Items filtered by date: Thursday, 01 August 2019
Sri Lanka: Nandana Ekanayake, the chief executive officer (CEO) of INSEE Cement, has called for the regulations on blended cement to be relaxed. He said that some of the company’s Chinese contractors had asked for cements with 65% slag but that the current regulations do not allow it, according to Economy Next. The Sri Lanka Standards Institute has a limit of 20% slag content in cement. He added that there were no uniform international standard for slag in construction cement. He made the comments at the launch of the company’s first sustainability report.
ArcelorMittal faces tough first half in 2019 01 August 2019
Luxembourg: ArcelorMittal’s sales fell by 2% year-on-year to US$38.5bn in the first half of 2019 from US$39.2bn in the same period in 2019. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 43% to US$3.21bn from US$5.59bn. Crude steel production volumes rose by 3% to 47.8Mt from 46.5Mt.
"After a strong 2018, market conditions in the first half of 2019 have been very tough, with the profitability of our steel segments suffering due to lower steel prices combined with higher raw material costs,” said Lakshmi N Mittal, ArcelorMittal’s chairman and chief executive officer (CEO). He added that the company had recued its production capacity in Europe in responses to global overcapacity.