Concrete Plants, Equipment & Applications

According to Jussi Mattila, director of the Finnish Concrete Industry, the outlook in the sector is bleak.

There are few orders as neither industrial companies nor the trade sector are investing, and housebuilding has decreased.

Mattila is certain the sector will have to reduce its workforce. The concrete industry employs about 4,500 people in Finland with specialised companies said to have managed best.

Turkish cement producer Limak Cimento Grubu is linking up with Afrikbat to build a cement production facility in Ivory Coast. The two frims have set up a new company, Afrika, and Limak has a 51% share in this firm. The plant will be based in Abidjan and will cost US$50 million. It will produce 1 million m³ ready-to-use cement when it opens in October 2015, and will export products to other African countries. There are also plans to extend the operation with additional block production and a pre-fabric produ

Cemtech, a subsidiary of India-based Sanghi Group, is preparing to start construction of the US$136.38 million (KES 12 billion) Pokot Cement Factory in Kenya. The cement plant is expected to achieve annual output of over 1.2 million tonnes and Cemtech will set up a power plant as well as staff houses, schools, staff training centre, a medical centre and other facilities.

Angola-based cement company Cimenfort has announced that expansion work on its factory in Lobito, Benguela, western Angola will lead to a 50-70% increase in capacity. The expansion work will take place over two stages, with the first, set for Q1 2015, to double the capacity of the factory. The second stage will see the construction of the blast furnace, which is expected to take two years to complete. The expansion work will lead to the creation of a large amount of new jobs, and see a shift-based system es

The World Concrete Forum has published its World Concrete 500 - a list of the top 500 players on Twitter from the international cement and concrete industry. French cement giant Lafarge (@LafargeGroup) takes the number one spot, with Colombia’s Cementos Argos (@Cementos_Argos) achieving second place. “Congratulations to Lafarge on heading the first listing of the World Concrete 500. Their work has been outstanding in recent months,” said Martin Clarke, director of the World Concrete Forum.

Egypt minister of investment Ashraf Salman said the government is planning is planning to issue licenses to build cement plants when two planned economic stimulus packages worth €6.62 billion are implemented. He said investors that are able to import gas and set up power plants can apply for the permits, with the government determining the areas where the plants can be built.

Hope Construction Materials, Britain’s leading independent supplier of construction materials, is bolstering its 300-strong concrete mixer fleet with 36 new Mercedes-Benz trucks.

Said to be industry leading in every respect - from safety and operational performance, to technical specification and sustainability – Hope say the trucks surpass any other ready-mixed vehicles on the road. They are Euro 6 compliant, built to the latest diesel engine emission legislation from the European Commission.

The st

Semen Indonesia will next year to set up a new €219.6 million cement plant in Vietnam, according to the Jakarta Post. The new plant will serve the Vietnamese domestic market and export to Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Singapore. Construction of the new plant is said by the newspaper to be earmarked to begin in early 2015. It will produce 1.5 million tonnes/cement annually.

In a further development at Semen Indonesia, a state-run cement maker, the firm has also reportedly entered into an offtake deal with T