Displaying items by tag: grinding plant

Morocco: Ciments du Maroc plans to commission its 0.7Mt/yr grinding plant at Nador in July 2022. The production unit, belonging to the subsidiary of Germany-based HeidelbergCement, is located around 18 km outside of Nador. The project has a budget of around US$36m and it intended to support development in northern and eastern regions of the country. Construction of the plant started in 2020.

India: UltraTech Cement has commissioned the new 2Mt/yr Line 2 of its Bara grinding plant in Uttar Pradesh. The additional capacity will help the company to serve the growing Central Indian cement market. Its total installed capacity is now 115Mt/yr, up by 2.9% year-on-year from 111Mt.

UltraTech Cement says that the Bara grinding plant, which opened in January 2020, operated at 80% capacity utilisation in the 2020 financial year.

India: Sagar Cements has announced the commissioning of its 1.5Mt/yr Jajpur grinding plant in Odisha. The plant commenced operations in early January 2022, slightly behind its scheduled December 2021 commissioning date. Jajpur Cements received clearance for the plant in September 2020 and invested US$41m in its construction.

We start 2022 with the news that Cemex is selling up to Cementos Progreso in Costa Rica and El Salvador. On 20 December 2021 Cemex announced that it was selling one integrated cement plant, one grinding plant, seven ready-mix concrete plants, one aggregate quarry and one terminal in Costa Rica and one terminal in El Salvador. The sale is valued at around US$335m with an expected completion date in the first half of 2022 subject to regulatory approval.

This sale is noteworthy because it concerns Mexico-based Cemex selling off assets in its ‘back yard’ of Central America. Once the sale completes it will retain operations in Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Colombia under its Cemex LatAm subsidiary. It will also continue to operate in the Caribbean in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Puerto Rico. Previous divestments by Cemex over the last five years or so have tended to focus on piecemeal (or bolt-off) divestments in the US and Europe. This latest sale could be viewed in a similar way if Central America and the Caribbean are seen as a region rather than individual countries. For its part Cemex describes the divestment as part of its ‘Operation Resilience’ plan to optimise its global portfolio.

Why it chose to sell up in Costa Rica is curious given that Cemex LatAm’s cement sales volumes for the region were reported as ‘flat’ in 2019 with the exception of Colombia and El Salvador. 2020 was then a shock, like almost everywhere else, as coronavirus caused disruption reducing sales volumes. 2021 saw recovery in all of Cemex LatAm’s national markets over the first nine months. Notably, both Cemex’s revenue and operational earnings in Costa Rica grew when comparing the first nine months of 2019, before the pandemic, to the same period in 2021, unlike Colombia and Panama. For the third quarter of 2021 Cemex said that growing cement sales volumes in Costa Rica had been driven by infrastructure and housing sectors. It also added that “Our cement footprint in the country is also a very relevant component of our regional trading network. We continued exporting during the quarter, mainly to our operations in Nicaragua.” In may be coincidence but it was interesting timing to add a comment like that.

From Cementos Progreso’s perspective the new assets in Costa Rica and El Salvador are part of an ongoing expansion phase outside of its home base. At home in Guatemala the company operates three integrated plants. The third, the San Gabriel plant, started up in 2019. In the same year the company purchased Cemento Interoceanico and its grinding plant in Panama. Then in July 2021 the group commissioned its new Belmopan grinding plant in Belize as part of its Cementos Rocafuerte subsidiary. The new proposed acquisitions in Costa Rica and El Salvador start to fill in the gaps in Cementos Progreso’s network between Guatemala and Panama. The price seems on the high side for a 0.9Mt/yr integrated plant and a 0.9Mt/yr grinding unit. Yet the associated quarry, concrete plants, terminals and, crucially, the location may have made it one well worth paying. For comparison Peru-based Unacem agreed to purchase a grinding plant from CBB in Chile this week for around US$30m. Back in 2013 Lafarge sold assets in Honduras, including an integrated plant and a grinding unit, to Cementos Argos for Euro232m.

Both parties may do well out of this transaction. Cemex continues to show that it is fully prepared to sell assets anywhere as it sharpens up its operations. Cementos Progreso meanwhile is turning itself into a regional player to watch.

Sri Lanka: Insee Cement plans to spend US$56m on an upgrade to its Galle grinding plant in Southern Province. The project will add an additional 1Mt/yr of production capacity to the 1.4Mt/yr unit, according to the Daily News newspaper. Commissioning is scheduled by the end of 2023. The company’s integrated plant at Puttalam and its grinding plant at Galle have reportedly been running at full utilisation since mid-2020 to meet high local demand.

Chile: Peru-based Unacem has bought CBB’s Cemento San Antonio grinding plant in Valparaíso region for US$30.8m. The deal also covers the nearby Popeta pozzolano deposit.

Germany: Holcim Germany has published environmental reports for 2020 focused on each of its cement plants. The subsidiary of Switzerland-based Holcim has decided to target its reports on local issues by issuing separate reports for each of its four integrated plants in the country, at Beckum, Höver, Lägerdorf and Dotternhausen respectively. Each report covers national developments for the sector and the company. Local data is then included as well as data on connected cement grinding and concrete plants. The reports can be downloaded from Holcim Germany’s website.

Malawi/Zambia: Huaxin Cement says it has completed its acquisition of Lafarge Zambia and Lafarge Cement Malawi. In late December 2021 the Chinese cement producer completed the equity delivery conditions for Lafarge Cement Malawi. This follows a similar process for Lafarge Zambia in late November 2021.

In June 2021 Huaxin Cement said it had agreed to spend US$150m on purchasing a 75% stake in Lafarge Zambia and US$10m on acquiring Pan African Cement from Lafarge Cement Malawi. The former operates two integrated cement plants in Zambia with a combined production capacity of 1.5Mt/yr. The latter operates a 0.25Mt/yr grinding plant at Blantyre in Malawi. Following the completion of the takeover Huaxin Cement now intends to increase its cement grinding capacity in Malawi by 0.25Mt/yr.

India: The government of Kerala says that it will double the total cement production capacity in the state to 14.4Mt from 7.2Mt before 2024. The Times of India newspaper has reported that Industries Minister Pinarayi Rajeev told Keralans that the state government would build a grinding plant at Kinfra in Kannur’s Mattanur district and a blending plant at Kochi Port Trust. Commissioning of both projects is planned by the end of 2023. A second phase of the plan will see additional grinding plants established.

Germany: Opterra has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Statkraft for the supply of electricity from onshore wind farms. The renewable energy producer will supply around 30GWh to the subsidiary of CRH’s integrated cement plants at Karsdorf in Saxony-Anhalt, Wössingen in Baden-Württemberg and a grinding plant at Sötenich in North Rhine-Westphalia between 2022 and 2025. The wind power will be generated at four wind farms.