El pasado día 20 de Febrero tuvo lugar en la sede de Anfre en Madrid la Junta Directiva, la Asamblea General Ordinaria y las reuniones de nuestros distintos comités.

Al tratarse de la primera reunión del año nos hemos centrado tanto en la aprobación de los acuerdos tomados durante el 2017 como en la organización y aprobación de los eventos que queremos llevar a cabo durante el 2018.

Cabe destacar en este sentido la celebración de nuestro IX Congreso Nacional de Materiales, Maquinaria y Montaje de Refractarios que tendrá lugar como vienen siendo habitual en Oviedo los días 12 y 13  de Junio.

Debido al gran éxito que se ha obtenido en el Curso de Ingeniería de Refractarios se va a realizar la II edición del mismo, este año en Sevilla durante el mes de Noviembre.

Se ha hablado largo y tendido de los temas que interesan a los asociados tanto a nivel nacional como europeo.

Tenemos que agradecer la asistencia a dichas reuniones de Matilde Fernández García y Ricardo Álvarez Fernández de la Fundación ITMA, nos han acercado un poco más con sus presentación a dicha institución.

Como es ya habitual después de un día duro de reuniones podemos relajarnos en la comida que ofrece Anfre a todos los asistentes.

Queríamos agradecer una vez más a todos los asociados su implicación en la Asociación, sin todos vosotros Anfre no sería posible. Gracias por seguir sumando.

Os esperamos en Oviedo.

The company aims to have its fused magnesia line ‘up and running’ in Norway before year-end.

Austrian refractory maker RHI is aiming to restart fused magnesia (FM) production at its partially-mothballed facility in Norway in December, the company told IM.

After an initial announcement at the beginning of October, RHI said it is confident the FM production line at the Porsgrunn facility can be «up and running» in a short period of time.

«We are working to start up in December with a limited number of lines first. We will constantly evaluate the needs in terms of production volume to guarantee the supply to our customers,» RHI told IM.

The FM operation at the facility was mothballed in August 2016, on the back of weak market conditions that made the line uneconomical to run.

CCM production at the site meanwhile continued – which is the main reason behind the swift restart schedule RHI is pursuing, as workers have remained at the facility and operations have ticked over in the other manufacturing lines at the site.

Whether RHI’s Norwegian plant would start producing FM again has been a main point of discussion among industry players over the past few months, as the shortage of the material intensified in major consuming markets.

Prices of the material from both Chinese and European suppliers have reached new highs in October.
European FM increased further to $1,400-1,600/tonne, while all Chinese FM grades also appreciate dafter the Golden Week national holiday.

The paper investigates the wear damage origins and causes of refractory products in cremation furnaces, identifies various material characteristics for service time improvements and suggests new concepts for the thermal optimisation of lining materials. There are essentially two types of furnaces available in crematoria: multi-deck furnaces and flat-bed furnaces.

The Henan government has ramped up efforts to combat pollution by implementing yet more shutdowns of brown fused alumina production later this year. This is set to cause more global supply disruptions since output was already intermittent in recent months.

The government of Henan province in China will enforce large-scale brown fused alumina production stoppages from November 2017 – March 2018 in a bid to cut down pollution levels in the region, according to official documentation.

China is one of the biggest fused alumina producers in the world and Henan is a key fused alumina producing region.

Further output cuts will severely impact exports to the refractories and abrasive sectors globally, since production was already intermittent due to the past months of anti-pollution checks, market participants told IM.

According to the provincial capital Zhengzhou government, the province must meet the target of the environmental plan, it announced on 28 September.

Under the plan, the average concentration of particulate matter (PM2.5) between October 2017 and March 2018 must fall by 20% year-on-year, and the number of severe pollution days must also reduce by 15%.

By end of October, all steel and cement producers must complete their paperwork for emission licenses, while copper, zinc, lead smelters, aluminium, pharmaceutical and pesticide producers must obtain their licences by December 2017.

Companies releasing pollutants without licenses will be prosecuted, according to Zhengzhou government.
In a separate notice seen by IM, a list of 51 brown fused alumina producers across Zhengzhou, Jiaozuo, Luoyang,
Sanmenxia, Jiyuan, Gongyi and Lankao have been compelled by the government authority to shut down for a set period of time, between 15 November and 15 March 2018.

While it is not a blanket ban to all producers to shut down production in the next four months, 42 on the list are allowed to produce for one month in January 2018, while five have ceased operation indefinitely.

It is unclear when the environmental restrictions will end, but many market participants within and outside China believe that many small fused alumina producers will not survive this wave of checks. As a result, the total output in China could potentially drop in 2017.

The recent global economic difficulties have resulted in overcapacities in many industries and the refractory industry isn’t an exception. In an uncertain environment driven by the slowing Chinese economy and the low crude oil price many industries have slowed down their investments.