Global Cement News

US: CRH has completed the sale of cement and ready-mix assets to Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC) following its acquisition of Ash Grove Cement. Ireland's biggest company sold the Trident cement plant in Montana to GCC for US$107.5m.

The move comes less than a month after CRH received regulatory approval from the US Federal Trade Commission to acquire cement manufacturer Ash Grove Cement for US$3.5bn in a deal first announced in September 2017.

As part of the transaction with GCC, CRH acquired most of the ready-mix plants and transportation assets belonging to GCC in Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas for US$118.5m. GCC will continue to own and operate four ready-mix plants in the Fort Smith, Arkansas area and own an office building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which it will lease to CRH.
The purchase and sale amounts have been paid in full but are subject to final inventory valuation adjustments, which are expected to be completed within 90 days.

Vietnam: FCT Combustion Inc has secured a supply contract for its Turbu-Jet AF burner that fires low calorific value coal and fuel oil to Vietnam National Coal-Mineral Industries Group (Vinacomin). It will be used at the group’s 0.8Mt/yr Quan Trieu cement plant in Thai Nguyen Province. Viet Bac Mining is a partner in the project.

US-based FCT Combustion, which launched its Turbu-Flex burner in April 2018, said that the product would enable the operator to switch between different fuels and optimise for each with one burner. Switching between alternative and refuse derived fuels (RDFs) is intended to allow cement and other industrial plants to lower fuel costs and improve kiln performance. The burner also offers reduced maintenance, as there are no moving parts needed to change the air supply.

Managing Director Con Manias said that FCT is mainly focused on building its footprint in Southeast Asia. It has recently won projects in China, Thailand, Malaysia, and Australia, prior to this one in Vietnam. The company is also working on an upgrade to the hot gas generator at Votorantim Group’s Vidal Ramos plant in Santa Catarina, Brazil. It is also supplying its Turbu-Jet AF burners with blowers, ignition, and flame detection systems to CSN Cimentos’ Arcos plant in Minas Gerais state, also in Brazil.

The company say that it has projects running in six continents due to a ‘surge’ in burner orders. It is currently working on projects in the US, Canada, Brazil, Ecuador, Poland, France, Egypt, Belgium, Italy, Algeria, Oman, Belgium, France, Ukraine, and Turkey, besides Asia Pacific.

Peru: Domestic cement sales climbed by 8.25% in Peru in May 2018. They had grown by 8.17% in April 2018, according to figures released by the National Institute of Statistics.

Czech Republic: Lafarge Cement’s sales in Czechia increased by almost 7% to Euro38.2m in 2017 but its profit dropped by 25% to Euro5.9m, according to spokeswoman Milena Hucanova.

Czech construction registered only moderate growth in 2017, which was reflected in the company's sales. Operating profit was comparable with the level from 2016.
"The company's net profit was mainly as a consequence of changes in the volume and appraisal of inventories, higher consumption of carbon credits and the firming up of the Koruna / Euro (exchange) rate after the Czech National Bank’s interventions," said CFO Jan Mencl.

Investments by the company in 2018 are planned to amount to Euro3.8m. Hucanova said that half of this had already been spent on the conversion of an electrostatic precipitator to a baghouse at the company’s Čížkovice plant.

Kenya: Bamburi Cement has completed construction of a new US$40m production line at its grinding plant in Nairobi. The new unit will allow the company to start manufacturing two new high strength products that were previously only produced at its Mombasa plant, according to the Kenya Broadcasting Association. The new line increases the plant’s cement production capacity by 0.9Mt/yr to 2.4Mt/yr.