31 May 2023

India: The cement industry imported 3.21Mt of petcoke during the first quarter of 2023, up by 72% year-on-year. This was due to a shortage and rising costs of domestically produced petcoke.

Oman is a major trade partner for petcoke for the Indian cement industry. The Oman Daily Observer newspaper has reported that a new oil refinery is scheduled for commissioning in Duqm before the end of 2023. ‘Several’ Indian cement companies are reportedly seeking to secure new petcoke supply deals in Oman.

Finland: Finnsementti is carrying out upgrades to its two integrated cement plants as part of its sustainability targets to 2030. The subsidiary of Ireland-based CRH is installing new main burner equipment at its Lappeenranta plant with completion scheduled for mid-2023. The project is intended to allow the plant to increase its use of alternative fuels. The company’s Parainen plant is replacing its satellite coolers with a grate cooler with completion scheduled for the spring of 2024. This work is expected to decrease the plant’s emissions by 10%. Overall the group is preparing to decrease its CO₂ emissions by 30% by 2030 compared to 2021 levels.

Sweden: Heidelberg Materials Sweden has called for swifter action to be taken by the government on a planned upgrade to the mains electricity supply to the island of Gotland. The building materials company is planning to build a full-scale carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) unit at its integrated Slite cement plant on the island by 2030. However, the newly approved plans to build two new electrical transmission cables to Gotland are currently scheduled for completion in 2031. The cement plant is expected to require annual electricity requirements of up to 1.5TWh with a power requirement of up to 250MW when the CCS unit is completed.

The cement producer has welcomed the government’s upgrade plans so far but has impressed the urgency of its timeline to build a CCS unit at the Slite plant. It says it is currently considering investing around Euro850m on the project. If completed the CCS unit is expected to capture up to 1.8Mt/yr of CO₂. The company said that this corresponds to approximately 3% of Sweden's emissions annually.

Iceland: Sementsverksmidjan says it has offset its domestic transport CO₂ emissions through an offset scheme with the government environmental agency Landgræðirin. In 2022 the subsidiary of Germany-based Heidelberg Materials offset 484t of CO₂-equivalent by restoring a birch forest and dry-land ecosystems.

Lithuania: Akmenes Cementas has benefitted from a European Union (EU) ban on cement exports from Belarus in response to the Russian-led invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The subsidiary of Germany-based Schwenk Zement reported a profit of Euro16m in 2022, according to the Baltic News Service. This is its first recorded profit since 2013. Artūras Zaremba, the head of Akmenes Cementas, added that higher cement prices, further borrowing from its parent company and fixed electricity prices also helped it make a profit.

The company’s income grew by 53% year-on-year to Euro134m in 2022 from Euro87.5m in 2021. Its cement sales volumes increased by 6% to 1.5Mt and cement production rose by 8% to 1.1Mt. Around 1.1Mt of cement was sold domestically with the remainder exported to other countries within the EU. Cement sales are expected to fall in 2023 due to changes in the local market.

Qatar: Qatar National Cement Company (QNCC) has signed a partnership agreement with SAP and Mannai ICT. The deal is intended to help the cement producer use cloud computing products such as Google Cloud to manage its data. It will also use S/4HANA, a resource planning product, and SAP Success Factors, a employee management product.

Essa Mohammed Ali A M Kaldari, QNCC’s Chief Executive Officer, said “In undertaking this end-to-end digital transformation, our aim is to modernise and streamline our systems, increase efficiencies, and enhance the services we deliver to our customers and employees.” He added, “After implementation, our operations will be more agile and scalable, enabling us to capitalise on future opportunities in the market and region.”

Alaa Jaber, the managing director for SAP Qatar and Fast Growth Markets, said, “Through this digital transformation, QNCC is aligning itself with Qatar’s 2030 National Vision and supporting its sustainability plans. It is also ensuring its future success by increasing its visibility over all operations, enabling it to react in an agile way to changes in the market and expected rise in demand for its products. Moreover, QNCC will be able to make decisions informed by real-time insights and data analytics.”

UK: Cemex UK has completed upgrades of its Dove Holes, Selby and Bletchley depots in partnership with MLP Railway Maintenance. As a result of the upgrade, the Selby depot in North Yorkshire can now receive an increased number of wagons per train, and complete turnarounds more quickly. Meanwhile, the producer relayed two reception lines at the Dove Holes depot in Derbyshire and installed new walkways, CCTV and a waterproof display screen for offloading at the Bletchley depot in Buckinghamshire.

Cemex UK’s rail and sea manager Mark Grimshaw-Smith said “It’s important that we continue to invest in our railheads across the UK. This not only ensures that the safety and wellbeing of those who work on our sites is enhanced on an ongoing basis, but it also provides further resilience in the operation, transporting more materials by train and thus taking more trucks off the road.”