Fujian Cement Plans to Invest US$106 Mln in Cement Production Project
Fujian Cement has announced plans to invest about US$106 Mln in cement production project, Fujian Cement Co., Ltd. Calcined Cement Plant with a production capacity of 4,500 TPD.
Philippines: Cemex Philippines has received a set of tax breaks and financial incentives for the new 1.5Mtyr production line it is planning to build at its Solid Cement plant in Antipolo, Rizal.
Its subsidiary Solid Cement has obtained ‘pioneer’ status from the Board of Investment (BOI) but with ‘non-pioneer’ incentives, according to the Inquirer newspaper. This means that the project may be able to benefit from a longer income-tax holiday. The new production line is scheduled to be operational by early 2020.
“This plant should have been built much earlier. If it is needed, we will expand it,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of its opening ceremony in December, which was live-broadcast to the Kazakh capital Astana, where a nationwide event to present some of the country’s newest projects to President Nursultan Nazarbayev was being held.
Built jointly by Gezhouba Group and Kazakh firm Corporation DANAKE, the plant is an illustration of how China is using its “Belt and Road” initiative to redraw its manufacturing footprint well beyond its own borders, reshaping industries in the process.
But amid increased scrutiny of Belt and Road – a sprawling infrastructure plan meant to foster trade along a new “Silk Road” linking Asia with Europe, the Middle East and beyond – others say China is using the initiative to export industrial overcapacity, especially in heavy polluting industries.
While the drive has encouraged China’s corporate giants to seek overseas business, some worry the trend could distort regional economies and increase their dependency on Chinese money.
China says the four-year-old Belt and Road initiative, a signature policy of President Xi Jinping, is a “win-win” opportunity that helps other countries upgrade their transport and infrastructure links while boosting its own trade.
Chinese authorities have also suggested it as a possible solution to its industrial overcapacity woes, a legacy of the billions of dollars it poured into infrastructure projects to weather the 2008/09 global financial crisis, allowing firms to shift to areas where demand could still grow.
That idea has been acted upon by companies in sectors ranging from steel to cement to coal, industry executives and analysts say, shaking up global production maps.
“Every week there’s news about a new cement plant in the Commonwealth of Independent States area or Asia area that is being built by (the Chinese),” said Raluca Cercel, an associate at consultancy CW Group, which analyses the cement market.
Hundreds of cement plants have been shuttered in China under the pollution crackdown, according to state media, and the China Cement Association says that the country aims to eliminate about 400 million tonnes of capacity – about one-tenth of the total – by 2020.
Chinese majors such Gezhouba, Anhui Conch Cement and Shangfeng Cement in 2018 announced investments in at least 18 plants across Africa, Asia and South America with total annual capacity of more than 20 million tonnes – larger than the output of most European countries – according to industry publication Global Cement.
GRAPHIC-China’s concrete plans – tmsnrt.rs/2RywR1U
They are also building more plants on behalf of Western cement makers such as LafargeHolcim and HeidelbergCement, said David Perilli, an editor at Global Cement.
These Chinese firms had no such overseas footprint a decade ago, executives said.
Gezhouba is keen to embrace the new opportunities, said Li Jinqing, general manager at the Chinese firm’s Shieli subsidiary.
“We have 17 cement plants in China, this one is our first here,” he said. “We plan to build more plants in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, western Kazakhstan.. Everything will depend on the market.”
China has in the last five years stipulated that companies must install advanced anti-pollution technologies to meet raised standards for the production of materials such as cement, and has banned new cement capacity apart from projects that are considered “absolutely necessary”.
Plants are also forced to shut down production when pollution levels are high.
Hangzhou-based Shangfeng Cement is another Chinese firm that is looking to expand its footprint, building plants in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
“The overcapacity situation in China has become very severe…which is why we considered going to countries along the Belt and Road,” the company’s vice president Qu Hui told Reuters in an interview.
“China is currently able to produce more than 3 billion tonnes of cement, but there is only demand for about 2.2 billion tonnes in reality.”
Shangfeng had also received a $68 million low-interest loan from the Export-Import Bank of China to build its first overseas production line, an offer made under the Belt and Road initiative, he said.
“The approval was done very quickly and the government was really supportive,” he said.
Chinese companies say the plants they are building abroad use the latest technology, are equipped with essential filters, and comply with local environment regulations.
However, environmental groups say the export of the pollution problems that dogged China’s rapid industrialization is a concern.
“Most countries targeted by Chinese firms for industrial investments have very weak emissions and environmental standards and enforcement,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at Greenpeace’s global air pollution unit.
“It’s definitely a concern that they take place in this regulatory vacuum.”
Kazakhstan has no unified national pollution standards like those in place in the European Union and China, according to local campaign group the Association of Practicing Ecologists, and does not track mercury emissions from cement kilns.
“Given those differences in pollution standards in China and Kazakhstan, it might be profitable for China to shift cement plants – under the Belt and Road project – to Kazakhstan which has rich deposits of carbonates and silica used as cement feedstock,” it said in an e-mail to Reuters.
While analysts said a number of central Asian countries were eager to ramp up cement production to create jobs and reduce reliance on imports as they seek to grow their manufacturing industries, there is a limit to how much new capacity their markets can absorb.
Landlocked Tajikistan, which has been a magnet for Chinese cement investors, exported 1 million tonnes of cement in 2017, up from just 500 tonnes in 2015, according to government data.
Shangfeng’s Qu said overcapacity could be hard to avoid, due to the highly efficient nature of Chinese cement manufacturing processes and their tendency to build bigger plants.
“It’s fine when you’re the first there,” he said. “But when you have two to three companies building in one country together, overcapacity can emerge very quickly.”
Partners consider a pilot plant on the Swedish island of Gotland that would be the world’s first
Utility Vattenfall and cement-maker Cementa may build a pilot plant in Sweden that for the first time in the world would produce cement from wind power instead of polluting fossil fuels, after positive results from a pilot study into the electrification of cement production.
The cement industry is one of the largest producers of CO2, creating up to 5% of the world’s emissions of the greenhouse gas, of which 50% is from the chemical process, and 40% from burning fuel, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
“It is very positive that we can proceed with the work of electrifying the cement industry, it is one of the most important examples of new collaborations for technology development which can make a substantial contribution to the efforts to create a fossil-free future,” said Vattenfall chief executive Magnus Hall.
Aiming for climate-neutral cement production is another part of Sweden’s effort to have no more net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2045. Next to aiming to switch its entire electricity production to renewables, the Nordic country is also starting to electrify its power thirsty steel industry, and plans to ban the sale of fossil-fuel powered cars by 2030.
Vattenfall and Cementa will be conducting an in-depth study this year into how a pilot plant can be built.
Simulations have indicated that any future electrification of Cementa’s factory on Gotland would work well together with planned expansion of wind energy on the island in the Baltic Sea. That would come partly through an improved energy balance, but also through reduction of the maximum surplus capacity to which wind energy would otherwise give rise.
The Cementa plant currently consumes close to half of the power on Gotland, Sweden’s largest island, a company sustainability manager told Recharge, but added that no decision on the location of a pilot plant has been taken yet.
The considerations for a pilot plant come as Vattenfall and Cementa are concluding a first part of the CemZero study and have submitted a final report to the Swedish Energy Agency that has co-financed the study.
Vattenfall’s Hall had first explained the plans for fossil-free cement in an interview with Recharge last June. The initial study had examined different technologies for heating in the cement process, with fossil-free electricity used as the energy source instead of conventional fuels.
“Achieving radical emissions reductions requires advances in technology. CemZero opens up an interesting path which we are looking forward to taking further,” said Cementa’s CEO Magnus Ohlsson.
The study concluded that electrification of the heating in the cement process appears to be technically possible. Among other things it has been shown to produce a certain amount of cement clinker based entirely on plasma technology. This possibility needs to be verified through large scale testing, Vattenfall has said.
An electrified solution for cement is competitive compared with other alternatives in order to achieve radical reductions in emissions, the study also found.
Publish by Rechaegenews
Published on ZKG
The World Cement Association (WCA) presented its WCA Climate Change Action Plan in London on 05.12.2018. The aim of the cement plants organized in the WCA is to make a concerted contribution to the objectives of the Paris Agreement in order to keep the global temperature rise well below two degrees. Bernard Mathieu, Director of the WCA Climate Programme, explained to us what measures should be taken to achieve this.How many cement companies with what total cement capacity are organized in the WCA?
The World Cement Association (WCA) was founded in London in 2016 with the aim of representing the cement industry and its stakeholders on a global basis with a single voice.
Read More »The global cement industry says yes to climate protection
FLSmdith has won an order from Fletcher Building to install a HOTDISC® combustion device at its Golden Bay cement plant in New Zealand. Local media reported that substituting rubber biofuels for coal will reduce CO2 emissions by 13,000 tonnes per year, or the equivalent of emissions from 6000 cars. Once the FLSmidth HOTDISC is fully operational, the kiln will consume up to 3.1m shredded tyres a year, replacing the need for over 15,000t of coal.
New Zealand’s Associate Minister for the Environment, Eugenie Sage, recently signalled that the government’s priority work programme for waste will include a greater focus on product stewardship for end-of-life vehicle tyres, with New Zealanders throwing away more than 5m tyres every year.
This follows earlier efforts by the government to tackle the issue of tyres, with private companies invited in 2015 to put forward applications to the Waste Minimisation Fund for environmentally sustainable solutions for end-of-life tyres.
Carsten Damslund Jensen, Global Product Line Manager at FLSmidth, noted that the FLSmidth HOTDISC is experiencing a boom in many parts of the world, especially in China.
“Whereas we previously experienced a market demand of one or two units a year, we are now projecting the sale of 10 units in 2019,” he says, adding, “It’s not only a good business case for cement producers and other energy-hungry industries, but also good news for the environment.”
