Cimenterie de Lukala SA

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HeidelbergCement (“the company”), a large international aggregates and cement company, has acquired a majority stake in the existing CILU Lukala cement plant in Bas Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2010. At that time the cement plant was in need of substantive rehabilitation and upgrade and since the acquisition, HeidelbergCement has worked on improving the operations. In May 2015 HeidelbergCement gained full control of the cement plant and has defined the remaining needs for the requisite upgrade. So as to support the upgrade HeidelbergCement has requested IFC to provide financing. CILU Lukala has been in operations since 1921. The initial operations were based on vertical kilns and in the 1970’s these were replaced by the current vertical rotary kiln with a four stage pre-heater. The focus of the current upgrade involves replacement of the existing systems with a new five stage pre-heater kiln with a pre-calciner, replacement of the limestone crushers, increasing the clinker grinding capacity and installation of new bagging and dispatch facility with rotary packers, a new staging area for vehicles dispatching cement, and rearrangement of certain site components. These developments will result in the capacity increasing from 330,000 tons of clinker and 450,000 tons of cement to 580,000 tons and 750,000 tons of clinker and cement per annum respectively. In addition, there will be improved plant reliability and energy efficiency, improvements to point source emissions, and improvements in site administration and management (e.g., human resource, environmental management, etc.) to ensure alignment with the HeidelbergCement standards as applied internationally.IFC has an existing equity investment in Scancem, a holding company owned by HeidelbergCement, for various other operations in Sun-Saharan Africa and the environmental and social performance of these activities is considered satisfactory. An engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract has been signed with Sinoma International, an experienced Chinese equipment supplier and construction company, with construction start expected in the second half of 2015 and project commissioning during the second half of 2017.