Displaying items by tag: Trucks

Brazil: Votorantim Cimentos, Brazil's largest producer of cement and other construction materials, is still evaluating its production loss after a recent 11 day truck drivers' strike, as well as calculating the impact of minimum freight prices. Brazil’s cement sector is highly dependent on road transport, with 96% of total shipments leaving plants by road, around 54Mt/yr.

"(The strike) will certainly impact the company's annual production," Walter Dissinger, Votorantim Cimentos president said. He added that Votorantim’s cement sales fell nearly 20% in May.

Russia: Iskitimcement has expanded its fleet with three Scania G Series 440LA6 trucks for around Euro0.5m. The new 28.1t vehicles, with trailers than can carry up to 30t, have been designed specifically for the Russian market. The new trucks will join the cement producer’s fleet to 26 vehicles to support its bulk cement business. In 2017 19.4% of Iskitimcement’s total volumes of products were delivered by truck.

Brazil: SNIC, the national cement industry union, says that 70% of cement plants have suspended operation due to a strike by truck drivers. A survey the union ran found that less than 3% of the average daily cement distributed has been delivered to its final destination since the start of the strike action on 21 May 2018.

Before industrial action started the local cement industry distributed around 200,000t/day. At the start of the strike this fell to 10,000t/day and has since dropped further to 6000t/day. Paulo Camillo Penna, president of SNIC, said that the cement industry was suffering disproportionately because plants have been affected by raw materials failing to be delivered and lack of space to store cement inventory. SNIC expects that once the strike ends, it will take two to three weeks for production at cement plants to return to normal.

Argentina: Loma Negra is considering using two trailer trucks or b-trains. The study follows a government relaxation concerning their usage in January 2018, according to the El Cronista newspaper. The cement producer is looking at using the longer trucks for both input materials and cement shipments. Due to a strong market locally most of the company’s 5.5Mt/yr cement production capacity is sold domestically.

Russia: Eurocement’s subsidiary Lipetskcement has launched a new production and logistics unit at its cement plant at Lipetsk. The cement producer has spent around Euro9m on the upgrade that allows the plant to ship up to 10,000t/day of cement. Features of the new unit include an automated weighbridge and lines for road and rail transport with a capacity of 800t/hr and 1600t/hr respectively.

France: Petrol containers and burnt matches have been found under trucks at a LafargeHolcim site in Paris. Workers found the items underneath the vehicles on the morning of 5 October 2017, according to Agence France Presse. However, the incident is not thought to be terror related. Security camera footage shows the perpetrators trying to ignite the fuel on the night before. Investigators say that the ‘crude device’ had no chance of detonating. Lafarge France operates a number of concrete and aggregate units in the city.

The incident follows on-going anti-terrorism investigations in the city following the discovery of several gas canisters and a cell phone detonator earlier in October 2017. LafargeHolcim is also under investigation by the French judiciary for its conduct running a cement plant in Syria during the civil war.

Russia: Iskitimcement has expanded its fleet with the purchase of three Scania P Series trucks with Sespel bulk cement semi trailers for Euro557,000. The new 28.1t vehicles have been designed specifically for the Russian market. The trailers can transport up to 30t of cargo each. Vladimir Skakun, the general director of the cement producer, commented that its road shipments are growing and that it expects to deliver up to 24,000t/month of cement in the summer of 2017 from a fleet of 26 vehicles. The company has plans to increase its fleet further in the future.

UK: Tarmac has started using a small-scale liquid lime delivery vehicle to despatch Kalic and Kalic HS milk of lime consignments to smaller or harder-to-reach locations. The eight-wheeled vehicle can carry up to 18t of milk of lime and its shorter wheelbase makes it much more manoeuvrable than larger carriers. It also comes equipped with metering capabilities and adaptable nozzle to aid delivery. The vehicle will compliment Tarmac’s use of bulk tankers or 1t intermediate bulk containers (IBCs).

“Many of our smaller customers require small but regular deliveries of milk of lime as they often have limited storage available on site. Our new ‘milk round’ allows us to regularly deliver fresh top-ups in lower volume deliveries without customers being restricted to taking small deliveries in IBCs,’ said Tarmac Lime & Powders Logistics Manager Nick Thomas.

Ethiopia: Messebo Cement has purchased 200 trucks from Germany’s Man for US$30m. The cement producer has expanded its fleet to reduce its transportation costs, according to the Ethiopian Reporter newspaper. The trucks have been assembled locally by Mesfin Industrial Engineering, a sister company to Massebo, after shipping. 25 of the trucks are silo trucks for transporting bulk cement and 50 are dump trucks.

Nigeria: Lafarge Africa has launched an academy to train truck driver safety and fleet management. The launch event took place at the Ewekoro cement plant in Ogun state. The logistics academy is a follow-up project to a road safety project and drivers academy previously established by the cement producer to ensure sound safety culture, process efficiency and good performance among truck drivers, according to the Nigerian Guardian newspaper.