Displaying items by tag: Calcined Clay

Italy: Cementir’s revenue grew by 11% year-on-year to Euro1.36bn in 2021 from Euro1.22bn in 2020. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 17.9% to Euro311m from Euro264m. Sales volumes of cement and concrete increased by 4.1% to 11.2Mt and 14.8% to 5.01Mm3 respectively.

“2021 marked for Cementir the year of the historic record of revenues and EBITDA despite the uncertainties related to the pandemic crisis, the substantial increase in energy costs, materials and services and the devaluation of the Turkish lira,” said Francesco Caltagirone Jr, chair and chief executive officer of Cementir.

The group also reviewed and approved the three-year Group Industrial Plan update for the period 2022 - 2024 and the 2022 budget. It has a target of reduce CO₂ emissions (scope 1) by 30% in 2030 compared to 1990 levels. It is also planning to invest Euro116m in the 2022 – 2025 to meet this goal and others. Some of this will go towards building a new production line at its integrated Gaurain cement plant in Belgium, where the work is intended to raise the unit’s alternative fuels substitution rate to 80% from 40%. The group noted that this project has been delayed to 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Changes at other cement plants include switching to natural gas and biogas as well as energy efficiency projects. It is also said it was planning to ‘significantly’ increase the production of its FUTURECEM calcined clay cement and related sustainable products.

Ghana: Professor Karen Scrivener has paid a working visit to the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA). The visit was part of a tour by Scrivener to Ghana to discuss innovations in cement and cementitious products and to introduce Limestone Calcined Clay Cement (LC3) to the authority, according to the Ghana News Agency. The Head of Laboratory of Construction Materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland met with GSA management and staff of the Building and Civil Engineering Lab at the Authority's Head Office in Accra. Scrivener noted that she was interested in learning more and engaging with the GSA on standards and its testing capabilities as well as a potential collaboration in capacity building in cement and cementitious products.

Denmark: Aalborg Portland Cement says that the market ‘warmly welcomed’ its new FUTURECEM calcined clay cement in 2021. The product has reached its sales expectations for the year and is now nearly sold out for 2022. The company says that its plan to ramp up FUTURECEM production to replace 50% of grey cement production at its Rørdal cement plant is on track.

Parent company Cementir Holding says that the success of FUTURECEM rests on four pillars, namely its suitability for intended applications, targeted communication, close dialogue with concrete producers and the entire value chain and strategic partnerships with leading construction clients. It said “The lesson learned is that the market needs thorough information about new products and its industrialisation to rely on and implement them in place of conventional products.” The group added that its experience in Denmark paves the way for limestone calcined clay technology rollouts in other markets in line with its sustainable roadmap towards 2030.

India: ACC and Ambuja Cements have partnered with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD) to develop a range of calcined clay cements with 50% lower CO₂ emissions than Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). The collaboration will vary clinker, calcined clay and limestone levels in calcined clay cements in order to ascertain their effects on its performance. France-based Holcim Innovation Centre will fund the research.

Holcim India chief executive officer and managing director Neeraj Akhoury said "Through our extensive research and development setup, we consistently strive to develop new low-CO₂ materials for the construction industry. Calcined clay cement is one such avenue to make a significant quantitative difference in the industry and further accelerate our sustainability drive. Our academic partnership with IITD is a big step towards building a greener future and we are excited to collaborate with the best minds in the country."

The producers have previously partnered with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) to study low-CO₂ binders with alternative reinforcements and with the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) to develop smart sensing technology for continuous on-site strength evaluation of a concrete structure.

Holcim has started to unify its low carbon cement product range this week with the launch of its ECOPlanet label globally. The products are already available in Germany, Romania, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, France and Italy. The plan is to extend this to 15 countries by the end of 2021 and then to double its ‘market presence’ by the end of 2022.

The headline news is that the range will include what Holcim says is the world’s first cement product with 20% recycled construction and demolition waste. This appears to be an improvement on the group’s Susteno cement products that use fine fractions from concrete and demolition waste. This product is currently sold in Switzerland where it is advertised as saving 10% of CO₂ emissions compared to a standard cement product. Both Holcim and HeidelbergCement already sell concrete products that use the coarse waste from building demolition. Other than this, Holcim says that the range will also include cements that contain calcined clay. In June 2021 subsidiary Lafarge France announced that it would produce a cement product under the ECOPlanet banner using kaolin clay with its proprietary ProximA Tech process at its integrated La Malle cement plant in Bouc-Bel-Air.

We will have to wait and see how far Holcim goes in standardisng the range between different countries. Yet, judging from what the countries that are already selling ECOPlanet are doing, it looks like it will be a variety of blended cements. At present, for example, Holcim Germany offers four products in the ECOPlanet range. These are all slag cements, with three having effective CO₂ reductions of up to 70% and the fourth, ECOPlanet Zero, reaching 100% through a carbon offsetting scheme in conjunction with MoorFutures. Holcim Italy also launched a product in the range called ECOPlanet Prime using calcined clay in June 2021.

Incidentally, LafargeHolcim US announced a research project this week with the US Army about using demolition waste. It’s going to start working with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center and Geocycle to look at how construction and demolition materials from military installations can be used for energy recovery and mineral recycling. Group resources at Geocycle’s Holly Hill Research Center in South Carolina, US and Holcim’s Global Innovation Center in Lyon, France will be used in the scheme.

Other low carbon cement products are available of course. Holcim is far from alone in launching low CO₂ cement and concrete products. Yet the use of worldwide brand names is different. Cemex is doing something similar with the global rollout of its Vertua concrete products. It first launched Vertua in France in 2018 before going global in 2020. Holcim started to launch ECOPact Concrete in 2019. Now, Holcim has gone further by doing the same thing with cement. Given how localised cement and concrete products are, it will be instructive to see how global branding for low carbon cementitious products helps these companies. For instance, who is the target audience? It could be eco-minded self-build customers or project specifiers or government departments or industry lobbyists. Or perhaps it is simply another marketing channel to reinforce the sector’s sustainable offerings.

The other point worth considering is when will the multinational cement producers start selling sustainable cements and concretes in less rich parts of the world? While Holcim was playing with blended cements and marketing this week, Dangote Cement said that it was ready to start commissioning its new 6Mt/yr integrated plant at Okpella, Edo State in Nigeria. Another 5Mt/yr plant is also on the way in the country from Madugu Cement. It has just signed a contract for China-based Sinoma International Engineering Company to build it. When Holcim and the other cement companies start selling low carbon cements in places like Nigeria then the rise of these products will be complete.

For more information on low CO₂ cement production read our feature in the February 2021 issue of Global Cement Magazine

Australia: Calix has joined as a partner of the Heavy Industry Low-carbon Transition Cooperative Research Centre (HILT CRC). The initiative brings together heavy industry players, government and research and aims to boost the capability of Australian companies to remain globally competitive by capitalising on existing mineral and renewable energy resources to become international producers and exporters of low-carbon products. HILT CRC has secured US$29m from the government. This joins funding of US$158m in direct and in-kind contributions from its partners over the last decade.

“It is a chance for us to demonstrate the technology developed for CO₂ mitigation in the production of cement and lime through our European LEILAC-1 and 2 projects in an Australian setting, as well as explore other more sustainable applications for our technology in heavy industry, backed by this impressive team of researchers and industrial participants," said Calix’s managing director Phil Hodgson.

As part of the HILT CRC, Calix will continue to develop its technology for the reduction of carbon emissions from lime and cement production, and also use its Calix Flash Calciner (CFC) technology to develop other more processing applications such as for bauxite processing for the aluminium industry and production of calcined clay from kaolinite for use in new lower carbon cements.

HILT CRC’s core industrial partners include Adbri, Alcoa, Boral, Fortescue, Grange Resources, Liberty, Roy Hill and South32. The initiative has its headquarters in Adelaide and it plans to establish hubs in heavy industry regions of Gladstone, the Pilbara, Northern Tasmania, South Australia’s Upper Spencer Gulf, Western Australia's Kwinana and South West regions, the Southern Highlands of Nnew South Wales and Portland in Victoria.

France: Denmark-based FLSmidth has won a contract to supply a 400t/day calcined clay production line to Vicat’s Xeuilley integrated cement plant. The order includes flash calciner technology, an environmental control system and alternative fuel (AF) firing, handling and storage equipment. The line will have a design capacity of up to 525t/day and is scheduled for commissioning in 2023. It will enable clinker substitution in cement of up to 40%, according to the supplier. It says that cement produced using calcined clay will have a 16% smaller carbon footprint than its clinker-based equivalent. The value of the contract is Euro26.8m.

Vicat deputy chief executive officer Eric Bourdon said, “EU regulations and increasing demand for more sustainable cement has accelerated the decision to introduce clay as an environmental alternative to clinker in our production. With clay readily available in the area and positive results from pilots at FLSmidth’s test facilities in Denmark, we feel confident about the technology and hope to be able to expand further in the future.”

Cameroon: Aumund France has won a contract to supply three BWZ type bucket elevators with central chain, three BWG type belt bucket elevators and three Samson material feeders to Oyak Çimento’s upcoming plant near Kribi. When commissioned in September 2022, the plant will grind 100t/day of cement and 720t/day of calcined clay. ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions (France) is responsible for the overall design, supply and installation of equipment to the plant.

Italy: Caltagirone Group subsidiary Cementir Holding has announced the upcoming launch of its FutureCem grey cement product on 1 January 2021. The company says that it has 30% lower CO₂ emissions than normal ordinary Portland cement (OPC). It developed the product in collaboration with its Denmark-based subsidiary Aalborg Portland using 35% limestone and calcined clay to replace clinker. This resulted in a much more sustainable, high grade cement according to the company. It added that the low carbon benefits of FutureCem have been achieved without compromising strength and quality.

Chief sales, marketing and commercial development officer Michele Di Marino said that FutureCem is a ‘giant step’ on the way towards more sustainable cement production. “This is immensely important if we are to achieve our sustainability goals at Cementir Group,” said Di Marino. “But it is also an important contribution to the green transition of the concrete and construction industries in general. Thanks to the efforts of our research and development department in Aalborg, we are ready to begin distributing the FutureCem technology in Denmark and soon other subsidiaries in Europe will follow.” He added, “We have reached an important milestone in our innovation and sustainability efforts, but we are not done. Currently, we are incorporating the technology into more cement types in our product range. This includes white cement, and we have already introduced two white ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) premix types with FutureCem technology.”

Cuba: The production of ‘low-carbon’ (LC3) cement consisting of clinker, calcined clay, limestone and gypsum has begun at Marta Abreu University’s 1460t/yr pilot integrated cement plant in Las Villas. The Granma newspaper has reported that the plant is currently producing 4t/day of cement, and plans to double this to 8t/day when fully operational.