CEMENGAL has built a global reputation as the definitive authority in cement-grinding solutions. For more than 25 years, the company has engineered, equipped, and optimized grinding stations with a level of precision that borders on craftsmanship. Its flagship PLUG&GRIND® systems, modular, mobile, and impressively efficient, bring cement production online at speed, delivering outputs from 12 to 70 tph.
What truly distinguishes CEMENGAL is its command of turnkey execution. From initial design to final start-up, the company orchestrates every detail with discipline, transparency, and technical rigor. And in a market demanding agile, high-performance milling, CEMENGAL offers more than solutions. It offers certainty.
In an exclusive conversation with The Interview World at the 15th Cement Expo 2025, Moises Rodriguez Nunez, Sales & Marketing Manager at CEMENGAL, outlines the company’s cement-grinding innovations, explains how modular grinding stations present a strategic alternative to traditional large plants, details the CAPEX required for such installations, and highlights the global appetite for these solutions.
Here are the key takeaways from his insightful discussion.
Q: Could you elaborate on the cement-grinding solutions that CEMENGAL provides?
A: CEMENGAL is a Spanish company specializing in every type of grinding station. We design and build conventional grinding facilities, and we also pioneered the world-patented modular grinding stations known as PLUG&GRIND®. This modular line includes four different unit sizes, delivering capacities from 12 to 70 tons per hour. In practical terms, each unit can produce between 90,000 and 500,000 tons of cement per year.
In essence, it is a full conventional grinding station, engineered and compressed into modular components. This design offers several powerful advantages: faster time-to-market, simplified construction, minimal civil works, and an installation process that is remarkably straightforward. Moreover, each plant requires only a small team to operate, making it efficient and highly adaptable to a wide range of project needs.
Q: Do your modular grinding stations provide a strategic alternative to conventional large cement plants?
A: Our modular grinding stations offer a strategic alternative to large cement plants. Often, a producer needs to increase capacity in an existing factory, a typical brownfield scenario, yet the requirement may be limited to a specific project or a specialty cement. When the demand is around 200,000 tons per year, a full-scale plant becomes unnecessary. In such cases, a PLUG&GRIND® unit provides the ideal solution.
We see the same logic in smaller markets. For example, in the Caribbean, several islands simply do not require high-volume production. Barbados is a perfect case in point. We recently installed a PLUG&GRIND® Classic unit there, delivering 12 tons per hour, exactly the capacity the island needs. Because the market is small, a compact, efficient, and rapidly deployable plant is not only practical; it is the smartest choice.
Q: Could you share the minimum CAPEX needed to set up one of these grinding stations?
A: There are two distinct CAPEX considerations. One is the cost of the PLUG&GRIND® unit itself, the scope we directly supply. The other is the CAPEX for the complete project, which includes raw material storage, silos, packing machines, and additional infrastructure.
I can speak to the portion we deliver. Our complete grinding station, as supplied by CEMENGAL, ranges from USD 3 million to USD 9 million, depending on the configuration. Beyond that, customers may either procure their own silos and packing machines or have us supply them as optional add-ons. However, the core grinding station falls within the price range mentioned above.
Q: What is the global demand for customized cement plants of this kind?
A: We introduced the concept of modular grinding stations 12 years ago and secured global patents soon after. Our first unit went online 11 years ago. Since then, we have sold more than 50 units worldwide. This track record reflects an annual average of four to five units sold, although the numbers naturally vary, some years we delivered two units, while in others we reached seven or eight. Even so, the consistent average remains four to five units per year.
Q: Do you currently have any projects underway in India?
A: No, we do not have a project in India yet. That is precisely why we are here at this conference. We want to build visibility among local producers as well as emerging players. Yesterday, I presented our PLUG&GRIND® solution to introduce its capabilities to the Indian market. Our goal is to establish a presence in India in the near future. We recognize that this is a long journey, but we are committed to it. We have installations across every continent, yet India remains an untapped market, one we hope to enter soon.
