Concrete Plants, Equipment & Applications

Lafarge and Anglo Amercian’s subsidiary Tarmac are reported to be planning to sell off £600million (€682million) worth of assets in order to complete their planned merger. The companies are reported to be selling quarries, cement plants and ready mixed concrete facilities in order to satisfy the concerns of the Office of Fair Trading in the UK. The joint venture is expected to submit plans for the restructuring to the authority next month in a bid to gain approval for the deal.

Although it celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, the European Ready Mixed Concrete Organisation is firmly looking to the future. Claire Symes reports. Ready mixed concrete is an essential building material in modern-day construction but until the 1920s concrete was manufactured in batches on demand and on site. Today the industry in Europe alone produces almost 400million cubic metres of material each year off site at hi-tech plants.

Local media has reported that Lafarge will go ahead with plans to build a new 2million tonne per year cement plant in the Rostov region of Russia. The company is said to be planning to open the €450million plant in two stages with the grinding facility starting work in late 2013 and the rest of the plant becoming fully operational in 2015. The new facility will be supplied with material from the Kulbakinskoye deposit.

Hungary-based Nostra Cement - a joint venture between Lafarge and Strabag - will officially open its new 1million tonne per year cement plant in Kirayegyhaza at the end of June. Work on the €270million facility will continue through to September this year. The new facility will have capacity to produce 1million tonnes of cement and 750,000tonnes of clinker per year and will be supplied with raw materials by the limestone quarry in Bukkosd, which will be transported to the site by a new 5km long rail link.

Overcapacity and high operational costs have been cited by Lafarge for plans to close its Frangey cement plant in Burgundy, France. The company has said that operations at the plant will be gradually reduced and the factory will close in 2012.

France-based concrete producer Fabemi has officially opened its new ready mixed concrete plant in La Roquette-sur-Siagne. The new 60,000m3 per year facility – the company’s fifth plant - will serve a 30km radius, including building sites in Grasse, Cannes, Mandelieu and Antibes.

The latest fully automated concrete precasting plants are helping To deliver on site precision. ABE reports on a new facility in Saudi Arabia. Complex architectural designs and challenging structures are calling for ever more precision when it comes to precast concrete. The industry is meeting this demand with the use of state of the art facilities with fullyautomated systems that also help to improve safety.

Cemex’s French business has signed a deal with Novacom to provide digital information directly from 90 of its concrete pumps. The system will allow ready mixed concrete pump drivers to send photos of the work site for security purposes, have clients sign paperwork, report hours worked, calculate travel time to a site, locate pumps and protect them from theft.

Tarmac is aiming to improve the efficiency of ready mixed concrete deliveries in the UK with the launch of a new concrete calculator smartphone application. The company has said that app makes ordering product even easier by enabling customers to calculate the volume of ready-mixed concrete required for their projects. Users can select the required shape and input the dimensions to accurately calculate the concrete volume they need and the order is placed by requesting a call back from Tarmac.

Eurocement has announced that it is planning to build a new cement plant in the Stavropol region of Russia and has signed agreements with the North Caucasus authorities. According to the company, the region has proven reserves of limestone but no operating cement plant.