Displaying items by tag: Canada

Canada: Lafarge Canada plans to develop and demonstrate a full-cycle solution to capture and reuse CO₂ from a cement plant. Project CO₂MENT will demonstrate and evaluate Inventys' CO₂ capture system and a selection of CO₂ utilisation technologies at Lafarge's Richmond cement plant in British Colombia over the next four years. This project is being led by Inventys in partnership with Lafarge Canada and Total. It also received financial support from CCP (CO₂ Capture Project), the Province of British Colombia and Canada's federal government through the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP).

"At Inventys, we see a real opportunity to build a CO₂ marketplace where tonnes of CO₂ are traded between emitters and users," said Inventys president and chief executive officer (CEO) Claude Letourneau.

Phase I of Project CO₂MENT, the Contaminant Program, will attempt to reduce harmful organic and inorganic substances, such as sulphur dioxide, dust and soot, as well as nitrogen oxides, from cement flue gas. Phase II, the CO₂ Capture Program, will separate the CO₂ from flue gas using a customised-for-cement version of Inventys' carbon capture technology at pilot scale. Phase III, the CO₂ Reuse Program, will prepare post-combustion CO₂ for reuse and support the economical assessment and demonstration of CO₂ conversion technologies onsite, such as CO₂-injected concrete and fly ash.

Funding for the first two phases is complete and development of Phase I is underway. Phase I will begin operation in 2019 followed by Phase II and III in 2020.

Canada: Sean Monkman, Senior Vice President of Technology Development at CarbonCure Technologies, has been named as Canada’s inaugural Mission Innovation Champion at the fourth annual Mission Innovation Summit (MI4) and 10th annual Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM10) summit hosted by Canada in Vancouver, British Colombia in late May 2019.

Mission Innovation, a global initiative involving 22 countries and the European Commission, has identified carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) as one of eight Innovation Challenges that are key to achieving substantial emissions reductions. Mission Innovation Champions were selected from member countries to celebrate individuals with a track record of progressing creative new ideas that drive the pace and scale of the clean energy revolution.

Canada: Lafarge Canada has appointed David Redfern as the chief executive officer (CEO) of its Eastern Canada operations. Previously Product Line General Manager for Western Canada Aggregates and the Greater Vancouver area, Redfern joined LafargeHolcim in 1999 and has held numerous roles of increasing responsibility throughout Canada and France. He holds more than 25 years of experience in the construction materials business.

Redfern received his Bachelor of Political Science degree from Queen's University in Kingston. He also holds certificates of achievement from Duke University, INSEAD and the University of Toronto. He is a Board member of the National Zero Waste Council and Business Council of British Columbia.

Canada: The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) says it no longer wants to sell its majority stake in McInnis Cement. CDPQ’s chief executive officer (CEO) said that the pension and insurance fund is ‘convinced’ of the potential the company, according to the Journal de Quebec newspaper. The company hired consultants in 2018 to look at a potential sale.

US/Canada: Terex says that its Terex Washing Systems (TWS) brand is investing in its North American sales and operational teams. Following the spend it will have 20 regional partners via 50 service depots, 60 mobile trucks and 100 technicians in the region.

“Our new enhanced levels of sales and service and support will build upon momentum gained in recent years as we continue to focus on serving customers, with world-class washing equipment solutions that add commercial value to their operations,” said TWS’ director Oliver Donnelly.

TWS manufactures products for the mineral washing sector for aggregate, recycling, mining and industrial sand industries.

Canada: Germany’s Menzel Elektromotoren has supplied a spare motor for a cement plant in Canada. A new slipping motor was required to replace three existing crusher motors in case of a failure. Due to tight space restrictions Menzel's project manager took the measurements in Canada personally. A 4.5MW motor was selected from stock, an extended shaft was built and adapter plates were fitted with mounting holes for all three locations as well as brackets for plug and play mounting of vibration sensors for condition monitoring. In addition, the terminal box was fitted with long feeder cables to facilitate the third-party connecting-up.

The German motor manufacturer supplies electric motors to end-users. It is also a supplier and partner of drive manufacturers, distributors and maintenance companies.

More details from HeidelbergCement this week on its divestment strategy. It has sold its half-share in Ciment Québec in Canada and a minority share in a company in Syria. A closed cement plant in Egypt is being sold and it is working on divesting its business in Ukraine. Altogether these four sales will generate Euro150m for the group. Chairman Bernd Scheifele said that the company expects to rake in Euro500m from asset sales in 2018. It has a target of Euro1.5bn by the end of 2020.

In purely cement terms that is something like seven integrated plants. So the usual game follows of considering what assets HeidelbergCement might consider selling. The group offered a few clues in a presentation that Scheifele was due to give earlier this week at the Commerzbank German Investment Seminar in New York.

First of all the producer said that it was hopeful for 2019 due to limited energy cost inflation, better weather in the US, the Indonesian market turning, general margin improvement actions and sustained price rises in Europe. It then said that its divestments would focus on three main categories: non-core business, weak market positions and idle assets. The first covers sectors outside of the trio of cement, aggregates and ready-mix concrete. Things like white cement plants or sand lime brick production. Countries or areas it identified it had already executed divestments in included Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Syria and Quebec in Canada. Idle assets included depleted quarries and land.

The first obvious candidate for divestment could be the company’s two majority owned integrated plants in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These might be considered targets due to the political instability in the country. However, this is balanced by the potential long-term gains once that country stabilises. Alternatively, some of the plants in Italy seem like a target. The company had seven integrated plants, eight grinding plants and one terminal in 2018.

The presentation also pointed out the sharp rise in European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) CO₂ emissions allowances, from around Euro5/t in 2017 to up to Euro20/t by the end of 2018. In late 2018 Cementa, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement in Sweden, said it was considering closing Degerhamn plant due to mounting environmental costs. The group reckons it can fight a high carbon price through consolidation, capacity closure, higher utilisation, limited exports and pricing. It also pointed out that it is a technology leader in carbon reduction projects. It will be interesting to see how environmental costs play into HeidelbergCement’s divestment decisions.

Finally, a tweet by Sasja Beslik, the head of sustainable finance at Nordea, flagged up a few cement companies as being the worst companies for increasing CO₂ emissions between 2011 and 2016. HeidelbergCement was 19th on the list after LafargeHolcim and CRH. Sure, cement production makes CO₂ but it’s far from clear whether the data from MSCI took into account that each of these companies had expanded heavily during this time. In HeidelbergCement’s case it bought Italcementi in 2016. Cement companies aren’t perfect but sometimes there’s just no justice.

Germany: HeidelbergCement says it has made good progress with its ‘portfolio optimisation’ process. The company closed the divestment of its 50% share in Ciment Québec and its minority participation in Syria in December 2018. In addition, a former cement plant area near Cairo in Egypt has been auctioned, and the divestment of its Ukrainian business has been signed. The divestments in Egypt and Ukraine are expected to complete in 2019. Altogether these divestments will have a value of Euro150m and are expected to have a ‘slightly’ positive effect on operating earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in 2019.

“We deliver on our action plan and have accelerated our efforts to improve our portfolio and generate cash in order to speed up deleveraging,” said Bernd Scheifele, the chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement. The cement producer has a divestment target of Euro1.5bn by the end of 2020.

Canada: Production has stopped at the McInnis Cement plant at Port-Daniel–Gascons in Quebec due to an unspecific mechanical issue. Maintenance is expected to take place until the end of January 2019, according to the Le Soleil newspaper. The cement producer refused to confirm whether that problem had been caused by the drive shaft overheating and damaging its metal shell. However, the company said that the repairs would only extend a planned maintenance period by a few weeks. No cost for the repairs have been disclosed.

Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions (USA) was originally awarded the contract to build the plant in 2014. After a protracted building phase the plant produced its first cement in mid-2017 and was then inaugurated a few months later.

Canada: Lehigh Hanson Materials has signed a deal with SaskPower to give it exclusive rights to fly ash from the coal-fired Shand Power Station near Estevan in Saskatchewan. This expands on an existing 10-year agreement signed in 2012 to market Boundary Dam Power Station fly ash. An estimated 0.22Mt/yr of fly ash will be sold from the Boundary Dam and Shand Power stations.