Pacific Cement to acquire new machines to improve production

Pacific Cement Limited will acquire a new pre-grinding mill, a dryer and an automatic packager by the end of the year.

Fijian Holdings Limited chief executive officer Nouzab Fareed said FHL will invest a total of $4 million to $5 million for the three machines within the next six to nine months.

Pacific Cement is the oldest and first cement plant established in Fiji.

Over the years, modifications and improvements have been made to better production.

However, this year, despite debates on whether to buy a pregrinding mill, Mr Fareed said the new machines will be the biggest modification the company has taken to improve its production capacity. .

Pacific Cement has the capacity to produce 150, 000 metric tonnes of cement per year.

But Fiji’s current market demand stands at over 1,500 tonnes per day.

This is due to the construction boom where a lot of cement is required.

Mr Fareed said Pacific Cement can produce around 600 metric tonnes per day while neighbouring Tengy Cement Limited is able to produce 400-500 metric tonnes per day.

Collectively, both factories are able to produce around 1200 metric tonnes per day which still falls short of the current market demand.

“It is a hard job but by buying a Chinese-made pre-grinding mill we will be able to increase our capacity to around 200 000 metric tonnes per year,” said Mr Fareed.

“Full production will begin by mid September after an equipment part will be installed by late August.

“But from next week, the company will bring some engineers from Australia and New Zealand to assist the company in installing the new part.”

The mill will be closed for two weeks from late August until mid September.

Pacific Cement is also considering buying a dryer to reduce the moisture in the raw material thus increasing the efficiency of the mill.

Since manual labour is currently banned in areas of cement production, Mr Fareed said, an automatic packager will also be acquired.

A vertical mill worth close to $10 million will also be purchased mid next year and built in the Western Division, said Mr Fareed.