The Portland plant of the National Administration of Fuels, Alcohol and Portland (Ancap) located in the city of mines It has not produced for 12 days, since it stopped on February 28, due to a technical problem; and the market is going through a critical situation in Uruguay.
After Thursday, March 2, the union of the state company, fancap, will carry out a 24-hour general stoppage in all the company’s facilities, the problems for production will continue. Unlike what happened in sectors such as the refinery of the tile or the cement plant of Paysandu, where operational guards were agreed upon and organized to “maintain the safety and integrity of people, the environment and equipment”, in Minas this did not happen, and operations stopped completely.
The consequences of the lack of agreement are still being suffered: although an orderly shutdown was achieved, problems arose during start-up that have prevented the normal operation of the plant until today.
“The cement plant was unable to resume operations due to the formation of a mass of material at the entrance of the kiln originated as a consequence of the stoppage of the production processes, which requires cooling from high temperatures for re-ignition after the union measure has passed”, said Ancap about the problems in the production process.
“He damage Caused by this situation is, at least so far, the loss of production at the Minas plant since last February 28. In the critical situation of the cement and lime business, These events damage Ancap’s equity and reputation severely,” the agency said on Friday.
A market in critical situation
This week the president of the public company, Alejandro Stipanicic, affirmed that the situation of the Portland business “is dramatic” and it is necessary to find a solution. “Portland continued to lose market and price. Last year we had union problems. The situation is distressing, ”he said in dialogue with the weekly Search.
The Portland division has accumulated numbers in the red for more than two years, with losses of about 10 million dollars annually on average.
Meanwhile, the competitive process for incorporate a private partner into the business, despite criticism from the opposition and the union, and accusations of attempts to privatize the market. In this sense, in the next few days the first stage would end, which consisted of the call for expressions of interest and meetings with interested parties.
The second stage is recruitment. Based on the elements that emerged in the previous stage, Ancap will prepare the bases and conditions of the public call for association and will define the terms of the call.
“We have already begun to develop an option to the original comprehensive association plan,” said Stipanicic, explaining that this can take two forms: “to export and supply Ancap to the local market. That can enable the interest of more companies, particularly local ones”, said Stipanicic.
Source: Ambito
