Eurocement Group and Sinoma International Engineering Co  have signed an agreement for the modernisation of three plants at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing.

The contracts cover the construction of dry-process cement lines at the Kavkazcement, Belgorodsky Cement and Oskolcement plants in Russia. All the lines will have a clinker capacity of 6200tpa (3Mta) and each contract is worth US$$93.3m.

Earlier in May, Eurocement signed six contracts to build new factories with Sinomach, CNBM and Sinoma for a total of US$580m. All of these projects are being carried out as part of a program to switch cement production to using a dry method. Overall investments in the program will exceed US$2bn.

"We are planning to switch our enterprises to the new technological platform in three years – between 2014 and 2017 – and hit the planned workload in 2018," Mikhail Skorokhod, Eurocement President, told Interfax.

By 2018, the holding intends to produce 100 per cent of its cement using the energy efficient dry-process method. This will boost capacities by 5Mta to 45Mta he said.