Displaying items by tag: US
US: Eagle Materials has completed its acquisition of Martin Marietta's cement import and distribution business in Northern California. The business is centred on the Stockton cement terminal in San Joaquin County. Eagle Materials hopes that the new business will enable it to extend and strengthen its reach across its heartland US cement sales network.
President and chief executive officer Michael Haack said "Our Nevada Cement operations have long-standing customer relationships in Northern California, and this acquisition will uniquely position us to better serve these and new customers with complementary imported product. Our entire cement system is currently 'sold out,' and this acquisition will enable us to more actively participate in the strong US demand environment."
Update on cement and concrete standards
03 May 2023Betolar has called today for a global performance-based standard to replace existing prescriptive standards. Riku Kytömäki, the head of Betolar, argued at the London-based Concrete Expo that the lack of a performance-based standard is holding back the use of low-carbon materials from replacing cement in concrete production. He said “the current regulations across the markets are restricting the use of circular materials allowed in concrete buildings.” Betolar produces Geoprime, an additive designed for use in cement-free concrete production with ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS). This gives the company a financial reason to want standards to change, as it will potentially allow it to sell more of its product. However, as the company points out, “there is a huge need for new alternatives.” The world needs around 4Bnt/yr of cement but there is only 300Mt/yr of slag available.
Building materials producers and related companies wanting to change rules and standards in response to new trends is a common refrain. For instance, the increased use of alternative fuels by the cement sector has prompted all sorts of regulatory changes. However, rather than simply asking for amendments to the existing ways of doing things, Betolar is advocating for more wholesale change. It isn’t alone. Also this week the ASTM in the US announced that it is writing a specification to include a wider range of secondary cementitious materials (SCM). In addition, many of the interviews Global Cement Magazine has conducted with companies developing and marketing new types of cement and concrete in recent years have said similar things. Examples include the use of graphene, carbon nanotubes or sequestering CO2 into industrial by-products to create novel secondary cementitious materials (SCM).
Prescriptive versus performance-based approaches to buildings and building materials tie into wider design philosophies about construction. The prescriptive approach provides detailed descriptions of regulations, methods and components, such as cement and concrete standards. With respect to concrete standards, this might mean setting mandatory SCM and cement proportions, determining allowable water content, certain types of aggregate to be used and so on. The performance approach focuses on the end results, although it can be just as codified and standardised as the prescriptive route. For concrete, for example, this means that performance is measured by standard test methods with defined acceptance criteria stated in the contract documents with no restrictions on the parameters of concrete mixture proportions.
For cement and concrete standards the prescriptive approach dominated in Europe and North America in the 20th century. However, this began to change in the US in 2002 when the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMCA) started working on its roadmap towards its Prescription to Performance (P2P) initiative. The key aim of the scheme was to shift the emphasis from prescribing (or indeed proscribing) the ingredients and their proportions in a concrete mixture to an emphasis on the performance properties of the combined materials. A decade later in the mid-2010s it found during a progress review that about half of the sample of project specifications studied were classified as ‘prescriptive.’ The biggest prescriptive restriction was on the quantity of SCMs set by specification writers. These were often percentages required in certain circumstances, such as freezing and thawing cycles, but imposed on all usage.
The current bout of interest in performance-based standards appears to be driven by the growing demand for cement and concrete products to lower their clinker factor by using higher amounts of SCMs. A far wider range of SCM-based products are being developed and coming to market and then encountering regulatory burden. These new material manufacturers are meeting up with the sustainability lobby, which also has an interest in decarbonising building materials. In 2022, for example, the Belgium-based Environmental Coalition on Standards (ECOS) started pushing for performance-based standards for cement. In a statement it said that, “it is commonly accepted that prescriptive specifications are convenient, but that this convenience is obtained at the expense of (eco-) innovation and decarbonisation.” It added that the switch to performance-based standards would also strengthen the European internal market for construction products as part of the Construction Products Regulation (CPR). It noted the ASTM standards for hydraulic cements (ASTM C-1157), that were developed in the 1990s in the US, and more recent developments in the field in Latin America.
It is worth pointing out that the prescriptive route does have its advantages. Using a prescriptive system is easier for less-experienced practitioners or generalists as it sets a minimum standard, even if it is over-engineered. Responsibility is shared out among the supply chain under a performance-based system for the quality of concrete. Under a prescriptive system, the supplier or contractor can be held responsible for quality control issues. For the performance approach this has to be specifically defined, although systems are in place to help. Making it harder via ‘red tape’ for new products to enter a market may stifle innovation but it also gives these new products far more time to be tested rigorously.
The whole prescriptive-performance standards issue opens up the wider implications of decarbonising construction materials. Where once there was a relatively small number of different types of cement and concrete now there are potentially hundreds, each looking for market share. Whether this situation will be the same in a decade’s time remains to be seen. A few common SCM-based cement and concrete products and formulations may predominate. For now, the future seems wide open and bigger changes, such as the global performance-based standards Betolar is advocating, may be required to support this. Considering the massive variation between countries and states, even within the US and the European Union, let alone the rest of the world, this seems ambitious. But it is not impossible!
Hollingshead Cement opens terminal in Tennessee
03 May 2023US: Hollingshead Cement, the cement division of SRM Concrete, has opened a new terminal in Nashville, Tennessee. The dome-style terminal is capable of storing over 45,000t of cement. It is situated on the Cumberland River to allow for transport by river barge.
Jeff Hollingshead, the chief executive officer of SRM Concrete, said “We are thrilled to announce the opening of this new state-of-the-art terminal here in Nashville, and we are looking forward to servicing our own cement needs and those of our customers. Over the course of the last few years, cement supplies have been disrupted many times. Our new terminal will allow us to ensure constant cement supply to our Middle Tennessee concrete plants.”
Hollingshead Cement currently provides bulk cement distribution services in Nashville, Savannah, Jacksonville, and Southwest Ohio.
US: ASTM International’s concrete and concrete aggregates committee (C09) is developing a proposed standard specification for a broad range of supplementary cementitious materials (SCM). Larry Sutter, an ASTM International member and the principal engineer at Sutter Engineering, commented that this performance specification (WK70466) will ease the adoption of new materials used for SCMs as established sources become less available.
Sutter said “For a variety of reasons, historic sources of SCMs, like coal fly ash from electric power generation, are in short supply and new materials are emerging.” He added, “These new materials do not fall under existing specifications, leading to the need for new specifications. Rather than writing a new specification for every emerging material, we are writing a performance specification that can be used to cover the full range of them.”
Sutter noted that concrete made with SCMs can be less costly, more durable and more sustainable than ordinary Portland cement. New specifications will allow these new materials into more construction projects. This effort relates to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #7 on clean and affordable energy.
US: Heidelberg Materials says that the first clinker has been produced on the new production line at its integrated Mitchell cement plant in Indiana. Construction work on the project started in 2019 and the majority of the work is now completed. The US$600m upgrade is expected to increase the production capacity at the unit to over 2.4Mt/yr. It will also create 50 new full-time jobs at the site, bringing the total to 170.
Chris Ward, president and chief executive officer of Heidelberg Materials North America, said “We are extremely pleased to have the new Mitchell kiln online and producing clinker.” He added “With the capabilities of the new facility, we will be able to supply our customers more efficiently, consistently and sustainably than ever before.”
CalPortland abandons attempt to buy Tehachapi cement plant from Martin Marietta Materials
28 April 2023US: Taiheiyo Cement says that its subsidiary CalPortland has terminated its deal to buy the Tehachapi cement plant from Martin Marietta Materials. It has blamed the situation on the two parties being unable to “timely obtain the necessary approval by the US Federal Trade Commission.” The deal was originally announced in August 2022 with CalPortland agreeing to buy the integrated plant in California and two terminals.
CRH now ‘de facto’ American company
28 April 2023Ireland/US: Albert Manifold, the chief executive officer of CRH, has described the company as a ‘de facto’ American company at it its annual general meeting. "This is a golden age of construction in the US," said Manifold, according to the Irish Times newspaper. He added that moving the group's main stock market listing to the US made it "more of an American company, which de facto we actually are". He also noted comments by US president Joe Biden in February 2023 that the country was planning “to buy American” as part of its infrastructure spending. North America accounted for 75% of the group’s earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in 2022 compared to around a half in the early 2010s.
CRH said in March 2023 that it was preparing to move its primary listing of shares to a US-based stock exchange.
Update on fly ash in the US, April 2023
26 April 2023Heidelberg Materials announced a US acquisition at the same time as the ongoing IEEE/IAS-PCA Cement Conference in Dallas, Texas this week. It has entered into a purchase agreement to acquire The SEFA Group, a fly ash recycling company based in Lexington, South Carolina. Its operations include five beneficiation plants, five utility partners, 20 locations and over 500 employees. It supplies fly ash to over 800 ready-mixed concrete plants in 13 states. It processes around 1Mt/yr of ash from storage ponds using its proprietary thermal beneficiation process. No value for the acquisition was disclosed.
The proposition for a heavy building materials manufacturer of securing a supply of fly ash is an attractive one. Fly ash can improve the performance of concrete, reduce its cost by lowering the amount of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) required and decrease the associated carbon footprint. It can also be use to make blended cement products. Heidelberg Materials and its US-subsidiary Lehigh Hanson could have various options here including using this new supply of fly ash internally, selling it on to other companies or licensing the beneficiation technology. Heidelberg Materials’ global sustainability report in 2021 reported that just under 9% of its cement-type portfolio comprised pozzolana or fly ash cements.
Graph 1: Coal combustion product production and use, 1991 – 2021. Source: ACAA.
Data from the American Coal Ash Association (ACAA) shows in Graph 1 that coal combustion products (CCP) production have declined in the last decade as the proportion used has steadily risen. In its annual production and use survey, the ACAA revealed that the use of harvested ash continued to grow in 2021 and that it constituted around 10% of the volume of ash recycled from current power plant operation. Thomas H Adams, the executive director of the ACAA, said “The rapidly increasing utilisation of harvested CCP shows that beneficial use markets are adapting to the decline in coal-fuelled electricity generation in the US. New logistics and technology strategies are being deployed to ensure these valuable resources remain available for safe and productive use.” Separately, the ACAA reported that coal-fuelled power stations represented about 50% of the country’s electricity demand in the mid-2010s compared to 20 – 25% in 2021 despite base-load remaining the same. It forecast that fly ash production was likely to remain fairly constant to around 2040 but that harvesting would help to cut the gap between supply and demand in some regional markets. It said that over 2Bnt of coal ash was in disposal. However, no indication of how recoverable this was given although it did note the higher cost of beneficiation. Work on updating specifications was ongoing to suit current circumstances.
As with the slag market, this presents a dilemma for cement and concrete producers that want to become more sustainable. They want to use more by-products from other carbon-intensive heavy industries – such as coal-fired power stations and steel plants – but these industries themselves are also trying to become more sustainable and are producing less secondary cementitious materials. Heidelberg Materials’ interest in a fly ash beneficiation company makes sense because it secures a bigger portion of a dwindling resource from the direct operations and opens up the possibility of selling the beneficiation technology to others. It is also worth mentioning that other fly ash thermal beneficiation processes are available. For example, Charah Solutions installed its MP618 technology at its Sulphur terminal in Louisiana in early 2019.
The general fly ash market in the US looks set to track the level of coal-fired power generation for the foreseeable future. Yet the proportion of CCPs being used continues to rise. In this context focusing on harvesting may be starting to make more financial sense. Charah Solutions’s new unit in 2019 and SEFA Group’s new units in 2020 and 2021 seem to support this view. Heidelberg Materials’ acquisition of SEFA Group may be further confirmation of this.
Double-digit growth for GCC in first quarter of 2023
26 April 2023Mexico: The construction materials producer GCC reported double-digit growth in its first quarter results, driven by higher prices for its products in Mexico and the US. Its operating earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the first three months of 2023 rose by 16% year-on-year compared to the same period in 2022 to reach US$63m, while revenues rose by 18% to US$243.9m.
"GCC delivered solid results in the first quarter," said Enrique Escalante, GCC’s chief executive officer. "High demand continues and we are leveraging all of GCC's resources to ensure we deliver the highest profits and strengthen our margins."
The growth in revenue was driven by higher ready-mixed concrete (RMC) sales volumes in the US, which were 27% higher than in 2022, and 11% higher cement and RMC volumes in Mexico. GCC also noted an increase in cement and RMC prices of 21% and 6%, respectively, in the US, while in Mexico the increases were 13% for cement and 11% for ready-mix.
US: Holcim US has joined the Department of Energy's (DOE) 'Better Climate Challenge' to reduce CO2 emissions and save energy. It is the first cement producer to commit to the DOE program. The subsidiary of Switzerland-based Holcim plans to power the electrical operations at 13 cement plants in the country with 100% renewable energy by 2030 and to reach net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. As part of the 'Better Climate Challenge' it has committed to reduce CO2 emissions in the US by at least 25% by 2033.
Examples of current renewable power usage at Holcim US cement plants include the installation of three onsite wind turbines at the Paulding plant in Ohio that generate 11,500MWh while a forthcoming solar unit at the Hagerstown plant in Maryland will generate up to 18,440MWh. All 13 Holcim cement plants will conduct reviews to identify projects that could contribute to meeting goals of the challenge.
With grant support from the DOE, Holcim is also investigating the feasibility of using carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) at its cement plants in Portland, Colorado, and Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. In addition to involvement in the Better Climate Challenge, Holcim US is a continuing partner of the DOE's 'Better Plants Challenge', sharing facility-level energy data and solutions to help guide other industrial companies with implementing energy solutions in their facilities.