LOESCHE mill type LM 60.4, Guangzhou, China
LOESCHE has been able to sell five large vertical roller mills to the emerging cement market in Algeria. The local building sector in Algeria is one of the drivers of increasing cement demand, which now stands at 24.5 million tons per year in this North-African country, and is not being met by the current annual production of around 19.5 million tons. Not least for this reason, several large-scale cement projects have recently been started there: As a result, LOESCHE will now be providing two mills for cement raw meal and three mills for cement clinker to the cement plant of the Algerian producer SARL Biskria Ciment in Biskra – 300 km south-east of the capital, Algiers. With this, the cement raw meal can be ground to a fineness of 12% sieving residue with 90 µm at a processing capacity of 500 t/h and the cement clinker to a fineness of 3,400 Blaine.
The three new cement clinker mills have already been delivered and commissioning is planned for autumn 2017. The Chinese firm CMBI Construction Co. Ltd. from Peking, with whom LOESCHE have collaborated successfully for many years in this sector, will act as contractor in this enterprise. For SARL Biskria Ciment, Algeria is not only a strategically important market in the Mediterranean region. With the expansion of its production capacity, the company aims to acquire national and international competitive advantages and also seeks to reinforce the socioeconomic development of Algeria by better serving the national market with local products, so as to ensure a stable supply with high-quality building materials at affordable prices. The commissioning of the new cement production line should see production volumes in the Algerian market rise considerably over the course of 2017 and contribute to a reduction in cement imports.