SOEICOM to invest in modernisation
The Industrial, Commercial and Mining Enterprise Society (Soeicom), owner of cement brand Cimentos Liz, is going to invest approximately US$180m in increasing and modernizing production in their plant in the city of Vespasiano, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The production is going to rise from the current 1.9Mta to 2.9Mta by 2009, according to company president Paulo Vasconcelos. The increase will be 53 per cent.
According to information disclosed by the government of the state of Minas Gerais, the works are going to begin this year and should be completed by 2008. The forecast is for the works to generate 1000 jobs. After the implementation of the project, Soeicom should create another 100 direct jobs, raising the number of factory employees to 522. The number of indirect jobs should rise from 650 to 860.
In the first quarter of this year, Soeicom sold a total of 463,000t of cement. The volume is 69 per cent greater than the total in the same period last year, when trade totalled 273,000t of cement. The company has an 11 per cent market share in the state of Minas Gerais, 7.8 per cent of the market in the South and Southeast of Brazil, and 5.13 per cent of the national market as a whole.
Cimentos Liz net assets total US$263m. The company was established in Brazil in 1969 by the Portuguese group Champalimaud. Currently, Votorantim group is the largest cement producer in Brazil, with 3.6Mt of sales in the first quarter of the year. Company João Santos is the second, with 1.2Mt in the period and Cimpor is the third, with 925,800t.
According to figures supplied by the Brazilian Cement Industry Union, the country produced 9.1Mt of cement between January and March 2006. In the whole of last year, production totalled 36.6Mt. In the previous year, 2004, production had totalled 34.4Mt. The growth was 6.3 per cent in the period.
Published under Cement News
