CBR takes first step into SE Asia CBR and Heidelberger Zement acquired a majority stake in Limay Grinding Mill Corp. of Luzon, the Philippines' main island. The deal was made through CBR's subsidiary ENCI. Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsubishi Materials retain their combined interest of 10% in the company.

Limay Grinding Mill Corp. has an annual production capacity of 420,000 mt and is supplied by local and overseas clinker shipments. The company delivers portland cement in bulk and bags to the industrial development areas of Central Luzon and Metro Manila.

New plant in Egypt Work started in August 1998 on a new cement factory in Beni Suef, Upper Egypt, as the result of a contract between the Egyptian-German Company for Cement Industry and the Chinese government.

The agreement outlines the supply of all equipment for the plant, which will be covered by a Chinese loan of US$135 million to be repaid over the next seven years.

The factory will be built on the Kuraymat-Za'farana Road and is expected to take 30 months to be completed.

Ciments Francais closes deal with Riberas Ciments Francais closed a deal with the Riberas family in Spain. The family will sell its controlling interest in Iniciativas Estrategicas to Ciments Francais. The primary asset of the Spanish firm is the Devnya cement plant in Bulgaria, situated on the Black Sea coast. The plant has an annual capacity of 2 million mt.

The Italcementi-controlled group also acquired a controlling interest in Shimkent Cement in Kazakhstan, which operates a 2 million-mtpy plant.

Hong Kong combination Cheung Kong Infrastructure (Holdings) Ltd. (CKI) of Hong Kong announced the formation of CKI Materials, which will combine the cement manufacturing and distribution activities of Green Island Cement (Holdings) Ltd. and the ready-mixed concrete, quarrying, and asphalt business of Anderson Asia (Holdings) Ltd.

Green Island is the only integrated cement manufacturer in Hong Kong, but it also operates the Yun Fu cement plant in Southern China and is building a clinker grinding plant in Shantou in Guangdong Province. The group also recently announced the start of commercial operations at its limestone export facility at Siquijor in the Philippines. Anderson Asia has concrete and asphalt operations in Hong Kong and China.

Cement Americas Hong Kong correspondent Barrie Cook, previously managing director of Green Island Cement, was appointed CEO of CKI Materials. In addition, Cook, who also is chairman of the Hong Kong Cement Association, became chairman of the East Asia Cement Forum on Oct. 1, 1998. The inaugural meeting of the Forum, representing the cement industries of China, Hong Kong, ASEAN, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, was held in Hong Kong on Oct. 24. Forum members account for about 50% of the global cement consumption.

Asia crisis hits Adelaide Adelaide Brighton Ltd. of Australia warned of lower second-half profits because exports to Asia have stopped in the wake of the financial crisis. Conditions in domestic markets remain soft outside NSW and Victoria.

Managing Director Richard Hammond said that exports to the traditional markets of Indonesia and Singapore were hit hard because of the situation in Asia and that prices were under severe pressure. He added that the company was investigating new export markets in North and South America but that the slow down in Asia meant that producers were facing "serious reductions" in pricing.

The company had planned to export 11% of its production capacity in 1997-98, representing about 200,000 mt, but the end result was expected to be only about 6% export by the end of 1998.

China avoids dumping fee China dumped about 3,000 mt of cement in New Zealand last year at prices 5% below its domestic value. The action, however, did not hurt the local market, according to a report in the National Business Review.

The finding means that two local manufacturers, Golden Bay and Milburn Cement, failed in their call for anti-dumping duties to be imposed on Chinese imports.

The dumped product was imported in 40-kg bags. The investigation carried out by New Zealand's Commerce Ministry found that another 5,000 mt of bulk cement imported in 1-mt bags last August was sold at acceptable prices. The ministry said that while imports of dumped product had increased significantly in absolute terms, it was not significant in relation to total production and consumption in New Zealand, which industry sources put at about 1 million mtpy. The investigation found no evidence of price undercutting or price suppression as a result of the imports.

Japanese giants join Mitsubishi Materials Corp. and Ube Industries Ltd. set up a joint cement sales and distribution company in Japan on July 1, 1998. The new entity is called Ube Mitsubishi Cement. The company became the country's second-largest cement company in terms of market share.

Ube operates three plants in western Japan, two in the Yamaguchi Prefecture, and one in the Prefecture of Fukuoka. Observers believe that high transportation costs have driven the company into the arms of Mitsubishi.

Chinese joint ventures China's State Bureau of Building Materials Industry has reported that China has eight medium and large, foreign-funded cement joint ventures. The ventures have a combined annual production capacity of 8.67 million mt, accounting for 1.8% of the country's total production, according to the Beijing Review.

Four more such ventures are under construction with a projected combined annual production capacity of 5.92 million mt. Another eight cement joint ventures have been approved for construction with a total production capacity of 22 million mt, accounting for 4% of China's total annual production.

Lafarge moves on Republic French giant Lafarge and a group of Filipino investors acquired an 18% stake in the island's Republic Cement. Lafarge has stated that Republic has a plant with an annual capacity of 1.5 million mt and that the acquisition was part of the group's expansion into emerging markets, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

The company added that the cement market in the Philippines had been growing between 15% and 20% per year for the past four years, reaching close to 15 million mt in 1997.

Siam Cement may spin off As part of a possible restructuring plan, Thailand's Siam Cement is considering splitting off its subsidiaries, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The move would be designed to attract foreign investors and would involve setting up a new company to run the cement business. Such a move would make Siam, the country's largest industrial business, merely a holding company. By doing this, potential investors could purchase only the businesses they were interested in.

Blue Circle boosts Malaysian interests Malaysian Cement Berhad, which is 58% owned by a Blue Circle Industries subsidiary, signed an agreement to purchase from its partner, Pan Malaysian Cement, the outstanding 50% shareholdings in both of Associated Pan Malaysian Cement and Pan Malaysian Cement Works Singapore.

The agreement includes the purchase of a number of other associated interests in ready-mixed concrete in Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam, and a building materials distribution network in Malaysia. Total consideration for the entire stake is MR1.2 billion (US$315 million).

China's half-year report China's State Statistical Bureau reported that the nation produced 222 million mt of cement in the first half of 1998, an increase of 0.9% compared with the same period in 1997, according to the China Daily Business Weekly.

CBR gets deeper into Poland CBR, a member of the Heidelberger Zement Group, decided to increase its stake in the Polish company Gorazdze, which is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The subsidiary CBR Baltic, which currently holds a 51.16% interest in Gorazdze, is making a takeover bid for the remainder of the shares.

According to CBR, this acquisition reflects the company's confidence in the prospects for the Polish market. The bid, priced at PLN60 (US$17.24) per share, opened on Dec. 1, 1998 and closed on Jan. 8, 1999.

Gorazdze's cement plant produces about 2 million mtpy. In 1997, the company's sales totaled PLN 320.5 million (US$92.1 million), with net income at PLN 51.3 million (US$14.7 million). CBR entered the Polish market in June 1993, when it acquired 34% of Gorazdze. The stake was increased to 51.16% in April 1996.

Hot kiln alignment patent validated After a 10-minute deliberation, the European patent adjudicators accepted the patent on Phillips Kiln Services' hot kiln alignment as "novel" and "an invention of merit," giving it full accreditation for all European Community countries.

The unanimous decision resulted following two years of written debate and oral testimony in Munich. The three-member judging panel rejected arguments set forth by one opponent, Krupp-Polysius, which argued that some of the instrumentation was similar to that used in its procedures. Therefore, nothing new was found in the Phillips' application that Krupp's Polscan system did not already do, according to Krupp. Phillips argued that its method focuses on rotary motion to identify centers of rotation and does not use diameters of rollers or tires to arrive at the state of alignment. The board will publish its exact findings on the matter soon.