Success Story – Lafarge – Morocco

Tanger
Morocco

Lafarge

CONSOLIDATION OF LAFARGE CEMENTOS IN THE NORTHERN REGIONS OF MOROCCO

The client.

Created in 1995, Lafarge Maroc (today LafargeHolcim Maroc) was a subsidiary of a partnership between Lafarge and Société Nationale d’Investissement (SNI), Morocco’s largest private industrial group.

In light of the country’s growing cement demand, in order to support and encourage national economic growth, LAFARGE Maroc Group decided to increase production capacity to 3Mt in Northern Morocco.

At the time, the majority of Lafarge´s investments in Northern Morocco were focused on the construction of a new 1Mt new kiln line (in addition to the existing production capacity) at its Tétouan plant. This Tetouan project was awarded to the Japanese KAWASAKI Heavy Industries Corporation on turnkey basis and reached its completion by the end of 2010.

On parallel, a new 700,000tpa grinding facility, as part of Tanger existing plant, was also part of this growth strategy.

The goal.

Lafarge Maroc’s objective was to create a state-of-the-art manufacturing unit, ensuring that the plant was a safe and an easy factory to maintain, environmentally friendly and capable of producing high quality of certified cements.

To achieve all these targets, the entire project (from engineering to commissioning) was implemented to adopt the most reliable and environmentally-friendly technologies. It was also designed in accordance with all the standards and specifications of quality, durability and innovation required by Lafarge Maroc.

The challenge

In January 2007 the project as a turnkey contract was awarded to Cemengal and its industrial operation was commissioned in June 2008.

The Cemengal´s experience, its know-how, the short delivery time of the project and its past experience in Morocco were important factors for LAFARGE to adjudicate the project.

As well as the full range of engineering services and the technological supplies, the project included all related construction services, where civil works, mechanical and electrical installations and commissioning of the whole facility, were part of the scope.

The delivery of the equipment, also the steel structures and machineries on a door to door, DDU basis were a major challenge successfully completed by CEMENGAL.

This transportation services included sea freights, customs clearance and land forwarding to deliver all the project goods to the final site.

The scope of supply included in the contract was distributed through different workshops:

Raw material feeding:

The stored clinker, gypsum and limestone materials were unloaded from three existing hoppers onto three new weighfeeders. Then, the material was transported by a set of belt conveyors (accounting a total length over 100m) into the ball mill.

A system of dedusting filters were introduced in the system to capture the dust in order to ensure emissions below 10mg/m3N. This spillage and dust were reintroduced into the feeding infrastructure.

Grinding mill:

The three-chamber ball mill of diameter 4.2m and 17,6m total length had an installed power of 3600kW. Its design guarantee was such as to produce 90tph of cement type CPJ 55 with 4000 Blaine. The mill couplings, as well as the gear box and motor disposition were fully engineered by Cemengal. The tube was equipped with inlet and outlet trunnions head, intermediate Opticontrol diaphragm and outlet wall Optimex, all supplied by Magotteaux. Magotteaux also supplied ball grinding media.

The mill circuit was fully dedusted by 2 process filters dedicated to recover the fine material suspended in the air. The material is correctly sized and separated by a high efficiency third generation Sturtevant SD 110 classifier, thus making it possible to reach a high fineness and an optimal distribution of particle sizing.

Cement storage:

From the mill circuit, cement was transported to three existing concrete storage silos on one side of the plant, and onto a newly constructed silo on reinforced concrete with a capacity of 6000t. The silo was equipped to load out cement via a bulk loading system and was also connected tpo the packing workshop.

Expeditions
Automatic packing system
and Truck loading equipment

The packing system is located in a separate building to ensure easy manoeuvring and accessibility for trucks. A fully automated packing system with Haver & Boecker roto-packer of 8 spouts has been installed to match the plant’s performance accounting a capacity of about 2200 bags per hours. In the future, the packing line will be completed by a fully automated palletising and wrapping line.

After the packing zone’s outlet a truck loading set is located and comprises two belt conveyors for transportation of cement bags onto two truck loading stations.

With this new BK6 grinding workshop supplied by CEMENGAL, the LAFARGE Tanger plant concluded a major modernization project and reinforced its position to become the cement reference supplier in the Northwest region of Morocco.

The Tanger grinding plant, together with the upgraded Tetuán factory accounted for a total production capacity of 3Mtpa which has served to secure the demand for the implementation of major infrastructure projects in the area.

Some of these projects were very strategic for the country, such as the Tanger Med Port facilities, new hospitals and a broad variety of residential and touristic developments.