Displaying items by tag: UK
GCCA launches second Innovandi Open Challenge
15 March 2023UK: The Global Cement & Concrete Association (GCCA) held an online launch for its second Innovandi Open Challenge on 14 March 2023. The global challenge matches start-up companies with some of the world’s leading cement and concrete manufacturers, which operate in almost every country across the world, to work on initiatives to cut emissions and pioneer environmental change across the industry. The launch follows the success of the first ever Innovandi Open Challenge in 2022, which saw cement companies partnering with six start-ups, with a strong focus on carbon capture and utilisation projects.
This time around, applicants are being asked to work on the development of new materials and ingredients for low carbon concrete – a major step towards the goal of net zero concrete. Alternative materials, including construction and demolition waste, can result in far lower CO2 emissions than traditional concrete, as well as reduce the need to use virgin raw materials. The applications phase will last until mid-May 2023.
Thomas Guillot, CEO of the GCCA, said “We’re calling on the best and the brightest from around the world to join us in the urgent fight to limit global warming and help towards delivering the great prize of net zero concrete. If you are a start-up from Austria to Australia, from Brazil to Bangladesh, with an innovative idea or technology, then we want to hear from you.”
Those companies that are accepted for this year’s Innovandi Open Challenge will gain unique access to industry plants, laboratories, key networks and the expertise and infrastructure of the GCCA’s 40 members from around the world. They will also receive guidance from the GCCA and its members to help them with the development of new technology and business cases.
Claude Loréa, GCCA cement director and innovation lead, said “We’ve already seen some remarkable progress from those start-ups who’ve been working with our members on the first Innovandi Open Challenge, with several projects already in the pilot stage. This year’s theme, low carbon concrete, is equally challenging. To succeed, we need products which are affordable, scalable and easily adopted. Good luck to all this year’s applicants. We look forward to working with those selected.”
Breedon Group increases sales and earnings
09 March 2023UK: Breedon Group's sales were Euro1.57bn in 2022, up by 13% year-on-year from Euro1.39bn in 2021. Its earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) rose by 16% to Euro166m from Euro143m. The group increased its cement volumes by 9.1% during the year, to 2.4Mt from 2.2Mt.
Breedon Group said "The outlook for the cement market is positive, underpinned by large ongoing infrastructure projects in the UK. In Ireland, housing and infrastructure are supported by the government’s development plans to accommodate a rapidly growing population."
UK: Langley Holdings, owner of Claudius Peters, recorded consolidated sales of Euro1.17bn during 2022, up by 40% year-on-year from Euro815m in 2021. The group ended the year with an order backlog worth Euro900m. Its Other Industrials division, which includes Germany-based Claudius Peters, recorded sales of Euro277m, up by 11% from Euro250m. Langley Holdings said that, due to the length of its lead times, Claudius Peters’ profitability was especially impacted by costs rises in its delivery on existing contracts in 2022.
Chair Anthony Langley said “Hopefully management will make progress with tangible improvements to the plant machinery business: restructuring is not the preferred option, but, either way, I do expect a better result this year.”
Cemex's European CO2 emissions decline by 41% between 1990 and 2022
24 February 2023Europe: Cemex’s annual CO2 emissions from its European operations fell by 41% in 2022 compared to 1990. It added that it had cut its emissions in the region by 12% between 2020 and 2022. The group attributed the decline to the success of its climate action strategy to date, including a large investment in a new alternative fuels facility in the UK, investments in solar power plants in Germany and Poland and the roll-out of its Vertua reduced-CO2 products across the region.
Regional president Sergio Menendez said "As we begin to implement the next stages in our climate action strategy, we now expect to exceed our 2030 aspiration of hitting a 55% CO2 reduction in our European operations. While we are progressing important carbon capture projects and policy advocacy for our ultimate net zero target, these 2030 interim aspirations are not reliant on this technology.” he continued, “This is certainly a challenging target, but I am confident that with innovative thinking, close collaboration between our different business areas and further development of our regulatory framework, it is both feasible and profitable. This sustained effort is vital if we are to meet our global, primary objective of becoming a net-zero CO2 company by 2050. We will continue to provide regular updates on our progress.”
Former Cemex UK Technical Director Neville Roberts dies
15 February 2023UK: Neville Roberts, a former Technical Director of Cemex UK, has died on 10 February 2023, at the age of 66. He was a notable figure in the alternative fuels sector for the cement industry.
Neville attended Holyhead County School 1969 - 1975, taking Maths, Physics and Chemistry 'A' Levels, as well as representing the school in rugby, football and athletics. Roberts trained as a chemical engineer at Loughborough University and had worked in the cement industry for over 35 years. During his career he started as a process engineer, became a plant manager at a number of cement plants around the world including Chelm, Poland, and was appointed to five director roles for three cement companies. The companies he worked for included Rugby Cement, Castle Cement, RMC, Cemex and Saudi Cement Company. His later roles for Cemex included UK Technical Director (2004 - 12) and Energy Business Development Director (2012 - 13). He worked in the UK, Poland and Saudi Arabia. After leaving Cemex, Roberts set up his own consultancy and later became the managing director for the UK of Netherlands-based N+P Alternative Fuels.
He was a passionate supporter of all things Welsh, especially rugby, and was awarded the Global CemFuels ‘Personality of the Year’ award in 2013. Neville was husband to Patricia, father to Katie and Holly and grandad to Martha, Edie and Albee. He was known to his grandkids as 'Wowo.' Neville Roberts was great company, mentored and influenced many colleagues around the world and will be sorely missed.
Holcim 3D-prints largest affordable housing complex to date
15 February 2023Kenya: Holcim has announced the successful completion of the largest 3D-printed affordable housing to date through 14Trees, its joint venture with British International Investment, the UK’s Development Finance Institution (DFI) and impact investor. The 3D printing of the 10 housing units in Kenya’s Mvule Gardens project was made possible with TectorPrint, Holcim’s 3D printing ink product, produced in Kenya for the first time. The project’s advanced sustainability profile has attained an EDGE Advanced sustainable design certification by IFC, the World Bank's development finance institution, which recognises resource-efficient buildings with the potential to be zero-carbon. It is the first time a 3D-printed housing project has attained this certification.
François Perrot, managing director of 14Trees, said “With 3D printing, you can solve two problems at once. You can build faster and with better cost efficiency, which will help make affordable housing a reality for the majority. In addition, you can build with less materials, which preserves the resources of the planet for future generations.”
Miljan Gutovic, Region Head for Europe at Holcim, added “I am very proud of the work done by 14Trees in Africa, where their innovations in 3D printing technology are accelerating affordable and sustainable building. I look forward to 14Trees replicating these successes in Europe and other parts of Africa in the very near future.”
Carbon Re and A³&Co sign strategic partnership agreement
13 February 2023UK: Carbon Re and A³&Co have signed a strategic partnership agreement to sell cement producers products to optimise production processes to reduce operational costs and carbon emissions. Carbon Re says that its Delta Zero industrial decarbonisation software product can cut fuel use by up to 10% and CO2 emissions by up to 20% and has been piloted in cement plants in three continents. The product uses a machine learning approach to model a cement plant’s production environment and optimise processes for low CO2 output and fuel use with no capital expenditure. A³&Co is a strategic and technical consulting company that is focused on the cement sector.
Sherif Elsayed-Ali, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Carbon Re, said "Our technology is already having a huge impact on some of the world's most energy-intensive industries. This strategic partnership with A³&Co will enable even more cement producers to benefit from the operational savings offered by AI as they tackle the challenge of cutting carbon emissions and rising fuel prices."
Update on recycled concrete paste, February 2023
08 February 2023Cement 2 Zero (C2Z) has officially launched in the UK this week. The project is an industrial scale pilot of the Cambridge Electric Cement (CEC) process. The Materials Processing Institute will lead on this stage with two-year funding of around Euro7m provided by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Partners include the University of Cambridge, Atkins, Balfour Beatty, Brewster Brothers, Celsa Group, Day Aggregates and Tarmac.
CEC’s method uses recycled concrete paste in place of lime-flux in steel recycling. Slag is formed as the steel melts and this is then used in place of clinker to make more cement. This way of making cement cuts out the decarbonisation of limestone step from conventional clinker production. If renewably-sourced electricity is used to power the heating and grinding parts of manufacture, then cement production in this way could potentially cut out most of its CO2 emissions. The first phase of trial melts by C2Z will be conducted by the Materials Processing Institute using a 250kg induction furnace and this will be scaled up to 6t in an electric arc furnace (EAF). Later, industrial scale melts will be tested in Celsa Steel's EAF in Cardiff, Wales.
CEC is taking a similar approach to HeidelbergCement with its research into using recycled concrete paste. However, HeidelbergCement says it is using the paste to help capture CO2 in an enforced carbonation step it is testing at cement plants. It too though wants to create a secondary cementitious material (SCM) afterwards. There are also links here to construction and demolition waste and electric cement kilns as covered by Global Cement Weekly previously. The latter is different with regards to what CEC is doing because it is recycling concrete waste to produce an SCM (slag) rather than using an electrically powered kiln to make clinker from limestone. Coolbrook, VTT and the like have had to build electric kilns effectively from scratch or adapt technology from elsewhere for their approaches whilst CEC appears to be about to use existing EAFs in its industrial scale pilot.
Figure 1: Projection of how the Cambridge Electric Cement production process could be used at scale in the UK. Source: UK FIRES. Click to view larger version.
CEC’s forecast of how its process could be used at scale in the UK can be seen above in Figure 1. If the majority of the country’s steel scrap was recycled in this fashion each year then 2.4Mt/yr of CEC cement could be produced. This would represent a quarter of the c10Mt of cement sales reported by the MPA in 2021. Assuming the EAFs were powered by renewables then this could reduce the cement sector’s CO2 emissions significantly. Although it would still leave the industry looking for other decarbonisation routes for the other three-quarters of cement demand.
C2Z and CEC offer a novel spin on cement production by recycling concrete waste, using an electrical heating step and dodging the process emissions associated with normal ordinary Portland cement (OPC) clinker production. If it did progress to a commercial stage then it would see a continued relationship between steel and cement producers. Currently this is mainly centered around iron and steel slag usage as a SCM. One point of interest here would be how much higher levels of steel recycling and a process like CEC being used regularly would affect existing slag usage as an SCM. It doesn’t look like CEC could solve the cement sector’s CO2 emission problem all on its own but it could certainly make a difference if it progressed to a commercial stage. As ever with cement sector decarbonisation there appear to be a range of options available to producers.
Cambridge Electric Cement commences recycled cement production
08 February 2023UK: Cambridge Electric Cement (CEC) has launched the two-year trial of its Cement 2 Zero project, aimed at scaling up production of its net zero-CO2, demolition waste-based alternative cement. It aims to produce 20t of the material for use in a low-impact construction project. CEC’s method, developed at the University of Cambridge, is based on the conversion of demolition waste into a slag-forming material within a steel furnace.
Developer Julian Allwood said “By combining steel and cement recycling in a single process powered by renewable electricity, we could supplement the global supply of the basic construction materials to support the infrastructure of a zero emissions world and to enable economic development where it is most needed.”
World Cement Association appoints three new directors
01 February 2023UK: The World Cement Association (WCA) has appointed three new directors: Fabien Charbonnel, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Cem’In’Eu; Xu Gang, the chair of the board of Maweni Limestone and Vice President and Head of Overseas Area of its parent company Huaxin Cement; and Kevin Lunney, the chief operations officer of Mannok Holdings. The appointments were agreed at the WCA General Assembly Meeting, which took place in January 2023.
At the same time Mohammed Ali Al-Garni, the CEO of Saudi Cement, and Roland van Wijnen, the CEO of PPC, were re-elected to the board of directors. Vincent Lefebvre, the founder and executive chair of Cem’In’Eu, and Mahendra Singhi, the managing director and CEO of Dalmia Cement, have also resigned as directors. They joined the board of directors of the WCA in 2019 and 2020 respectively.