Displaying items by tag: grinding plant

France: Cem'In'Eu intends to open its first cement grinding plant in May 2018. The 0.24Mt/yr plant is located at Tonneins in Lot et Garonne, according to Les Echos newspaper. It has had an investment of Euro18m. The company is planning to open new grinding pants at the rate of one per year.

New locations include Chalon-sur-Saone in Saone-et-Loire, Portes-lès-Valence in Drôme, Montreuil-Bellay in Maine-et-Loire and Mulhouse-Ottmarsheim. Internationally the company is also considering new plants in London in the UK, Poland, Switzerland and Germany. Financing for the company is provided by Pergam, a French private equity firm that has already raised Euro33m.

Philippines: Big Boss Cement has appealed against a decision by the Board of Investment (BOI) denying its application for registration because it lacked ‘proof of concept’. Big Boss’ president Gilbert Cruz said that the new cement company’s application was turned down in 2017 because it was not producing clinker, according to the Manila Bulletin newspaper. It plans to open a cement grinding plant in Pampanga in March 2018.

Colombia: Holcim Colombia plans to launch its new US$30m cement grinding plant in Buga in late 2018 or early 2019. Originally the plant was scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2018. The company also intends to focus on infrastructure projects such as the country’s fourth generation road development scheme, airport renovations and an urban train scheme in Bogota, according to La Republica newspaper.

India: Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, has inaugurated JSW Cement’s plant at Salboni. The US$125m grinding plant has a production capacity of 2.4Mt/yr, according to the Press Trust of India. It started commercial production at the site in July 2017 with plans to manufacture Portland Slag Cement. The cement producer is already preparing upgrades at the unit including a US$15.6m captive power plant with a capacity of 18MW and a US$47m production capacity increase of 1.2Mt/yr.

Philippines: SM Group heir Henry Sy Jr has launched Big Boss Cement with a group of investors. The new cement producer plans to start selling cement in March 2018, according to the Manila Bulletin newspaper. Its first product will be called ‘Big Boss Cement Type 1P.’

It has nearly completed a cement grinding plant that will have a production capacity of 1.5 million bags/yr at Porac in Pampanga. The company hopes to capture 3% of the estimated market demand for cement of 25Mt/yr. Big Boss Cement operates a laboratory in Metropolitan Manila.

Puerto Rico: Cemex Puerto Rico plans to stop clinker production at its Ponce cement plant. The site will move to grinding cement in January 2018, according to Sin Comillas. The cement producer has been unable to rule out job losses.

The changes come in response to poor cement sales that the company says are the worst in the territory since the 1950s. Cement sales have been falling since 2009 and Hurricanes Irma and Maria punished the market in the autumn with big declines in September and October 2017. At present Cemex Puerto Rico says that the local market only needs around a third of the country’s capacity. However, the Ponce plant has a production capacity of 1.2Mt/yr. The company has also cited high electricity costs as part of its decision.

India: The deadline for bidding for Binani Cement has been extended until 15 January 2018 as the cement company takes potential buyers on a tour of its grinding plant in Dubai. The Rajasthan-based cement producer is being sold following bankruptcy proceedings, according to the Daily News & Analysis newspaper. The family-owned company with cement plants in Indian, China and the UAE has attracted a high level of interest from both international and local cement companies.

Nepal: Production at 13 cement grinding plants have been distrupted by a restriction on Indian clinker imports at Birgunj. Imports at the border town stopped on 22 December 2017 following complaints by local residents about air pollution, according to the Kathmandu Post. Cement plants in the so-called Parsa-Bara industrial corridor have resorted to using inventory supplies or clinker sourced from alternative locations.

Sad news this week from the Talcahuano cement plant in Chile that is to stop producing clinker. Local media reports that the Cementos Bío Bío unit has decided to import clinker from Asia instead, which will reduce its production costs. At the same time it has laid off a third of its workforce. The plant has been producing cement since 1961.

The decision carries echoes of Holcim New Zealand’s closure of its Westport cement plant in 2016, another unit in a country on the Pacific Rim. However, in that country LafargeHolcim has purposely moved towards becoming a distribution company by opening import terminals and depots. Plus the local subsidiary benefits from the cement-trading arm of a multinational company. By contrast, local producer Cementos Bío Bío still retains two integrated plants and a grinding plant in Chile. Following the closure its production share from integrated plants will drop to 2.4Mt/yr (39%) from 3.2Mt/yr (45%). The country will retain a total production capacity of 6.2Mt/yr from its clinker producing plants.

The timing of Cementos Bío Bío’s decision is also interesting given that the Chilean competition authority (TDLC) approved Hurtado Vicuña Group to buy a controlling stake in Cemento Polpaico from LafargeHolcim in early July 2017. The deal was originally announced in October 2016 to sell LafargeHolcim’s 54.3% stake in Cemento Polpaico for US$225m. The sale includes one integrated plant with a cement production capacity of 2.3Mt/yr and two grinding plants. Hurtado Vicuña has not been required by the regulator to sell any of its cement units but it has been asked to sell parts of its concrete business and to abide to a ban on repurchasing the assets within 10 years. Hurtado Vicuña owns Cementos BSA, a subsidiary that runs the El Bosque cement grinding plant in Santiago and it has just started-up production at a new 0.95Mt/yr grinding plant at Quilicura, also near the capital.

In its 2016 annual report LafargeHolcim reported that cement sales volumes of cement fell in Chile due to a fall in the residential construction market in the second half of the year. However it did manage to raise its operating earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBTIDA) off the back of higher prices and lower production costs compared to the previous year. Cementos Bío Bío concurred with this assessment of the market in its 2016 report, lamenting the country’s poor economic growth since 2015 and declines in the mining and construction sectors. Despite this its cement despatches rose very slightly to 1.56Mt in 2016. The big drop in its sales occurred in 2014 when its sales fell by 10% year-on-year to 1.51Mt. More recently, Bío Bío noted a 37% decrease in its operating profit for its cement, concrete and lime division for the first quarter of 2017 due to falling sales volumes and margins in cement and lime. However, it did benefit from falling costs for energy and petcoke inputs. The group also announced plans to sell a minority stake in itself in February 2017.

These stories show another country that is realigning its cement industry to a clinker-rich world market. Chile appears to retain a ‘big three’ group of local clinker producers that has shifted with the rise of Cementos BSA and the departure of LafargeHolcim. However, the market share in the cement grinding business has changed significantly as Cementos BSA has gained both an integrated plant and a more national profile, away from the capital, with its grinding plants. Once the local market picks up it will be interesting to see whether this trend towards clinker import and local grinding continues.