US: A fire has damanged Dragon Products’ Thomaston cement plant in Maine. The incident took place on evening of 26 March 2019 following a spill of fuel oil, according to the Portland Press Herald newspaper. The blaze was stopped by firefighters as it started to enter a laboratory and control rooms. No employees were injured.

Plant manager Martin Turecky said that no customers would be affected by the fire and that it was continuing to distribute cement. He added that the cement grinding plant had not been affected. An investigation into how the fire started is underway.

Sri Lanka: Tokyo Cement has agreed to amalgamate its subsidiary Tokyo Super Cement into the main company. The amalgamation of its wholly-owned subsidiary will take place around the end of May 2019.

Argentina: Loma Negra has secured two loans to upgrade its L'Amalí cement plant. The loans are worth US$40.9m and US$12.5m respectively, according to the Bae Negocios newspaper. The cement producer will use the funds to import equipment to the plant as part of a project to build a new US$350m production line at the unit.

Germany: Siemens is extending its Simogear portfolio with a new synchronous-reluctance drive system consisting of Simogear standard gear unit, Simotics reluctance motor and a Sinamics frequency converter for controlling speed. The product has an output range of 0.55 – 4kW and is available for Sinamics G110M, G120D, G120 and S120 converters.

The engineering company says that its efficiency class is comparable to IE4 and it is offers advantages in comparison to asynchronous motors when operating under partial load due to its greater efficiency and lower losses. In addition, the drive system is characterised by high dynamics due to the low moment of inertia and optimised control. An external fan is not required due to the constant torque/speed curve up to the nominal speed and the drive system is certificated to CE, UL/CSA and CCC is in preparation. It also says that commissioning is easy as the motor code can be entered into the convertor.

Siemens sells a portfolio of frequency converters, motors, couplings and gearboxes for many industries and applications, including the cement and mineral sectors.