Global Cement News

Germany: HeidelbergCement expects increasing sales volumes for its cement, aggregate and ready-mix concrete products in 2019. It plans to raise its prices to regain margins it lost in 2018. The building materials producer also intends to continue the cost cutting programme it started in November 2018. It said that energy cost inflation, improvements in Indonesia, Europe and North America, and new state infrastructure projects should result in a ‘solid result improvement.’

“In view of our strong positioning in raw material reserves and production sites in attractive locations, the unique vertical integration, our excellent product portfolio, and our industry-leading margin management, we believe we are well equipped for the opportunities and challenges of 2019,” said Bernd Scheifele, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement. He added that the group will continue the digitalisation process of its entire value chain in order to further improve operational excellence.

Kuwait: Saudi Arabia’s Qassim Cement has signed a contract with the Al-Aradah Building Materials Company to export cement to Kuwait. It has agreed to transport 120,000t of cement until the end of 2019. The financial impact of the deal will be disclosed in the cement producer’s financial results later in the year.

Mexico/US: Cemex has entered into a global agreement with Petuum to implement its Industrial AI Autopilot software products for autonomous cement plant operations at its plants around the world. The products for cement plant operations are being deployed at select Cemex USA and Mexico plants and will continue to be rolled out in 2019.

"We expect our yield improvements and energy savings to be up to 7%, from the connected AI-based autopilots, which is game-changing for our industry,” said Rodrigo Quintero, Operations Digital Technologies Manager at Cemex.

Petuum says that its Industrial AI Autopilot suite of products can deliver real-time forecasts for key process variables, prescriptions for critical control variables and supervised autosteer aligned with business objectives for all cement plant operations including clinker cooler, preheater, rotary kiln, pyro-process, ball mill and vertical mill processes to achieve lowered energy consumption, optimised fuel mix and increased throughput while maintaining stable operation and product quality. The products are integrated with plant control systems and OSIsoft PI data infrastructure for scalable and standardised deployments across multiple lines and plants globally.

The joint Cemex and Petuum teams achieved a cruise-control-like supervised ‘autosteer mode,’ where the AI Autopilot could run operations with full engage-disengage control available to the operator.

To find out more about Pettum visit: https://petuum.com/

Poland: Lafarge Poland delivered over 0.2Mm³ of ready-mix concrete (RMX) in 2018 for use in various infrastructure initiatives including road expansion projects. In 2019 the company plans to produce 0.32Mm² of concrete surfacing for a motorway extension. The subsidiary of LafargeHolcim set up its LH Engineering business in 2017 to help implement infrastructure projects. It offers engineering services and the delivery of building materials, including RMX, aggregates and other products.

Germany: Cemex has received certification from the Concrete Sustainability Council (CSC) certification for five of its ready-mix concrete (RMX) plants in Berlin and Potsdam. The CSC acts as a certification system, grading building materials facilities on environmental, social and governance practices throughout supply chains. The auditing was conducted by Kiwa Deutschland, an independent certification body recognised by the CSC.