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Turkey: Ireland's CRH and its Turkish partner Eren Holding AS have hired JP Morgan Chase & Co (JPM) to help sell their cement joint venture in Turkey. CRH and Eren Holding each own a 50% stake.
Companies including Haci Omer Sabançi Holding AS (SAHOL), Limak Holding AS and Oyak Cement Group are interested in the plant. The three potential bidders are among those shortlisted and the sale process for the venture, which is known as Denizli Çimento Sanayii TAS, could be finalised by October 2014.
Denizli produces about 3% of Turkey's and 31% of western Turkey's total clinker output, according to its website. It is aiming to increase its sales to Euro86.8m in 2014 from Euro76.1m 2013.
Who watches the cement plants?
Written by David Perilli, Global Cement
13 August 2014
The comic book series 'Watchmen' takes its title from the Latin phrase 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' which is translated as 'Who watches the watchmen?' Commonly used today to warn against government, police and judicial corruption, the saying might also apply to those groups who watch big industry such as the Atlas of Environmental Justice.
This initiative is an online database compiled by the Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT) to map environmental conflicts around the world. It's a great tool, it is professionally presented and the project is backed by the European Commission. EJOLT's goals are to give those fighting for environmental justice a voice and to gather data to allow policy change.
As ever the problem with any form of user-content database is who vets the submissions and how much of 'reality' does the data actually represent compared to a more curated project. The mass use of Wikipedia shows that these issues can be overcome to some extent, while user-submitted online hotel and restaurant reviews often suggest otherwise.
All three conflicts registered in the EJ Atlas in southern England, where the Global Cement office is based, offer incomplete or misleading data. The entry for the third runway expansion at Heathrow airport doesn't present the economic benefits of expanding the airport or what the alternatives are. Rightly, the activists will argue that they have significantly smaller resources compared to the big industrial multinationals to fight their corner. Unfortunately this shows in the EJ Atlas and the user-submitted data approach it uses.
At the time of writing only 15 cases are tagged as cement-related out of a total of 1154. This is far fewer cases than you might expect with no mention, for example, of any of the regular environmental scuffles the cement industry faces in North America. The cases it does list are mainly based in Latin America with other clusters in southern Europe and India. Of these, three have been mislabelled and are not even related to the cement industry. The rest are mainly concerned with pollution due to waste incineration and mineral extraction worries. The waste incineration listings have a certain irony about them considering that these cement plants are almost certainly praising themselves for their reduced carbon emissions!
In the online world big companies can sometimes be at a disadvantage to nimble activist campaigns. Journalists from national media outlets can easily find campaigns with a web or social media presence to provide counterpoint for editorial. A good example is the Stop Titan Action Network that formed to fight Titan America's cement plant in Castle Hayne in North Carolina, US.
If the EJ Atlas accrues more attention and/or carries on past its project deadline of 2015 then the problems with the atlas may be fixed as activists log more cases, industry refutes them and the moderators weigh up the arguments in line with the project's aims of environmental justice. As previous online examples have shown, engagement may be better than ignoring these kind of initiatives.
Orient Cement appoints Sushil Gupta as chief financial officer
Written by Global Cement staff
13 August 2014
India: Orient Cement has appointed Sushil Gupta as chief financial officer following a meeting of its board of directors. Other appointments included Rahul Deshmukh as chief operating officer and S K Pandey as plant head of Devapur.
UK/Singapore: The private equity firm CVC Capital Partners is in discussion with Singapore's Government Investment Corporation (GIC) about a combined bid for assets being sold by Holcim and Lafarge as they prepare to merge, according to Sky News. CVC is also understood to be talking to other state investment funds about the proposed deal.
At least two other private equity groups have been formed to bid for the divestments that Holcim and Lafarge are preparing to sell. Blackstone has teamed up with Cinven and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. BC Partners and Advent International are also preparing a joint bid. Initial offers are understood to be due in September 2014.
Democratic Republic of Congo: PPC Barnet DRC has awarded an EPC contract to Sinoma International Engineering Company for the construction of a new cement plant in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The signing took place in Kinshasa marking the inaugural phase of the construction. The main sponsors of the US$300m project include PPC, Barnet Group and the International Finance Corporation. The investment forms part of PPC's expansion plans in Africa, which aim to increase the company's revenue from outside South Africa from the current 26% to 40% by 2017.
"The plant is located near Zamba in the Cataracts district, approximately 230km from Kinshasa. The fully-integrated plant will consist of a five-stage preheater kiln with an inline calciner and will produce 1Mt/yr of cement to serve both the rapidly growing market in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighbouring export markets," said PPC's Business Development Executive Trevor Barnard.
The plant is expected to take around 26 months to complete and commissioning is scheduled for the last quarter of 2016. The new plant will generate approximately 300 direct jobs once fully operational.