Tuesday, March 13, 2012

ESPAÑA: Cementos Portland despedirá a 500 empleados y cerrará dos plantas

Cementos Portland Valderrivas cerrará parcialmente dos de las ocho plantas que tiene operativas en España, dentro de un proceso de reestructuración que contempla despidos de hasta 500 personas, entre contratados y externos, una sexta parte de su plantilla española, explicaron hoy fuentes del grupo.

Esta reestructuración será suficiente para atender un consumo de 30 millones de toneladas anuales, que son las que debería poder asumir el mercado en el medio plazo, según un documento elaborado por la filial cementera de FCC y presentado hoy.

No obstante, la empresa ha comenzado el año con un descenso del consumo del 20% respecto al mismo periodo del año anterior, con cifras que, extrapoladas al resto de 2012, supondrían volver a los 16 millones de euros facturados en 1984.

Cementos Portland cuenta con fábricas en Alcalá de Guadaira (Sevilla), El Alto (Madrid), Monjos (Barcelona), Vallarca (Barcelona), Hontoria (Palencia), Mataporquera (Santander), Lemona (Bilbao) y Olazagutía (Navarra).

Los planes del grupo pasan por cerrar "temporalmente" los hornos de dos fábricas y, en principio, mantener operativos sus molinos de clinker (material del que se extrae el cemento), aunque no descarta, si empeoran las condiciones del mercado, dejarlas sólo como centros de distribución.

Fuentes de la cementera aseguran que aún no han decidido cuáles serán las dos plantas afectadas, ya que dependerá de los costes de producción y transporte, así como de las pérdidas por los derechos de emisión de gases contaminantes.

Sin embargo, entre las posibilidades que baraja la compañía están una de las barcelonesas y una de las del norte (Bilbao, Santander, Navarra o Palencia), con las que se despediría a algo más de 300 personas. El resto de los despidos se deberán a la "reorganización de la estructura de negocio del grupo en España".

Según sus cálculos, la reestructuración tendrá un coste para la compañía de hasta 50 millones de euros en 2012.

Además de este "plan de choque", Cementos Portland busca refinanciar los 1.500 millones de euros de deuda que tiene, para lo que ha puesto en marcha la venta de su filial en Estados Unidos, Giant, y una ampliación de capital, si bien sólo ejecutará una de las opciones y lo hará antes de junio.

En cuanto a la primera vía, las fuentes aseguraron que de momento "no hay ninguna oferta en firme" para la venta de Giant, cuyo valor debería rondar los 700 millones de dólares (533 millones de euros) y que cuenta con una deuda de 340 millones de euros.

En la segunda vía, la cementera busca inversores industriales o institucionales que se comprometan con sus proyectos de diversificación geográfica a largo plazo y que estén dispuestos a aportar unos 200 millones de euros.

En cualquier caso, el principal accionista de la cementera, FCC, no acudiría a una eventual ampliación de capital, por lo que diluiría su participación actual (70%), pero siempre manteniendo el control de Portland.

El consumo de cemento en Estados Unidos se ha contraído desde 2005, si bien se estabilizó en 2011, año en el que las ventas de Giant ascendieron a 197,3 millones de dólares (150,5 millones de euros).

Las previsiones de Portland apuntan a un aumento del consumo en el mercado norteamericano a partir de 2013. La consecución de una de las dos opciones supondrá reducir el endeudamiento entre 200 y 300 millones de euros y situarlo en 2012 en cinco veces el ebitda, indicador que se situará en 200 millones de euros el próximo año.

Monday, March 12, 2012

AFRICA: CoAL making progress at Vele



Mining company Coal of Africa (CoAL:CZA) reported on Monday that revenue from the sale of coal, for the six months ended December 2011, totalled US$143.8 million compared to US$88.3 million for the comparative period.

The company reported a loss for the six months under review amounting to US$74.7 million or 13.36 cents per share compared to a loss of US$66.5 million or 12.30 cents per share previously.

Sales of export quality coal on international markets increased by 15.5% to 798,311 tonnes, attributable to improved rail performance, a slight recovery of market conditions and increased capacity at the Matola Terminal in Maputo, Mozambique compared to the previous six month period.

During the six months under review Woestalleen sold 449,237 tonnes, compared to 621,799 tonnes, Mooiplaats sold 80,991 tonnes of export quality coal compared to 124,388 tonnes to the comparable period, to domestic customers.

Eskom purchased 344,390 tonnes from last year's 106,000 of middlings coal from Woestalleen and 68,259 tonnes from Mooiplaats.

CoAL advised that it had entered into definitive agreements with Rothe, a black economic empowerment (BEE) company which would represent local communities, to acquire a 26% shareholding in a wholly-owned CoAL subsidiary, was expected to hold the Chapudi coal project and related exploration properties upon completion of the acquisition from Rio Tinto minerals development and Kwezi mining.

Total production from Vuna of 1,719,506 tonnes was 2.6% lower than the comparative six month period of 1,764,830 tonnes, primarily due to limited pit room and a shorter month in December.

Operational performance is expected to improve during the second half of H2 FY 2012, with a projection of 1.62 million tonnes run on mine for the six months to June 30 and full year production outlook of approximately 3.3 million tonnes run of mine.

The Woestalleen wash plant produced 823,877 tonnes (H2 FY2011: 1,009,519 tonnes) of export quality coal and a further 334,123 tonnes (H2 FY2011: 161,346 tonnes) of lower grade product for Eskom.

The company said that safety at Mooiplaats continued to be a focus area, after four lost time injuries were reported at the mine during the six months.

CoAL added that progress on converting the memorandum of understanding into an memorandum of agreement had progressed satisfactorily for both parties, and that significant information sharing had taken place between the two parties to date in the spirit of the memorandum of understanding, and that once the review of specific technical studies has been concluded, both parties would be in a position to conclude the memorandum of agreement.

The company said the most significant development of the half-year was the lifting of the integrated water use license at Vele Colliery.

“This has enabled management to complete construction of the infrastructural facilities, building of the plant, and commence production at Vele at the end of the half-year, with the first sales of coal expected in Q4 FY2012,” CoAL said.

AFRICA: MARRUECOS: El consumo de cemento se dispara en Marruecos



La región que más cemento ha consumido es Gran Casablanca, con 235.000 toneladas. Otras zonas del país magrebí, como Tanger-Tetuán, Marrakech-Tensift-Haouz, Souss-Massa-Draa, l´Oriental o Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaër también superan las 100.000 toneladas en el primer mes del ejercicio.

Las gamas más demandadas son CPA 55 y CPJ 45, que suponen un 61% de las ventas y que, según la asociación, "responden a una paulatina profesionalización de los operadores del sector y de los consumidores de cemento".

Este aumento invita al optimismo respecto a la evolución del mercado, pues los datos confirman los buenos resultados del año 2011, que cerró con un repunte de las ventas del 11%.

Dado que el cemento se utiliza tanto para obra civil como para edificación, este dato apunta el crecimiento del sector de la construcción en el país vecino y el interés que esto ofrece para las empresas españolas relacionadas con el sector, las de equipamiento de cocinas entre ellas.

VENEZUELA: Producción de cemento ascenderá a 8,3 millones de toneladas en 2012

El Ejecutivo nacional prevé producir en 2012, 8,3 millones de toneladas de cemento para seguir impulsando el desarrollo de la infraestructura en el país, así comola Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela, manifestó el viceministro de Gestión de Productividad, Raúl Pacheco.

Al ser entrevistado en VTV, explicó que la cifra anterior da cuenta de un incremento, ya que en 2011 la producción de ese material llegó a las 7,77 millones de toneladas.

Añadió que hace dos años comenzó la construcción de la planta de cemento Cerro Azul, ubicada en el sector El Pinto del municipio Piar, estado Monagas, cuyas operaciones arrancarán en 2012 y elevarán la producción del rubro en un millón de toneladas más, anualmente.

Pacheco apuntó que próximamente harán una serie de mejoras en la planta de Cumarebo, en el estado Falcón, y contarán con una nueva línea en la planta San Sebastián de Los Reyes, ubicada en el estado Aragua.

“Esto llevará la producción a 11,54 millones de toneladas. Esto es más cemento para todos los venezolanos y para las obras estratégicas”, dijo.

El Viceministro de Gestión de Productividad manifestó que la demanda dela Gran MisiónVivienda Venezuela es elevada, por lo que en 2012 “quizá habría que importar algo de cemento”, mientras entran en operatividad las nuevas plantas a las que hizo referencia.

CHINA: China Resources Cement profit over double in 2011

China Knowledge reported that China Resources Cement Holdings Ltd the largest cement producer in South China earned HKD 4.18 billion in net profit attributable to shareholders last year reflecting a YoY jump of 105%.

In a statement filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the company said its earnings per share were 64.1 HK cents and a final dividend of HKD 0.06 per share was declared.

In 2011, the firm sales volume of cement, clinker and concrete surged by 49.4%, 104.3% and 28.4% respectively. Average sales price of cement increased 10% to CNY 369.5 per ton clinker increased 11.5% to HKD 306.3 per ton and concrete increased 15.3% to CNY 357.4 per cubic meter last year.

Chief Financial Officer Robert Lau said the Chinese cement supplier targets HKD 6.2 billion in capital expenditure, excluding funds for acquisitions for 2012.

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: Cement selling at $100 a bag on black market

Some hardware owners have started selling cement at black market prices, even as local producer Trinidad Cement Ltd (TCL) has begun distributing cement imported from Jamaica and Barbados to plug the shortage caused by a strike by workers, a TCL official said yesterday.

TCL general manager Satnarine Bachew said customers could expect to pay a small increase in cement prices, but nowhere near what he said was a 100 per cent increase in prices being asked by some hardware dealers.

Bachew said yesterday: “We are currently off-loading the first shipment and some hardwares are collecting already. We have another shipment coming in tomorrow. Next week from Monday other shipments are coming in. About 23,000 tonnes of cement will be coming into the island.” 

Bachew said: “People are black-marketing it already at $100 a bag. I am are not sure exactly where the hardware is going to take this because the normal price of cement retail is between $45 to $50 and hardwares have jumped that to $100. And we have not increased the price.”

Bachew said the only additional cost would be the warehousing cost on the imported cement and handling charges.

“It should just be a small increase,” he said.

He said TCL will inform dealers of the location and time to collect their cement supply in order to prevent any rush. 

The Express was told by one company involved in concrete products that prices had increased by as much as $10 a bag.

Checks with several hardwares across the country including Arima, Chaguanas, Tacarigua, Couva, Marabella, Penal, Fyzabad and Debe found all were without a supply of cement.

One hardware dealer at Southern Main Road, Enterprise, said he expected to get a supply next week. 

“Our regular price is $60 but when we get, it will go for between $70-$75,” he said.

Another dealer at Fyzabad said the regular price was $50 a bag but this would be increasing to $60 when a supply comes in next Tuesday. 

A Couva dealer said yesterday: “Our normal price is $55 but when we get, it will go for about $65.”

AFRICA: Lafarge plans to increase cement production in West Africa


With the commissioning of the Ewekoro II plant it is not possible that cement prices will crash. What are the fundamentals that will crash cement prices for ordinary Nigerians who hope to own their own houses?
There are several factors influencing the price of cement in Nigeria. One among them is availability of cement which plays a significant role in its pricing. You know in the past we had price variations due to the fact that there is not enough cement in the country. So this commissioning of Ewekoro II plant and subsequent production will bring into the market cement and by the way stabilise prices.
Our prices have been stable over the time. We have not increased our price in the last months but you know the market forces dictate the situation. Now what we are talking about is the cost of production of cement and the cost of transportation and distribution to the end user. So this plant that has been commissioned will hopefully reduce the price of cement, but of course we can not do everything alone in terms of lowering the price, the transporters have to do their beats and the distributors have to be effective and efficient, so that altogether we can achieve lower price of cement over time for our customers.
There was a time the Federal Government met with cement manufacturers following public outcry that the prices were outrageous and gave them a deadline to crash the prices, but it seemed nothing really happened?
No there was an impact. If I remember well, it was at a time the price of cement was at a very high level in the market exactly because of the problem of availability of cement.
Now what we have done is that we have increased the capacity of our plant, we have pushed production as much as possible, as a result, the whole industry managed to put prices under control and to make sure that the product became much more at the reach of the end user. There was a big influence on the price.
With the commissioning of this plant which indicates progress on your part, hope your host community will benefit from this progress and you will endeavour to put into practice the local content law?
First, we ensured that the youths of our host community associated with the building of the plant by asking our main contractors, Chinese contractors, which built it to employ as much as possible from our host community. That was really the first action we took. And then we have employed 95 percent of Nigerians in the new plant, so this is a very big achievement I believe, and of course we need to train the people, we need to make them competent to run the plant, we need to be careful and upgrade them to manage the equipment here. So, this requires a lot of training, we have sent people abroad to get the requisite knowledge, we have trained them here also in our training school, and we wish to do that even more in the future to develop managers over time in our operations in Nigeria.
We have a particular policy in Lafarge which favours the training of youths in building trade, like block making, in mason, construction, which is really where we have a lot of knowledge. We have a training centre here dedicated to our Nigerian operations where we train mostly our new employees; we take training and re-training of our staff seriously. Here we train not only staff from Ewekoro but also those from Ashaka. We actually have invested much on training because we know its importance in a workforce. I bet you the training centre has been a success story, having dedicated our wealth of knowledge in producing quality staff. It is part of our building strong value, which is developing people. We are also mulling extending the capacity of the centre to include people who are not employees of Lafarge, but will be interested to develop technologically for other endeavours. So it’s fantastic idea dishing out training. Originally, we used to train our people abroad, but now we think it’s important we develop our own training capacity.
Hope you are working towards keying into the Federal Government agenda of reversing the import dependent nature of the economy as you increase capacity?
First and foremost, we are looking at the possibility of shipping cement further away from our plants; to further regions of the country, for example we are looking at using the train very effectively to send cement to Kano and other northern states. We are also looking at the possibility to ship further from our existing plants to other neighbouring countries like Niger and Chad. We will of course continue to do that because we believe there is a good demand in these markets. And again ship the product further away to other West African countries and further to African countries, you know we are not so far from the port at Apapa, Lagos. So we are looking at the possibility to do that.
How are you tackling stiff competition?
We don’t think everyday about competition. What we do is definitely to follow our ambition at Lafarge: to be the leader in this country in terms of people, in terms of competencies, we can bring so much and I think Nigerians will recognise that we have a very important role to play in this market. Competition will always put challenge on us. I think it is good there are competitions. Elephant Cement has always been known for its extremely good quality. The strongest cement is Elephant Cement for sure. Beyond that, what we do is to develop specific qualities for specific applications of cement, so cement which is good for the making of the bases of a building is not the same that you use in making blocks. So we have recognised that and adapted the quality of the specification of our products to each application. In fact, Elephant Cement is the best for any application. It is a five-decade old formidable brand of impeccable standard and quality. It backs solution provision with power, maturity, resilience, durability and reliability.
It is interesting that you have built and commissioned a power plant with a capacity of 90 megawatts…
You know we have been operating our plant in Nigeria for several decades and we know that there is no constant supply of electricity from the national grid. So we have used in the past complementary small IPP to support the grid but the system was not totally efficient, this is why we decided to have a power plant and dedicate it to cover all our needs, not only this plant but all our plants and also we have additional capacity to sell to neighbouring industries and to the national grid. We are using 60 megawatts and the remaining 30 megawatts we are ready to sell. We have started discussion with the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to be able to get the licence to sell these additional megawatts, so we are waiting for NERC to tell us what to do.
Hope all these growths will rub off positively on your shareholders?
Well I think Nigerian shareholders have recognised already the value of Lafarge WAPCO, they have seen its share price increasing in the last months and I think they see so much potential in the company and trust that the company will deliver on its promises, Lafarge is reputed to deliver on its promises. And we will do that of course by delivering not only in this year but also the years ahead, they (shareholders) are expected to benefit in terms of good dividends and we are working hard to make that possible. In fact, the future looks bright as Lafarge approaches its next decades with great sense of responsibility to its stakeholders, the built industry sector and the nation at large.
Hope you have tailored your operations to be environmentally friendly?
In fact, the first thing here is that we have ensured that we operate with the highest respect for the environment as we have tried as much as possible to produce less emission. So we have the bag filter which prevents the dust from flaring outside and it is very effective. Also we use bio-mass, it is very important. It reduces the impact of the CO2 emission.
On health and safety…
They are our core priorities. We have done so much in the last one year in making sure that we are proactive in our operation in these directions. We have a super modern clinic in Ewekoro to take care of our people. We are working now on road safety because we see too many accidents on the roads not so much of our staff, but our contractors and truck drivers.

AFRICA: Cimpor plans to build new cement plant in Mozambique



Cimentos de Moçambique, the Mozambican unit of Portugal-based cement group Cimpor, is studying construction of a plant in Mozambique at a potential cost of 100 million euros.

“We are carrying out feasibility studies to set up a clinker production plant next to our unit in Dondo,” the chief executive of Cimentos de Moçambique, João Nunes Pereira told financial news agency Bloomberg adding that the aim of the project was to respond to increased demand from Mozambique’s construction sector.

If the project moves ahead the plant will take 36 months to build.

In 2011 sales of cement and clinker by Cimpor rose 10.4 percent to 976,000 tons. Its turnover rose 30.2 percent to 114.6 million euros and EBITDA more than doubled to 23.6 million euros.

ESPAÑA: El 16% del combustible que utiliza Tudela Veguín en Aboño procede de residuos

La consejera de Fomento, Ordenación del Territorio y Medio Ambiente, Isabel Marqués, visitó ayer las instalaciones de la fábrica de cementos de Tudela Veguín en Aboño. En su recorrido por la fábrica, estuvo acompañada por el director de la planta, Iván Menéndez; el responsable de Medio Ambiente de Cementos Tudela Veguín, Fernando Fernández Tresguerres, y la directora general de Relaciones Institucionales y Comunicación, Alicia Castro Masaveu.

Durante su visita, los responsables de la planta manifestaron su interés en el uso de combustibles alternativos; esto es, la quema de residuos -principalmente madera y neumáticos troceados- en sus hornos para fabricar clínker, la caliza cocida que es la principal materia prima de la que se obtiene el cemento.

Según señalaron, desde que comenzaron a utilizarlos hace tres años, les ha reportado buenos resultados ambientales. De hecho, desde que la empresa anunció la puesta en marcha de este proyecto ha valorado el ahorro considerable de combustible y la reducción de emisiones de dióxido de carbono a la atmósfera. El 16% del combustible utilizado por Tudela Veguín en la fábrica en 2011 procedía de la quema de residuos. La consejera se interesó por las inversiones en mejoras ambientales del grupo Masaveu. En la última década han supuesto 125 millones de euros.