Displaying items by tag: commissioning

France: Cem’In’Eu has announced plans to establish a Euro23.0m grinding plant at Portes-lès-Valence in Drôme department. The La Tribune newspaper has reported that the plant will receive imported clinker produced at Adana Çimento’s 5.2Mt/yr integrated Adana plant in Turkey by river and rail from the port of Sète. Cem’In’Eu president and Vincent Lefebvre said that the location “allows us to be in the middle of a Lyon-Marseille-Montpellier triangle but also to be connected to the Alpine valleys.”

The grinding plant is due for commissioning in mid-July 2021, however the coronavirus has delayed the start of construction.

US: Residents of Shenango, Pennsylvania attended a public hearing regarding Cemex USA’s plan to begin limestone mining at a 593 acre site in the township. New Castle News has reported that the proposal is part of a planned reopening of the company’s 0.9Mt/yr integrated Wampum plant, decommissioned in 2010 after 136 years’ operation, located nearby in Lawrence County. Cemex USA director of cement resources Mark Davies said that Cemex has plans that would generate ‘as much as US$109m’ for Lawrence County and Pennsylvania. Cemex’s legal staff advised residents that 100 new jobs and at least US$100m was at stake.

Pakistan: Pioneer has announced the completion of a new 3.7Mt/yr integrated cement plant with a 12MW waste heat recovery (WHR) power plant and 24MW coal-fired power plant. It said that production and dispatch would start ‘in due course.’ It commenced construction of the facility in 2017.

India: Dalmia Bharat has successfully lobbied the Sundargarh, Orisha district government to request the inclusion of the company’s proposed 446 acre expansion to its Lanjiberna limestone and dolomite mine in the agenda of a village meeting in Kukuda, in which public opinion and suggestions will be recorded. The New India Express Newspaper has reported that, due to the special status of Kukuda as a Scheduled Tribal area, the village meeting forms a necessary preliminary step prior to district government permission of planned works. In October 2018, villagers in nearby Jhagarpur successfully blocked construction of Dalmia Bharat’s proposed Industrial Training Institute. The Lanjiberna mine will serve Dalmia Bharat’s 2.3Mt/yr integrated Rajgangpur plant, which was completed in 2019 at a cost of US$281m and awaits commissioning.

Japan: Ofunato biomass power plant began generating electricity on 1 January 2020. The 75MW plant is the result of a 65:35 partnership between Taiheiyo Cement and electrical engineering firm Elex formed in July 2016, with a total investment of US$36.5m. It will primarily burn coconut matter to provide electricity for sale and supply to Taiheiyo Cement’s 1.9Mt/yr integrated Ofunato plant. Taiheiyo Cement says that its will generate 520,000MWh/yr, replacing fossil fuels responsible for 0.3Mt/yr of CO2 emissions.

Oman: Alsahawa Cement Company (ACC), the newly-founded Oman Cement Company (OCC) subsidiary, will operate the group’s upcoming Duqm cement plant, for which an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract tender has been issued. Bidding is due to close on 27 February 2020.

The new facility will include a coal-fired power plant and waste heat recovery (WHR) power plant. OCC Chief Executive Officer Salim Abdullah Al Hajiri described the commissioning of the 1.7Mt/yr integrated plant as a ‘reverse integration’ process, whereby the plant will initially grind clinker produced at other OCC cement plants beginning in September 2021 before upgrading to fully integrated cement production in March 2022.

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement has installed an ash washing facility at a waste incineration plant in Kumagaya, Saitama prefecture for desalination and lowering of chloride content. After rinsing, the installation will supplement cement production at Taiheiyo Cement’s 1.8Mt/yr integrated Kumagaya plant with up to 69,400t/yr of ash. The total cost of investment was US$7.17m.

Colombia: Empresa Colombiana de Cementos (EcoCementos), a 50-50 joint venture between Colombian multinational Organizacion Corona and Spanish-based Cementos Molins, has announced the start of production at its new 1.5Mt/yr integrated cement plant at Sonson, Antioquia province. The plant, which was constructed with an investment of US$380m, mines limestone from its own quarry and will produce Alion brand cement for the Colombian market. The unit is increases Cementos Molins’ first in Columbia. It already produces and trades cement via its subsidiaries in Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay.

India: UltraTech Cement’s net sales grew by 15% year-on-year to US$1.42bn in the quarter to 30 June 2019 from US$1.23bn in the same period in 2018. Its profit before interest, depreciation and tax rose by 61% to US$402m from US$250m. Its local sales volumes increased by 3% to 17.3Mt from 16.8Mt but exports fell by 7% to 0.6Mt from 0.65Mt.

It said that it had fully integrated its UltraTech Nathdwara Cement subsidiary with its systems and processes. The plants it acquired from Jaiprakash Associations in June 2017 were operating in line with its existing plants and had achieved break-even profit before tax during the reporting quarter. The commissioning of its 4Mt/yr Bara grinding plant in Madhya Pradesh has been delayed to late 2019.

Jamaica: Caribbean Cement has commissioned an automatic palletiser. The project cost around US$66,500, according to the Gleaner newspaper. It is part of a US$9m investment on capital projects in 2019. The cement producer is planning to increase its output to 1.2Mt/yr by December 2020 compared to 0.95Mt/yr at present. The subsidiary of Mexico’s Cemex operates an integrated plant in Kingston.