Displaying items by tag: India

Kenya: Mombasa Cement has ordered a MVR 3750 C-4 type vertical roller mill from Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer. It will be used to grind cement on the second production line it is building at its integrated Vipingo plant. The mill has a drive power of 2900kW to produce 150t/hr of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). Delivery will be coordinated between Gebr. Pfeiffer’s Indian subsidiary and its headquarters in Kaiserslautern, Germany. No value for the order has been disclosed.

The cement producer has previously ordered two cement mills from Gebr. Pfeiffer. In January 2016 it ordered a type MVR 3750 C-4 vertical mill for the Tororo plant in Uganda. In June 2016 it ordered a Ready2Grind type MVR 1800 C-4 mill for its Vipingo plant. The latest order at Vipingo has the same design as the mill in Uganda.

India: Minister Piyush Goyal, the Commerce and Industry Minister, has confirmed that the Competition Commission of India looking into complaints of rising cement prices. He said that complaints on the had been received about the price of cement and allegations of cartel-like behaviour, according to the New Indian Express newspaper.

India: Credit rating agency ICRA expects that cement demand growth will fall to 7% year-on-year in the first quarter of the 2019 – 2020 financial year from 13% in the previous year. It has blamed this on a slowdown in infrastructure projects due to the general election and resulting labour shortages. However, higher cement prices and lower input costs - including power, fuel and distribution expenses – are forecast to improve profits. Cement consumption is predicted to increase in the third quarter due to housing demand and pickup in infrastructure schemes.

The agency also said that around 18 – 20Mt/yr of cement production capacity would be added in the 2019 – 2020 year. This will be from a variety of integrated and grinding projects. This is below the projected demand growth of 24Mt/yr but overall sector production overcapacity is expected to continue at around 71%.

India: UltraTech Cement is in talks to buy a stake in Emami Cement for up to U$800m. Sources quoted by the Economic Times newspaper say that UltraTech Cement is working with private equity companies, including KKR and Temasek Holdings, on the potential deal. Emami Group is reportedly still deciding whether to sell its entire cement business, a stake or selected assets.

Emami Cement operates a 2.5Mt/yr integrated plant at Risda in Chhattisgarh and a 2.5Mt/yr grinding plant at Panagarh in West Bengal. It acquired a 0.6Mt/yr grinding plant at Bhabua, Bihar in September 2018. In addition, the firm has mining assets in Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and near Jaipur in Rajasthan. Its main markets are in West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. It markets its products under the Double Bull brand.

Poland: FLSmidth MAAG Gear has successfully tested a MPU/274G type gear unit at its Elblag production plant. The product is intended for JK Cement’s new cement grinding plant in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. Shipping is scheduled for late June 2019. No value for the order has been disclosed.

India: Cement producers and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) have launched the Indian Cement Sector SDG Roadmap. The planning framework uses the United Nation’s (UN) sustainable development goals (SDG) to set a series of goals in energy and climate, people and communities, the circular economy and natural resource management. It is intended to contribute to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

This initiative has been convened by nine cement companies: ACC, Ambuja Cement, CRH, Dalmia Cement (Bharat), Heidelberg Cement, Shree Cement, Orient Cement, UltraTech Cement, Votorantim Cimentos. It is also partially funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Notable goals from the roadmap include promoting railway and waterway transport networks, improving transport safety, increasing the use of blended cements and encouraging the use of alternative fuels. The framework also plans to increase the number of women in the indsutry workforce at every level from entry to board.

India: Dalmia Cement and South Eastern Railways have inaugurated a freight train. The ceremony marked the start of an agreement whereby the cement producer will use its own locomotives with branded rakes of goods wagons, according to the Pioneer newspaper. The deal covers five such freight trains.Image

India: ICICI Bank has asked the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) to speed up an insolvency petition against Jaiprakash Associates. It said that there had been no progress on the plea since September 2019, according to the Hindu newspaper. The private bank alleges that the subsidiary of Jaypee Group has delayed the petition through adjournments of the process. It owes the bank around US$185m.

Jaiprakash Associates sold six integrated cement plants and five grinding plants to UltraTech Cement for US$2.5bn in 2017. It was reportedly in talks with LafargeHolcim’s subsidiary ACC in mid-2018 to sell its remaining cement business.

India: UltraTech Cement aims to increase contribution of so-called ‘green energy’ to 25% of its total power consumption by 2021 from 10% at present. It also intends to raise its contribution of renewable energy to its total power consumption by five times in the next two years to 2021 to over 10%. By building capacity for renewable power the cement producer intends to become one of the largest users of renewable energy in the Indian cement sector.

In addition to renewable energy, the green energy contribution includes energy generated through waste heat recovery systems (WHR). During its 2019 financial year UltraTech commissioned 28MW of WHR systems to take its total generation from WHR to 8% of total power consumption. Further upgrades are expected to be completed in a phased manner by 2021, taking its WHR share to 15% of its total power requirement.

“To bring the cement sector in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change, UltraTech Cement’s annual emissions will need to fall by at least 16% by 2030. There are a number of solutions for reducing emissions associated with cement production as identified by the latest Low Carbon Technology Roadmap published by International Energy Agency (IEA) in partnership with Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI). These solutions need to be deployed at scale to meet the decarbonisation challenge,” said K K Maheshwari, the managing director of UltraTech Cement.

UltraTech Cement has set a target to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 25% from its 2005 – 2006 level by 2021. The company is also working on CO₂ reduction strategies including energy efficiency, alternative fuels, WHR, renewable energy and reducing its clinker ratio.

India: Ramco Cements’ Ramasamy Raja Nagar integrated plant has won the ‘Green Award 2018 for Industries of Tamil Nadu’ from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. It was bestowed in recognition of the contribution towards protection of environment made by the company. Special focus is acknowledged to best practices adopted to achieve best environmental quality in emissions, discharge of waste water, solid and hazardous waste management and green belt development.