Global Cement News
Search Cement News
Sweden/Colombia: Swedish engineering firm SKF has signed a three-year deal with Cementos Argos to provide engineering products and services for its operations in Colombia. SKF will provide everything from bearings, housings and seals to training and application engineering, to support Argos' operations in 10 plants throughout the country. Argos has expanded the scope of the agreement to include seals and more bearing products than SKF had supplied previously.
"SKF has an extensive partnership to support Argos in maximising the utilisation and reliability of its assets, thereby achieving its business objectives," said Vartan Vartanian, President, SKF Industrial Market, Regional Sales and Service. The deal expands SKF's existing contract for maintenance services, mechanical services, reliability engineering services and condition monitoring solutions for conveyors, gearboxes and mills at four of Cementos Argos' plants in Colombia.
India: Fosroc Chemicals has set up a new US$1m plant in Uluberia, Howrah district in West Bengal. The plant is intended initially to manufacture 20,000t/yr of cement and concrete additives.
"The plant, constructed on 5261m2 of privately owned land on lease, will initially produce cement and concrete reinforcing liquid chemicals. Within a year, we will add powder chemicals manufacturing with another US$1m investment," said R Sai Krishnan, Vice-President, Fosroc Chemicals (India).
The Fosroc Indian arm of the international construction chemicals company wants to increase its turnover to US$67m in 2014. Cement, concrete and grouting chemicals are its main sales drivers in the country. In India it has a 15% market share in construction and industrial chemicals. Around 70% of its turnover comes from business projects solutions and the rest from retail.
Chile/US: Cemento Melón has hired River Logic to implement its Integrated Business Planning (IBP) solution, a business analytics platform. The IBP solution is intended to aid the Chilean cement producer to dynamically integrate finance with the sales and operations planning process, optimising demand, supply, production, distribution and investment capital decisions. The implementation will be led by River Logic Chile, a partner company to US-firm River Logic.
"We are convinced that the IBP solution will enable us to accurately model the business, including the financial and operational complexities and through the application of prescriptive analytics will provide us with the superior decision-making ability required in modern management," said Antonio Lira, Strategy Lead at Cemento Melón. "
"Given the complexity of the cement market, low return on assets and strong price competition, we believe IBP's unique ability to supporting tactical and strategic planning processes will be a fundamental contributor to achieving a sustainable competitive advantage for Melon" said Raimundo Veloso, partner at River Logic Chile.
Uzbekistan: Eurocement plans to build a new 2.4Mt/yr cement plant in Uzbekistan worth US$128m. Commissioning is expected in 2016. The company has signed a contract with China CAMC Engineering Co Ltd for the supply of equipment, design, installation supervision and training for construction of the cement plant in the Tashkent Region.
Nigeria: The controversy among cement manufacturers and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) over the application of various cement grades for building and construction may have waned as block makers in the northern part of Nigeria have started to comply with the SON directive on the classification of cement grades and their uses.
Northern Nigerian block-makers have announced that they have complied with the SON directive as most of them now use 42.5R grade cement to produce concrete blocks. Hamza Gambo, chairman of Kaduna State Blocks and Concrete Makers Association, said that all of his members have complied with the SON directive, adding that the directive was in the national interest. He stated that most block-makers in the north now use Dangote 3X cement, which is the only 42.5R grade cement that meets the SON specification.
"We've been using the new improved cement for the past two months," said Gambo, who owns concrete block plants across Nigeria. He added that the Kaduna State Blocks and Concrete Makers Association would deal with members who refuse to comply with the SON cement grade standards according to the association's constitution.