plant. ThyssenKrupp signed up as the principal equipment supplier in 2019 and H&M was the main contractor. The production line is expected to reduce energy consumption by one third. Further change is scheduled with a switch to production of Portland limestone cement (PLC) from Ordinary Portland cement (OPC) by the start of 2023.

Vicat has repeatedly noted its affection for the plant as it was the first cement plant the group purchased outside of France, back in 1974. Indeed, Vicat’s group chair and chief executive officer Guy Sidos personally managed the Ragland plant in 2001. However, rather more prosaic reasons may also have been behind the decision to expand Ragland. According to United States Geological Survey (USGS) data, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee’s cement shipments grew by nearly 5% year-on-year to 7.1Mt in 2019 from 6.8Mt in 2018. Shipments are up by 3% year-on-year to 2.5Mt in the first four months of 2022 and the three states were the fifth largest region in the US for cement shipments in April 2022. A shortage of cement was also reported in Alabama in April 2022.

The other big US-based cement plant expansion is Lehigh Hanson’s US$600m upgrade to its Mitchell plant in Indiana. It also celebrated a milestone this week with a ‘topping out’ ceremony to mark the placement of the final section of steel for the stack. Another recent achievement here was the completion of a 169,000t storage dome supplied by Dome Technologies. The supplier says that the 67m diameter and 48m tall dome is the second largest clinker storage facility in Europe and North America, after one it previous built in Romania in 2008.

The Mitchell K4 project was announced in mid-2018 and then ground breaking began in late 2019. However, the start of the coronavirus pandemic delayed construction in early 2020 before it restarted in September 2020. The revised commissioning date was then moved back about half a year to early 2023. The key part of this project is that it will replace the plant’s three current kilns with just one. The new production line will increase the site’s production capacity, reduce energy usage and decrease CO₂ emissions per tonne of cement. It was reported by local press back in 2018 that the project would increase the plant’s cement production capacity to 2.8Mt/yr. The project has been linked to supplier KHD with CCC Group as the contractor.

It’s fascinating to see two major new upgrades to cement plants emerging in a mature market like the US and during an unprecedented event like the emergence of coronavirus. No doubt compelling tales will emerge of how both teams coped with managing nine-figure capital expansion projects as a global public health emergency unfolded. The US market has been on a roll in recent years, despite all the uncertainty in the world, and so far it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. With luck both of the projects feature above have timed their opening right.

Germany: ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions’ Polysius division says that it has been commissioned by Buzzi Unicem, HeidelbergCement, Schwenk Zement and Vicat to build a pure oxyfuel kiln system at the Mergelstetten cement plant as part of the Cement Innovation for Climate (CI4C) project. No dates of the start of construction or final project commissioning of the industrial trial have been disclosed. CI4C was originally formed in 2019.

The Polysius pure oxyfuel process is a new type of clinker production process in which the otherwise normal ambient air is replaced by pure oxygen in the kiln combustion process. One advantage of the technology is that atmospheric nitrogen is eliminated from the clinker burning process leading to much higher concentrations of CO₂ in the exhaust gas compared to a conventional kiln. As such the process aims to concentrate, capture and reuse almost 100% of the CO₂ produced in a cost-effective manner. The medium-term goal is to further process the captured CO₂ with the help of renewable energy into products such as kerosene for air traffic.