Displaying items by tag: Spain
Spain: Cementos Molins reported sales worth Euro1.08bn during the first nine months of 2023, up by 13% year-on-year from those recorded in the corresponding period of 2022. Meanwhile, the company’s earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 33%, to Euro278m. Its net profit grew by 38% to Euro124m. The producer succeeded in reducing its debt by 76% to Euro34m, compared to Euro1.42bn at the beginning of the year.
Cementos Molins chief executive officer Julio Rodríguez said "Despite the increasing challenges in the global environment, the results for the first nine months of 2023 showcase the strength of our integrated business model, which comprises products and solutions. We are also making significant progress in implementing our sustainability strategy. I extend my personal gratitude to our dedicated and committed team of more than 6200 employees, whose efforts have enabled our growth across our diverse business segments and in most geographical regions.”
Holcim to acquire Élite Cementos
26 October 2023Spain: Switzerland-based Holcim has concluded a deal to acquire Élite Cementos from Grupo Simetría and other shareholders. Élite Cementos operates a grinding plant at the Port of Castellón in Castellón de la Plana, Valencia. Holcim said that its acquisition of the business will unite the latter’s local brand recognition with its own experience and vision of sustainable growth.
The group said “With this agreement, Holcim expands its geographical presence, responding to the increasingly demanding and specialised needs of the sector. The Élite Cementos team joins the Holcim family to continue together an era of growth and transformation of the construction sector.”
Update on construction and demolition waste, October 2023
25 October 2023Cementos Molins has been celebrating the first anniversary this week of its alternative raw materials unit at its Sant Vicenç dels Horts plant near Barcelona. It has processed 75,000t of waste since September 2022 when the site started up. More is yet to come as the unit has a production capacity of up to 200,000t/yr. The facility receives waste in coarse, granular, powder and sludge formats. Waste from concrete plants is crushed and screened to produce recycled aggregate. Industrial and construction waste is dosed and homogenised to produce alternative raw materials for cement production.
Global Cement Weekly has covered construction and demolition waste (CDW) a couple of times already so far in 2023. A number of cement producers are investing in the sector - including Holcim, Heidelberg Materials, CRH, Cemex – by developing technology, buying up other companies, setting up internal CDW divisions and so on. Holcim and Heidelberg Materials have been the more obviously active participants over the past six months based on media coverage. In September 2023 Holcim France commissioned the Saint-Laurent-de-Mûre alternative raw materials plant and Holcim Group invested in Neustark, a company promoting technology to sequester CO2 in CDW. In August 2023 Lafarge Canada also completed the first stage of a pilot project to use CDW in cement production at its St. Constant plant in Quebec. Heidelberg Materials meanwhile announced in October 2023 that a forthcoming upgrade to its Górażdże cement plant in Poland would include a new CDW recycling unit and in September 2023 it launched a CDW division for its subsidiary Hanson UK.
Previously we have described how the European Union (EU) has set recovery targets for CDW. However, McKinsey & Company published research in March 2023 setting out the economic case for cement and concrete companies looking at CDW. It estimated that “an increased adoption of circular technologies could be linked to the emergence of new financial net-value pools worth up to roughly Euro110bn by 2050.” It is not a certainty and there is risk involved, but adopting circular practices is one way to reduce this risk. It then went on to predict that recirculating materials and minerals could generate nearly Euro80bn/yr in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the cement and concrete sectors by 2050. The biggest portion of this could come from using CDW in various ways such as a clinker replacement or as an aggregate in concrete production, or the use of unhydrated cement ‘fines.’ Capturing and using CO2 and increasing alternative fuels (AF) substitution rates would have a financial impact but not to the same scale.
Graph 1: CO2 abatement cost via circular technologies for cement and concrete sectors. Source: McKinsey & Company.
Graph 1 above puts all of the McKinsey circular technology suggestions in one place with the prediction that all of these methods could reduce CO2 emissions from cement and concrete production by 80% in 2050 based on an estimated demand of 4Bnt/yr. The first main point they made was that technologies using CO2, such as curing ready-mix or precast concrete, can create positive economic value at carbon prices of approximately Euro80/t of CO2. Readers should note that the EU emissions Trading Scheme CO2 price has generally been above Euro80t/yr since the start of 2022. The second point to note is that using CDW could potentially save money by offering CO2 abatement at a negative cost through avoiding landfill gate fees and reducing the amount of raw materials required. This is dependent though on government regulation on CO2 prices, landfill costs and so on.
Cement producers have been clearly aware of the potential of CDW for a while now, based on the actions described above and elsewhere, and they are jockeying for advantage. These companies are familiar with the economic rationale for AF and secondary cementitious materials (SCM) in different countries and locations. CDW usage is similar but with, in McKinsey’s view, existing CO2 prices, landfill costs, and regulatory frameworks all playing a part in the calculations. Graph 1 is a prediction but it is also another way of showing the path of least resistance to decarbonisation. It is cheaper to start with AF, SCMs and CDW rather than barrelling straight into carbon capture. The beauty here is that cement and concrete sold, say, 50 years ago is now heading back to the producers in the form of CDW and it still has value.
Spain: Cementos Molins has processed 75,000t of waste into alternative raw materials for use in its cement production since opening its Barcelona alternative raw materials plant in September 2022. The plant has a production capacity of 200,000t/yr. It produces the materials from construction and demolition waste and various industrial by-products.
Cementos Molins’ director of corporate development and sustainability, Carlos Martínez, said “Our commitment to the environment is intrinsically linked to our business model, which is based on the development of sustainable and innovative materials.” He continued “We provide a second life to industrial and construction waste that would otherwise end up in landfills, generating high-quality sustainable products from them. The plant has enabled all our cements to incorporate alternative raw materials in their production process. Furthermore, we are working to reduce the carbon footprint of all our concretes, ensuring that, in the short term, all of them include recycled aggregates in their manufacture."
Holcim España upgrades Carboneras cement plant to achieve 70% alternative fuel substitution rate
23 October 2023Spain: Holcim España invested Euro4m in an upgrade to its 1.5Mt/yr Carboneras cement plant in Almería. Alimarket-Construction News has reported that the upgrade will raise the plant’s alternative fuel (AF) substitution rate to 70% and enable it to dispose of 50,000t/yr of waste through co-processing it as AF. Holcim España expects this to reduce its CO2 emissions by 22,000t/yr.
Spain: Cementos Molins inaugurated its new Euro6.6m headquarters in Sant Vicenç dels Horts, Catalonia. The facilities include a 3250m2 solar power plant, which will supply 100% of the energy consumed in the building’s operations. The solar power plant consists of an array of 1455 photovoltaic panels. Cementos Molins says that it also used recycled materials where possible in building its new headquarters.
CEO Julio Rodríguez said “We celebrate 95 years of life and we feel proud to contribute to the development of the country and its social evolution. In our DNA is the will to collaborate with our environment.”
Storing energy at scale at cement plants
27 September 2023Taiwan Cement has just commissioned a 107MWh energy storage project at its Yingde plant in Guangdong province, China. Subsidiary NHOA Energy worked on the installation and has been promoting it this week. The battery storage works in conjunction with a 42MW waste heat recovery (WHR) unit, a 8MWp solar photovoltaic unit and a proprietary energy management system. It is expected to store about 46,000MWh/yr of electricity and save just under US$3m/yr in electricity costs.
NHOA Energy, formerly known as Engie EPS before Taiwan Cement bought a majority stake in it, claims it is one of the largest industrial microgrids in the world. We can’t verify this for sure, but it is definitely large. For comparison, the 750MW Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California often gets cited as the largest such facility in the world. This is run by a power company, as are many other large battery energy storage systems. In its annual report for 2022 Taiwan Cement said it was planning to using NHOA’s technology to build seven other large-scale energy storage projects at sites in Taiwan including its integrated Suao, Ho-Ping and Hualien cement plants.
The aim here appears to be supplying renewable electricity to the national grid in Taiwan. Taiwan Cement is diversifying away from cement production, with an aim to derive over 50% of its revenues from other activities besides cement by 2025. In 2022 cement and concrete represented 68% of its sales, while its electricity and energy division, including power supply and rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, represented 29%. The company is also not using its own batteries at the Yingde plant. Instead it is using lithium iron phosphate batteries supplied by Ningde Times. This is worth noting, as the cement producer’s batteries are used in vehicles.
Global Cement regularly reports news stories on cement plants that are building photovoltaic solar power arrays. However, so far at least, energy storage projects at scale have been rarer. One earlier example of an energy storage system loosely associated with a cement plant includes the now decommissioned Tehachapi Energy Storage Project that was situated next to the Tehachapi cement plant in California. That project tested using lithium ion batteries to improve grid performance and integrate intermittent generation from nearby wind farms. It is also worth noting that Sumitomo Osaka Cement’s sister company Sumitomo Electric is one of the world’s larger manufacturers of flow batteries, although no installation at a cement plant appears to have happened yet. In simple terms, flow batteries are an alternative to lithium ion batteries that don’t store as much energy but last longer.
More recently, Lucky Cement in Pakistan started commercial operation of a 34MW solar power plant with a 5.59MWh energy storage unit at its Pezu plant in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in late 2022. Reon Energy provided the equipment including a lithium-ion based battery approach to the storage. Then, in March 2023, Holcim US said that it was working with TotalEnergies to build solar power capacity and a battery energy storage unit at the Florence cement plant in Colorado. TotalEnergies will install, maintain and operate a 33MW DC ground-mounted solar array and a 38.5MWh battery energy storage system at the site. Operation of the renewable energy system is expected to start in 2025.
Away from electrical batteries, the other approach to energy storage at cement plants that has received attention recently from several quite different companies has been thermal batteries. The two prominent groups using them at different scales are Rondo Energy and Synhelion. The former company has developed its Heat Battery technology, which uses refractory bricks to absorb intermittent renewable energy and then supply the energy back as a steady stream of hot gas for use in a cement plant mill, dryer, calciner or kiln. Both Siam Cement Group (SCG) and Titan Cement have invested in Rondo Energy. In July 2023 SCG and Rondo Energy said that they were planning to expand the production capacity of a heat battery storage unit at a SCG plant to 90GWh/yr. Synhelion, meanwhile, has been working with Cemex on using concentrated solar power to manufacture clinker. It achieved this on an ‘industrially viable scale’ in August 2023. It has since been reported that the companies are working on building a small scale industrial plant at Móstoles near Madrid by 2026. Crucially for this discussion though, the process also uses a thermal energy storage unit filled with ceramic refractory material to allow thermal energy to be released at night, and thus ensure continuous operation.
The examples above demonstrate that some cement companies are actively testing out storing energy at scale. Whilst this will not solve the cement sector’s process emissions, it does potentially start to make using renewable energy sources more reliable and reduce the variable costs of renewable power. Whether it catches on remains to be seen. Most of these kinds of projects have been run by power companies and that is where it may stay. It is instructive to note that Reon Energy was the only company to state that its battery-based energy storage system has a life-span of 8 - 12 years. Our current vision of a net-zero future points to high electrical usage but it may be shaped by how good the batteries are… from our phones to our cars to our cement plants.
For more information on Rondo Energy read the January 2023 issue of Global Cement Magazine
Catalan cement consumption falls in August 2023
27 September 2023Spain: Cement consumption in Catalonia fell by 11% in August 2023, while production fell by 2.7%, and exports by 32.7%, according to regional cement association Ciment Català. During the 12 months, to 31 August 2023 consumption decreased by 2.9% to 2.24Mt, while production fell by 4.4% to 3.15Mt and exports fell by 3.7% to 1.74Mt. Ciment Català’s president, Salvador Fernández, attributed these declines to the poor economic situation in the autonomous region, a lack of investment and ‘the challenges of the decarbonisation process,’ according to Europa Press.
Alan Svaiter elected president of Oficemen
13 September 2023Spain: The Spanish cement association (Oficemen) has elected Alan Svaiter as its president. He will take charge of various cross-sectoral initiatives aimed at helping the local cement industry to meet present and future challenges. These include recovering its higher activity levels and advancing its net zero strategy. He succeeds Cemex’s director general of strategic planning, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia, José Manuel Cascajero, in the role.
Svaiter has held the position of chief executive officer (CEO) of Votorantim Cimentos España since January 2018. Prior to that, he worked in Brazil as Votorantim Cimentos’ supply chain director from 2014 and the CEO of its ready-mix concrete subsidiary Engemix from 2010. Earlier, he held management roles at logistics groups VarigLog and Vale.
Launch of All4Zero carbon capture and renewable fuel platform
07 September 2023Spain: A cross-industry group of companies has launched All4Zero, a platform to speed up development of renewable fuels and the CO2 capture in Spain. Representatives from steel-maker ArcelorMittal, oil producer Repsol and cement producer Holcim launched the platform on 6 September 2023 in Madrid, describing All4Zero as "a unique industrial technological innovation hub in Spain, of a private, multi-sector and non-profit nature, which will promote disruptive technologies in the field of renewable fuels, circular materials, CO2 capture and conversion or renewable hydrogen, among others.” All partners share the common objective of net zero operations by 2050.
All4Zero will focus on the scale-up of early-stage technologies developed by private companies, universities, research centres and start-ups, and will allow them to validate their technological developments in real industrial environments, thus bridging the gap between ideas and implementation. Participants will be able to participate in technical conferences and carry out concept tests in the facilities provided by the industrial partners.