Displaying items by tag: HeidelbergCement
World Business Council for Sustainable Development launches Indian Cement Sector SDG Roadmap
26 June 2019India: Cement producers and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) have launched the Indian Cement Sector SDG Roadmap. The planning framework uses the United Nation’s (UN) sustainable development goals (SDG) to set a series of goals in energy and climate, people and communities, the circular economy and natural resource management. It is intended to contribute to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
This initiative has been convened by nine cement companies: ACC, Ambuja Cement, CRH, Dalmia Cement (Bharat), Heidelberg Cement, Shree Cement, Orient Cement, UltraTech Cement, Votorantim Cimentos. It is also partially funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
Notable goals from the roadmap include promoting railway and waterway transport networks, improving transport safety, increasing the use of blended cements and encouraging the use of alternative fuels. The framework also plans to increase the number of women in the indsutry workforce at every level from entry to board.
Burkina Faso: Harouna Kaboré, the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Handicraft, has inaugurated a new mill at Cimburkina’s cement grinding plant at Kossodo in Ouagadougou. By installing the new mill the unit has doubled it production capacity to 2Mt/yr, according to the Sidwaya newspaper. The upgrade cost US$25m.
François Sangline, the director general of the subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement, said that the 2000t limestone silo feeds the production line consisting of two 150t/hr cement grinding mills. This is followed by a 120t/hr bagging unit. Sangline noted that the country’s cement consumption of 2.5Mt/yr is below the domestic cement production capacity of 6Mt/yr. Due to this he lobbied the government to protect local production against imports and fraud.
Update on Egypt
19 June 2019Tourah Cement in Egypt took the tough decision last week to temporarily stop production. It blamed this on an acute financial crisis rendering it unable to pay its running costs. The subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement was reported in the Global Cement Directory 2019 as already being partly closed. This latest news is regrettable but not surprising.
Graph 1: Cement consumption and production in Egypt. Sources: Industrial Development Agency, Global Cement Directory 2019, Cement division of the Building Materials Chamber of the Federation of Egyptian Industries.
As Graph 1 shows that the backdrop here is of a local cement sector rife with overcapacity. Capacity utilisation rates have hovered around 70% in recent years. The sector breaks down into about a quarter of production capacity under state control and the remainder owned by private companies. Overall, about half of the production capacity is run by multinational companies like Greece’s Titan, France’s Vicat and Germany’s HeidelbergCement.
The country hosts some of the largest cement plants in the world as well as several very big plants by European or North American standards anyway. The whopping 13Mt/yr government/army-run El-Arish Cement plant at Beni Suef opened fully in 2018. It seemed likely that there were going to be losers in the industry following that kind of disruption from a state-owned player. Indeed, Medhat Istvanos, head of the cement division of the Building Materials Chamber of the Federation of Egyptian Industries, explicitly blamed the El-Arish Cement plant for making the situation worse in September 2018. He said that the decision to build the plant was ‘not based on precise information’ and that it had harmed local production.
In the wider picture, the cement sector started to move away from subsidised natural gas and heavy fuel oil to coal instead in the mid-2010s. Tourah Cement mentioned this in its statement about halting production. The government has supported the cement industry through large-scale infrastructure projects and a state-sponsored compensation system under the Contractors Compensation Act that offset the loss prompted by the Egyptian pound’s floatation in 2017.
However, overcapacity has consistently been a problem and this was clear when the El-Arish Cement plant was approved. Exports of cement crept up to 1Mt/yr in 2017 from 0.1Mt/yr in 2015. Yet, as the Low-Carbon Roadmap for the Egyptian Cement Industry pointed out, Egyptian FOB exports of cement cost US$20/t higher than regional competitors such as Turkey. At this kind of disadvantage Egypt lacks the traditional escape route for an overproducing cement sector.
In these kinds of conditions, consolidation appears to be crucial while organic or government-backed demand plays catch-up with the production base. Certainly Egypt has the population and the development potential as its economy grows in the medium to long term. The government stabilising the economy after recent troubles is crucial for the construction industry. In the meantime all is not lost as the focus is on efficiency gains and cost cutting. The growth of alternative fuels as the sector’s fuel mix continues to adjust to the new normal following the abolition of subsidies on natural gas is one example of this.
Tourah Cement stops production due to oversupply
18 June 2019Egypt: Tourah Cement says it has stopped production due to a financial crisis caused by oversupply in the local market. Jose Maria Magrina, the managing director of Tourah Cement, told employees in mid-June 2019 that production would be stopped temporarily as it couldn’t cover its costs, according to Mist News. Estimated national cement consumption is 50Mt/yr but total production capcaity is 85Mt/yr.
In a statement the subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement said that new plants had forced producers to lower prices below the cost of production. It has also blamed higher fuel prices due to a cut in government subsidies.
Christoph Beumelburg appointed Head of Group Communication & Investor Relations at HeidelbergCement
12 June 2019Germany: HeidelbergCement has appointed Christoph Beumelburg as Director Group Communication & Investor Relations. He succeeds Andreas Schaller, who has left the organisation.
Beumelburg started his career at BASF in 1995. He has since held different management positions both domestically and abroad, including Director Investor Relations USA. In 2010 he moved to the automotive and industrial supplier Schaeffler, where he held the position of Senior Vice President Communications, Marketing and Investor Relations. He holds an Industrial Engineering degree from the University of Kaiserslautern.
France: The government is preparing to approve an extension to the quarry at Ciments Calcia’s Gargenville plant. The extension will cover an area of 74 hectares near the communes of Guitrancourt and Brueil-en-Vexin, according to the Le Parisien newspaper. Local environmental activists are preparing to contest the decision.
Cement plays the waiting game
29 May 2019There were two main takeaways from the Global Future Cement Conference that took place in Brussels last week. Firstly, there are not any obvious alternatives to using cement and concrete. Secondly, serious at-scale commercial investment on capturing CO2 process emissions from clinker production is still waiting for the right economic conditions.
Graph 1: Embodied energy versus embodied CO2 of building materials. Source: Hammond & Jones, University of Bath, UK.
Although the conference was heavily focused on Europe, the graph above explains why the cement and concrete industries are sitting pretty right now in the face of mounting environmental activism. The sector may be responsible for 5 - 10% of annual CO2 emissions but, put bluntly, there is simply no alternative. As Karen Scrivner from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) explained during her presentation, concrete uses some of the most abundant minerals present on earth, notably silicon and calcium. Alternative chemistries are simply not backed up by available materials. The cement and concrete associations have strongly promoted the unique position by focusing on the whole lifecycle of building materials.
The energy and emissions research needs to be scrutinised much more closely but, if it’s correct, there is no way to maintain modern standards of living without concrete. And, judging from the response by the French public to a badly handled meagre carbon tax on diesel by the so-called Yellow Vest movement, whacking up the price of housing or infrastructure might go down badly, especially in developing countries.
Two immediate ‘outs’ presents themselves. Cement doesn't necessarily have to be made from clinker as Robert McCaffrey’s presentation reinforced (also given at the IEEE/IAS-PCA Cement Conference this year). Future research may find alternatives to clinker and wipe out the cement business in the process. Also, the graph above is based on per kilogramme amounts of each building material. It doesn’t indicate how much of each material is required to build things. Even if clinker-based building materials are irreplaceable, there is no reason why their market share might not decrease. This could have large consequences in a market already burdened by over-capacity.
Graph 2: Comparison of cost of carbon capture technology for the cement industry. Source: European Cement Research Academy (ECRA).
Solid research into carbon capture technology is proceeding apace, from the LEILAC project at HeidelbergCement’s Lixhe plant, to oxyfuel kiln development and other methods, as Jan Theulen from HeidelbergCement demonstrated in his presentation. Off-the-shelf technologies from other industries also exist ready to be used. Today, for example, Inventys has announced plans to test its own CO2 capture technology with Lafarge Canada. Yet there are no commercial-scale installations in Europe. most likely due to the price burden it would place on the end product.
With the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) entering its fourth phase and the carbon price holding above Euro20/t the question is: when will the serious investment begin in Europe? Notably, more than a few major European cement equipment manufacturers attended the Global Future Cement Conference, yet none are offering mature products to capture CO2 emissions. Most or all have projects up their sleeves ready to be developed and sold but orders aren’t being received. The carbon price in Europe is the problem here. If it's too low then nothing happens outside of government subsidy. Too high and cement plants start being shut down because they become too expensive to run. To be fair to the cement sector other carbon emission mitigation strategies are being employed from alternative fuels usage to lowering the clinker factor and other methods but the endgame is based on reducing process emissions.
The challenge for the cement and concrete industry is to show legislators that their materials are essential and irreplaceable. They are doing this. The legislators then need to concoct ways of encouraging mass scale rollout of carbon emissions abatement technology without destroying the cement industry. This is far from certain right now. If nothing else it’s in governments’ interest to get this right because, as the Yellow Vest protests show, if they get it wrong their voters become angry. All of this is happening against the clock as CCU/S is required to get the cement industry past the 2050 2°C maximum warming target set by the Paris Agreement. In the meantime the cement industry is essentially in a holding position on the more far-reaching aspects of CO2 emissions mitigation. Its products are likely irreplaceable but its carbon capture technology has to be encouraged by governments. This means that, for most cement producers, waiting to see what happens next is the way forward.
The 3rd Future Cement Conference and Exhibition is scheduled to take place in Vienna, Austria in 2021
Sweden: Cementa has started using a gas-powered truck for bulk cement deliveries. The Volvo FH460 LNG will use the Skövde cement plant as its main base and delvier cement to customers in the west of the country. Typically gas-powered vehicles in Sweden use a mixture of 50% biogas and 50% natural gas, although this may change is greater amounts of biogas become available. The truck is owned and operated by Tommy Bremans Åkeri in Skövde, a supplier to XR Logistik.
Cement industry takes emissions seriously
22 May 2019Today is the first day of the Global FutureCem Conference taking place in Brussels, Belgium. The event is looking at how the cement industry can adapt to a low or zero carbon world. Although Global Cement is organising the event, it is clearly topical as two news stories this week demonstrate.
Firstly, the chief executive officers (CEO) from 13 US companies, including LarfargeHolcim, announced that they were lobbying the US government to enact business-led climate change legislation. The initiative, known as the CEO Climate Dialogue, included principles such as ‘significantly’ reducing US greenhouse gas emissions. This is shocking because, at face value, large-scale CO2 emitters like LafargeHolcim have the most to lose from more rigorous environmental regulations. What do they have to gain from doing this? This is like turkeys voting for Christmas!
Interpretations of why LafargeHolcim and others might want to do this could go in a few directions. Firstly, the intention might be fully plausible. These companies could genuinely want to combat climate change. Secondly, more cynically perhaps, leading demands for legislation puts the lobbyists in the room when change is actually made. Given the integral nature of concrete in modern construction this is not necessarily a bad thing. Environmentalists may want to ban building materials that create CO2 emissions but, until they can offer an alternative or convince people to accept reduced quality of life, then cement is the material of choice. Thirdly, leading change allows one to stay ahead of it or at least give the sector more time to react to it. The ‘turkeys’ may not want to vote for ‘Christmas,’ but perhaps ‘Christmas’ could be replaced with something else?
This latest initiative by the CEOs in the US has parallels with the creation of the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) in 2018. Like the current moves in the US, cement producers led the creation of the GCCA, to promote concrete as the sustainable building material of choice.
Meanwhile, Germany’s HeidelbergCement also announced this week that its CO2 reduction targets to 2030 have been assessed against the Science Based Targets initiative’s (SBTi) criteria. Its SBTi target is to reduce scope 1 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 15% per ton of cementitious material by 2030 from a 2016 base year. HeidelbergCement has also committed to reduce scope 2 GHG emissions by 65% per ton of cementitious materials within the same timeframe. The SBTi target follows HeidelbergCement’s previous goal of a 30% reduction in its specific net CO2 emissions by 2030 compared with 1990. It says it has achieved a reduction of 20% so far.
HeidelbergCement is a sustainability leader in the sector with various projects on the go including the Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) consortium direct separation pilot project at the Lixhe cement plant in Belgium. Following SBTi is a continuation of this trend, albeit one that anchors it with a global consensus.
Coincidence perhaps but when the two largest non-Chinese cement producers start announcing sustainability stories like then the picture is changing. The questions at this point is how far will it go.
A full review of the 3rd Global FutureCem Conference will be published after the event. To find it and more information visit: http://www.globalcement.com/conferences/global-future-cement/introduction
Egypt/Qatar/Russia/Turkey: Dal Engineering Group has released information about recent project from its Dal Teknik Makina subsidiary in Russia, Egypt and Qatar. In Russia Dal Teknik Makina is currently converting a production line at Eurocement’s Zhigulovskiye Stroymaterialy plant in Samara to manufacture white cement. The project started in November 2018.
In Egypt Dal Teknik Makina conducted a technical audit for HeidelbergCement’s Helwan Cement plant in February 2019. It was carried out on clinker production line one. In Qatar Dal Teknik Makina was awarded a contract in February 2019 to install a pilot scale plant for a calcium sulfoaluminate clinker production line. Dal’s engineers will evaluate the concept and identify the possible problems with operation, and supply the complete engineering and instrumentation for the whole project.