Displaying items by tag: Croatia

Europe: Holcim has secured funding for three separate carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) projects at its cement plants in Europe. The recipient projects are the Go4Zero project at Holcim Belgium's Obourg cement plant in Belgium, the KOdeCO project at Holcim Croatia's Koromačno cement plant in Croatia and the eM-Rhône project at Lafarge Ciments' Le Teil cement plant in France. The Le Teil plant's system will be used to produce e-methanol, while the investment at the Koromačno plant will be part of a package of upgrades to turn the plant carbon neutral.

Alongside on-going projects in Germany and Poland, this will bring Holcim's total number of EU-funded CCUS projects to five. Holcim is committed to US$2.33bn-worth of investments of its own in over 50 carbon capture projects worldwide before 2030.

Holcim's Europe regional head Miljan Gutovic said “It’s exciting to be at the forefront of decarbonising the building sector in Europe. The support we are receiving from the EU Innovation Fund for five of our CCUS projects is a great testament to the strength of our engineering teams, the maturity of our technologies and our advanced partnerships across the value chain. Our robust pipeline of projects positions us as the partner of choice to scale up carbon capture technologies in Europe.”

Croatia: Nexe has awarded a contract to Germany-based ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions for the construction of a new clinker line and carbon capture installation at its 0.6Mt/yr Nasice cement plant. The Poslovni Dnevnik newspaper has reported that the work will cost Euro400m. When commissioned in 2029, the upgraded plant will produce carbon neutral cement and despatch 700,000t/yr of CO₂ by pipeline for storage near Bockovac in Osijek-Baranja County.

Croatia: Volunteers from Cemex collaborated with the Agricultural and Veterans’ Cooperative Lintar and local school pupils to harvest 6.5t of olives from the site of its rehabilitated Split quarry in Split-Dalmatia. The company says that the winter crop produced 900l of olive oil.

Cemex’s Europe, Middle East and Africa corporate affairs, sustainability and environmental resources manangement vice president Andrew Spencer said “We recognise that our industry has consequences for the environment, but Cemex is working hard to actively counteract climate change and this drive is present through all aspects of our business. In our cement and aggregate quarrying operations across Europe, we restore and recultivate our sites to provide optimal conditions that are managed well to deliver for biodiversity.” He added “Our vision is of a successful, sustainable Cemex that makes a positive contribution to people and the environment.”

Germany: Cementos Molins has concluded its acquisition of calcium aluminate cement producer Calucem following all regulatory approvals. Calucem operates the Pula grinding plant in Istria, Croatia and a bauxite quarry in Turkey. The new acquisition positions Cementos Molins as the world's second largest calcium aluminate cement producer. The company said that it expands and enhances its innovative and sustainable product range in line with its sustainable growth strategy.

CEO Julio Rodríguez said “I warmly welcome the Calucem team into the Cementos Molins family. Today marks a new and exciting milestone in the history of Calucem and Cementos Molins and, with this integration, we have excellent business development opportunities for a new step forward to our strategy of profitable and sustainable growth.”

Calucem CEO Yuri Bouwhuis said “We are excited about the integration into Cementos Molins, where we will accelerate our development and create together more value for all our stakeholders.”

Croatia: LafargeHolcim Croatia has successfully commissioned a continuous mercury monitoring system in the stack of its Koromačno cement plant in Istria. Gasmet supplied the system via its regional distributor RACI.

LafargeHolcim Croatia Production Engineer Ivan Marićsaid “The product gives us exactly what we want – peace of mind. We now know where we stand with our mercury emissions.”

Croatia: Holcim Croatia plans to invest Euro1.28m to upgrade the dosing equipment of its Koromačno cement plant’s kiln line. The planned upgrade will enable the line to increase the proportion of alternative materials used in its cement production, thus equipping the plant for low-carbon cement production. Innovation Norway has granted the producer Euro441,000 towards the cost of the project.

Managing director Nikola Kovačević said “Mineral admixtures in cement have a threefold benefit: on the one hand, different characteristics are created in the cement to meet the requirements of different types of construction; on the other hand, the exploitation of natural resources decreases. Thirdly, the carbon footprint of the cement is thus reduced through the lowering of the clinker factor.”

Germany/Spain: Cementos Molins has agreed to buy 100% of the shares of Calucem for Euro150m from Ambienta SGR. The cement producer says that the acquisition will help it become the world’s second largest producer of calcium aluminate cements (CAC). The transaction is scheduled to complete in the last quarter of 2021 and it is subject to approval by competition authorities.

“This is a significant strategic step forward, expanding our activity in the specialty construction chemical sector. With Calucem, we will be able to build a platform focusing on innovation, sustainability and global growth,” said Julio Rodríguez, the chief executive officer of Cementos Molins.

Calucem has its headquarters in Mannheim, Germany. It operates a production plant in Pula, Croatia with a deep-sea port allowing it to export worldwide. It also runs an innovation centre in Germany as well as a network of sales offices and distribution centres in Europe, the US and Asia. Calucem has around 180 employees.

Croatia: Building materials producer Nexe Grupa invested a total of Euro15.3m in upgrades to its plants in 2020. This included subsidiary Našicecement’s capacity expansion at its Našice integrated cement plant. The producer also implemented alternative fuels substitution in the plant’s kiln line.

Austria: Weitersdorfer Group has consolidated its lime activities under lime subsidiary Intercal. The group says that the closer cooperation of locations under the regionally-rooted InterCal enables the most effective roll-out of new technology such as drones for stockpile management and supports sustainable production practices such as the use of blown wood dust in lime kilns. Austria-based W&P Kalk became InterCal Austria, Slovenia-based IGM became InterCal Slovenija and Croatia-based InterCal became InterCal Croatia.

Sales and marketing managing director Harald Braunecker said, InterCal's "The new umbrella brand enables future-orientated cooperation between the individual locations, thus strengthening our market position from Austria to the Black Sea. The name InterCal combines the international market claim of the umbrella brand with calcium carbonate, the most important basic raw material for lime production.” He added, "Thanks to cross-border synergy effects among the individual InterCal companies, it is also possible for us to place an even stronger focus on the topic of sustainable production."

Çimsa and its parent company Sabancı Holding renewed their ambition to become a global leader in the global white cement market this week with the formation of Cimsa Sabanci Cement. The new subsidiary brings together most of Çimsa’s international white cement companies including Cimsa Americas Cement Manufacturing and Sales Corporation in the US, Cimsa Cement Sales North in Germany, Cimsa Cementos Espana in Spain and Cimsa Adriatico in Italy. Notably, the new entity does not include businesses in Romania and Russia or at home in Turkey. The move coincides with regulatory approval from the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) for Çimsa’s purchase of Cemex’s white cement business in Spain, including its integrated Buñol white cement plant, for around US$180m, which was first announced in March 2019.

The acquisition in Spain came with conditions though since Çimsa has now become the market leader in both bagged and bulk white cement locally, with a combined share of over 50% in the case of bulk white cement. Firstly, Çimsa has agreed to give Cementos Molins the rights to use its silo in Alicante along with a customer list over the last three years. Secondly, it has agreed to supply all its customers previously supplied from a silo in Seville from one in Motril instead for two years. The Motril terminal was purchased from Cemex. The idea here is to give Cementos Molins time to establish itself in the new market and for customers in the south of Spain to find alternative white cement suppliers if they want to. The latter condition was enough for the CNMC to approve the Cemex purchase in Spain. It was proposed on 24 September 2020 and then approved by the end of the month.

The wider picture is that Çimsa has been playing up its ambitions in white cement for a while now. At the time that the acquisition in Spain was announced, Tamer Saka, the president of Sabancı Holding Cement Group and chairman of Çimsa said, “With the integration of the Buñol white cement plant to our production and distribution networks, we will increase our white cement production capacity by 40%, translating into Çimsa becoming the world's largest white cement company.” This compares to Cementir’s self-declared world share of around 27% white cement production capacity, through its Aalborg White brand and others. Other recent developments at Çimsa include the commissioning of a 0.35Mt/yr white cement grinding plant in Houston, Texas by Cimsa Americas Cement Manufacturing and Sales Corporation in July 2019 with commercial sales starting later that year.

Back home in Turkey the domestic grey cement industry has faced difficulties in the last few years as the economy suffered, the capacity utilisation rate fell, competition increased in export markets and then coronavirus-related lockdowns caused further stress this year. By contrast the world white cement market has remained quite buoyant over the last decade, rising by around 7% year-on-year to 21Mt in 2018 and then remaining at a similar level in 2019.

HeidelbergCement memorably described white cement as a “niche product” when it left the scene in 2018 by selling its remaining shares in Lehigh White Cement in the US to Cementir. It has faced problems of its own this week with the decision by the European General Court (EGC) to uphold the European Commission’s (EC) previous ruling in 2017 to block a proposed takeover of Cemex Croatia by HeidelbergCement and Schwenk Zement. Funnily enough, that acquisition also revolved around a cement terminal. In this case the EC didn’t think that the offer by the potential buyers to grant access to a cement terminal in Metković in southern Croatia would be enough to assuage concerns about reduced competition following the transaction. Some you win, some you lose.