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Starlinger revealed this week that it had taken on copycats in China and won. The packaging machine manufacturer said that it had sued a number of China-based machine manufacturers and their customers, packaging producers, based on infringement of several of its patents. An out-of-court settlement was eventually reached with the case going before both a civil court and a Chinese court specialised in intellectual property. Naturally, Austria-based Starlinger did not say what the settlement involved other than stating that the proceedings had been “...settled with strict obligations for the machine manufacturers.”

It’s unclear how directly the case affected the cement sector. Starlinger did say that the case involved a replica of a proprietary sack conversion line for producing woven plastic sacks. Packaging producers, often in Asia, use Starlinger’s conversion lines to manufacture proprietary block bottom valve sacks made of polypropylene tape fabric for the cement and construction industries, although they are also used for other dry bulk goods such as rice, flour or chemical granulates.

Starlinger’s reasons for going public are interesting given that most companies steer well clear of discussing legal matters openly. In the accompanying press statement Harald Neumüller, the chief strategy officer of Starlinger, used the disclosure to promote his products by saying “Only the best are copied, as the saying goes.” He then went on to underline the company’s strengths in research and development. Yet he also admitted that this was “...little consolation if it has economic consequences for innovative machine manufacturers like us.”

Firstly it should be noted that battles over patents and ideas happen everywhere from time to time. Discussing international copyright theft has become politicised because it plays into the geopolitical rivalry between the US, Europe and China. One US-government commissioned estimate in 2017 reckoned that the US economy was losing US$225 - 600bn/yr due to counterfeit goods, pirated software and theft of trade secrets. This report has been criticised but it gives one an idea of the scale of the concern. However, there are also plenty of prognosticators in the western media who have spent the last two decades warning of a hard landing in the Chinese economy that hasn’t happened.

Bringing this discussion back to cement, following the collapse of the real estate market since 2021, cement output has fallen. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China shows that output decreased by 11% year-on-year to 1.33Bnt in the nine months from January to September 2024. This appears to be following a similar decline in local real estate investment. The market is still correcting itself and the government is making gradual changes but there has been no apparent cataclysm so far. China-based equipment suppliers don’t appear to have suffered to the same degree due to their foreign orders.

The standard western narrative is that when European or American companies sold their equipment in China from the 1990s onwards they contended with a rocketing economy and lax intellectual property (IP) enforcement. Such an environment reputedly made it easy for some local companies to copy machinery and sell it more cheaply. At the same time China’s industries legitimately surpassed their competitors leading to criticism about how they did it. Publicly available evidence of this behaviour in the cement sector is limited. One of the few includes action by Haver & Boecker, another packaging machine manufacturer, in the late 2010s. However, anecdotally, the view that IP was stolen in China is prevalent in the west whether it is true or false. No doubt readers will have their own experiences and opinions. None of which would be publishable. The issue has been superseded though as China’s cement sector has become the largest in the world by a considerable margin. The biggest manufacturers of cement plants in the world are now Chinese companies too. They either use their own equipment or buy in western kit depending on what the customer wants. They also own a number of their overseas competitors and more potential acquisitions look likely.

All of this is what makes Starlinger’s admission unusual. It has taken a stand and it may have paid off. At the very least the equipment supplier is wringing publicity out of the affair regardless of how big - or small - the settlement may have been. Others may follow.

One unusual thing about coverage of cement in the media is the way that discussions often centre precisely on its absence – that is, on alternatives to cement. These alternatives boast unique chemistries and performance characteristics, but are all produced without Portland cement clinker. They are generally called ‘alternative cements,’ perhaps because ‘cement-free cement’ does not have such a commercially viable ring to it. This contradictory tendency reached a new high in the past week, with developments in alternative cement across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. Together, they hint at a more diverse future for the ‘cement’ industry than the one we know today.

Asia

In Indonesia, Suvo Strategic Minerals has concluded tests with Makassar State University of a novel nickel-slag-based cement. Huadi Nickel-Alloy Indonesia supplied raw materials, and tests showed a seven-day compressive strength of 37.5MPa. Suvo Strategic Minerals says that a partnership with Huadi Nickel-Alloy Indonesia for commercial production is a likely next step.

Europe

Cement producer Mannok and minerals company Boliden partnered with the South Eastern Applied Materials (SEAM) research centre in Ireland to launch a project to develop supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) from shale on 7 October 2024. The project will additionally investigate CO₂-curing of cement paste backfill for use in mines. Irish state-owned global commerce agency Enterprise Ireland has contributed €700,000 in funding.

UK-based SCM developer Karbonite expects to launch trial production of its olivine-based SCM with a concrete company in 2025. The start-up launched Karbonite Group Holding BV, with offices in the Netherlands, to facilitate this new phase. Karbonite’s SCM is activated at 750 – 850°C and sequesters CO₂ in the activation process, resulting in over 56% lower CO₂ emissions than ordinary Portland cement (OPC). Managing director Rajeev Sood told Global Cement that talks are already underway for subsequent expansions into the UAE and India.

Back in the UK, contractor John Sisk & Son has received €597,000 from national innovation agency Innovate UK. John Sisk & Son is testing fellow Ireland-based company Ecocem’s <25% clinker cement technology in concrete for use in its on-going construction of the Wembley Park mixed development in London.

At the same time, Innovate UK granted a further €3.23m to other companies for concrete decarbonisation. Recipients included a calcined clay being developed by Cemcor, an SCM being developed from electric arc furnace byproducts by Cocoon, a geopolymer cement technology being developed by EFC Green Concrete Technology UK and an initiative to develop alternative cement from recycled concrete fines at the Materials Processing Institute in Middlesbrough. Also included was the Skanska Costain Strabag joint venture, which is working on the London stretch of the upcoming HS2 railway. The joint venture, along with partners including cement producer Tarmac and construction chemicals company Sika UK, will test low-kaolinite London clay as a raw material with which to produce calcined clay as a cement substitute in concrete structures in HS2’s rail tunnels.

Middle East

Talks are underway between UK-based calcined clay producer Next Generation SCM and City Cement subsidiary Nizak Mining Company over the possible launch of a joint venture in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The joint venture would build a 350,000t/yr reduced-CO₂ concrete plant, which would use alternative cement based on Next Generation SCM’s calcined clay.

North America

Texas-based SCM developer Solidia Technologies recently patented its carbonatable calcium silicate-based alternative cement, which sequesters CO₂ as it cures.

Meanwhile, C-Crete Technologies made its first commercial pour of its granite-based cement-free concrete in New York, US. C-Crete Technologies says that the product offers cost and performance parity with conventional cement, with net zero CO₂ emissions. Its raw material is globally more abundant than the limestone used as a raw material for clinker. Other abundantly available feedstocks successfully deployed within C-Crete Technologies’ repertoire include basalt and zeolite.

Across New York State, in Binghamton, KLAW Industries has succeeded in replacing 20% of concrete’s cement content with its powdered glass-based SCM, Pantheon. KLAW Industries has delivered samples to local municipalities and the New York State Department of Transportation. Its success expands the discussion of possible circular cement ingredients from the industrial sphere into post-consumer resources.

In Calgary, Canada, a novel SCM has drawn attention from one of the major cement incumbents: Germany-based Heidelberg Materials. It invested in local construction and demolition materials (CDM)-based SCM developer EnviCore on 9 October 2024. The companies plan to build a pilot plant at an existing Heidelberg Materials CDM recycling centre.

Conclusion

Alternative cement developers are still finding the words to talk about their products. They may be more than ‘supplementary’ up to the point of entirely supplanting 100% of clinker. Product webpages offer ‘hydraulic binder,’ ‘pozzolan’ and even ‘cement.’ As alternative ‘cements’ are developed, they build on the work of pioneers like Joseph Aspdin and Louis Vicat. Start-ups and their backers are now reaching commercial offerings, on a similar-but-different footing to cement itself. None of these novel materials positions itself as the sole, last-minute ‘super sub’ in the construction sector’s confrontation with climate change. Rather, they are a package of solutions which can combine into a net zero-emissions heavy building materials offering, hopefully before 2050.

Related to this is the need for ‘technology neutral’ standards, as championed this week by the Alliance for Low-Carbon Cement and Concrete (ALCCC), along with 23 other European industry associations, civil society organisations and think tanks. The term may sound new, but the concept is critical to the eventual uptake of alternative cements: standards, the ALCCC says, should be purely performance-based. They ought not attempt to define what technology, for example cement clinker, makes a suitable building material. According to the ALCCC, Europe’s building materials standards are not technology neutral, but instead ‘gatekeep’ market access, to the benefit of conventional cement and the exclusion of ‘proven and scalable low-carbon products.’

At the same time, cement itself is changing. Market research from USD Analytics showed an anticipated 5% composite annual growth rate in blended cement sales between 2024 and 2032, more than doubling throughout the period from US$253bn to US$369bn. If you can’t beat it, blend with it!

For a further discussion of alternative cement and binders in Europe, see Global Cement’s interview with ALCCC co-ordinator Joren Verschaeve in the forthcoming November issue of Global Cement Magazine on 17 October 2024.

Poland: The Polish cement industry is under threat from increasing Ukrainian cement imports, which have risen by 106% year-on-year in the first half of 2024, according to Warsaw Business Journal. These imports, making up 91% of all cement imports into Poland, could exceed 500,000t by the end of 2024. Despite a projected 3.6% rise in domestic production to 17.2Mt, the competition from lower-cost Ukrainian cement, not subject to EU climate regulations, threatens Poland's economy and job market.

China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment announced plans last week to add the cement sector to the country’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) by the end of 2024. The ministry has started the consultation process to also add steel and aluminium production to the system. 2024 will be used as a control year for the new industries entering the scheme, an implementation phase will run in 2025 and 2026 and then the quota allocated to companies will start to be reduced from 2027 onwards. Plants that emit 26,000t/yr of CO₂ or higher will be included in the ETS.

Clearly this is a big deal for the cement industry worldwide, as China produces around half of the world’s cement. As Ian Riley the CEO of the World Cement Association commented, "The inclusion of cement in the Chinese ETS is a critical and long-awaited step. As we have seen in Europe, a well-implemented carbon ETS can be beneficial by not only curbing emissions but also catalysing industry restructuring that favours the most efficient and lowest-emitting producers. This move signals China’s intent to prioritise sustainability in high-emission sectors…” In 2023, for example, China produced 2.02Bnt of cement compared to a global output of 4.10Bnt. This compares to the 176Mt of cement produced in the European Union (EU) in 2022. The EU, of course, is the home of the world’s second largest ETS.

China’s National ETS originally started in 2021 focusing on the power generation sector. It followed several pilot markets in eight regions, which continue to operate in parallel with the national system. At present the National ETS covers more than 2000 companies with emissions exceeding that 26,000t/yr of CO₂ figure mentioned above. These are mostly generation businesses, but it does also cover captive power plants. Overall, the scheme is estimated to cover around 5Bnt/yr of CO₂ and accounts for over 40% of the countryʼs CO₂ emissions. The current targets are an 18% reduction in carbon emissions per unit of GDP compared to 2020 levels by 2025, peak CO₂ emissions by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2060. Following the addition of the cement, steel and aluminium sectors, however, the ETS is estimated to grow to 8Bnt/yr of CO₂ and it should account for 60% of the country’s CO₂ output.

In April 2024 the average spot price of emissions traded on the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange reached €12.7/t of CO₂. This was a notable milestone because in the local currency it exceeded the ‘psychological’ 100 Chinese Yuan threshold. Meanwhile, the EU ETS CO₂ price started to increase in 2021 finally making it just past Euro100/t of CO₂ in early 2023. Since then, it has declined somewhat but remains at €50-75, well above the levels of the 2010s.

In practical terms the real significance of China’s National ETS for the cement sector should begin to be felt once the government starts to tighten up the allocated quotas from 2027 onwards. It is at this point that it will become apparent how the system is being used to drive the pace of decarbonisation. The other part of this to watch is if or when domestic talk turns to setting up a version of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to stop imports. It is at this point that one might be able to tell if the ETS has ‘bite.’

The government has not been shy in regulating industry and one of its starkest tools so far in tackling overcapacity has been mandating cement plants to simply stop production for some months of the year through so-called peak shifting. The National ETS gives it another tool to drive policy changes. Yet it is more complicated and with wider implications to other industries than simply telling plants to take a break. How it fits in globally, where there is a significant difference between the ETS price in China and the EU, remains to be seen. Yet, any additional CO₂-based burden upon the cement sector in the world’s largest cement producing country is a major step towards decarbonisation.

One surprise at the end of August 2024 was that Türkiye-based Çimsa has agreed to buy a majority stake in Ireland-based Mannok. The subsidiary of Sabancı Holding signed a deal to acquire just under a 95% stake in Mannok Holdings based on an enterprise value of Euro330m for 100% of the shares. The final purchase price will be determined later in the process, as will a potential completion date subject to the usual regulatory approvals.

Çimsa has described the deal as its “third major global initiative in the past three years” following expansions in the US and Spain. Çimsa started production at its 0.3Mt/yr white cement grinding plant in Houston, Texas in 2019. It is currently planning to set-up a 0.6Mt/yr grey cement grinding plant, also in Houston, with operation expected to start by the end of 2024. Its Spain-based business received a boost in mid-2021 when it purchased the Buñol white cement plant in Valencia from Cemex. Outside of Türkiye the company also operates a few terminals in Germany and Italy. Of interest to this article it established a subsidiary for sales in the UK in mid-2023.

Mannok was previously known as Quinn Group before it was rebranded in 2020. In addition to cement the company sells a range of construction products including PIR (polyisocyanurate) insulation, aircrete thermal blocks, roof tiles and precast concrete. The company is headquartered at Derrylin in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland in the UK but it operates in both Ireland and the UK. It runs a 1.4Mt/yr integrated plant at Ballyconnell, County Cavan in Ireland, just across the border from Derrylin. With the 17th Global CemFuels Conference scheduled to take place next week in Dublin, it is worth noting that this cement plant had a recent upgrade of interest to the alternative fuels sector. In 2023 the company said that it had installed the world’s first FLSmidth Fuelflex Pyrolyzer at a cement plant following an earlier pilot of the system back in 2018. It is used to replace coal with solid recovered fuels (SRF) in the pre-calcination stage of cement production. Later in 2023 Mannok said that the equipment was reducing its CO₂ emissions by 58,000t/yr.

As reported in the October 2023 issue of Global Cement Magazine, cement from the Ballyconnell plant is sold in both Ireland and the UK. In 2022, 35% of its sales were in Ireland, 30% in Northern Ireland and the remaining 35% in the rest of the UK. The company uses a storage unit at Warrenport in Northern Ireland to despatch cement to a 8400t cement storage and distribution at Rochester in Southern England.

Çimsa said that the acquisition is intended to help it to increase the share of its revenue in foreign currencies to over 70%. It is not a revelation that Çimsa might want to do this given the parlous state of the economy in Türkiye since 2018. Interest rates are high and the Turkish Lira has lost value. Çimsa raised the issues this has caused in its 2023 annual report. These include higher costs for imported goods and services such as energy, equipment and engineering services. In 2023 the company reported that 57% of its sales consisted of foreign currency-based revenue. The same year exports represented just under 40% of the company’s total revenue. Overall, Çimsa’s revenue fell slightly year-on-year in 2023, in part due to the divestment of a cement plant and other assets, but earnings rose significantly.

Buying Mannok gives Çimsa another route into the European Union (EU), via Ireland, and the UK. Crucially, this gives its first integrated grey cement production site outside of Türkiye. Both of these things are especially useful for an export-focused company facing increasing hurdles to sales in the guise of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. It also helps the business to further hedge against negative currency exchange effects back home in Türkiye. So ‘Sláinte’ to Çimsa and Mannok, and good luck.

The 17th Global CemFuels Conference & Exhibition takes place in Dublin, Ireland on 18 - 19 September 2024

Vietnam: Vietnam's cement sector anticipates minimal impact from the EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) as exports to the EU account for less than 2% of total sales, according to the Vietnam News Brief Service. However, Luong Duc Long, vice president and general secretary of the Vietnam Cement Association, remains alert to potential changes in emission thresholds that could incur additional taxes. Currently, the country’s cement sector emits 700 - 750kg/t of CO₂, with goals to reduce this to 650kg/t by 2030 and to 550kg/t by 2050 through technological advancements like rotary kilns and AI, as well as the use of alternative fuels and waste management solutions.

The mountainous eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea and its hinterlands in Europe’s Balkan Peninsula have one of the world’s highest densities of countries: six, across a broad equilateral triangle of 212,000km². All six states – Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – are historically characterised by political non-alignment, carrying over from the Cold War period, and all the more notable for the presence of the EU to the north (Croatia, Hungary and Romania) and east (Bulgaria and Greece).

A nine-plant, 9Mt/yr local cement sector serves the 16.8m-strong population of the unconsolidated ‘bloc.’ Albania has 2.8Mt/yr (31%), Serbia 2.7Mt/yr (30%), Bosnia & Herzegovina 1.6Mt/yr (18%), North Macedonia 1.4Mt/yr (15%) and Kosovo 500,000t/yr (6%), while Montenegro has no cement capacity – for now. Altogether, this gives this quarter of South East Europe a capacity per capita of 539kg/yr. The industry consists entirely of companies based outside of the region. Albania’s two plants are Lebanese and Greek-owned (by Seament Holding and Titan Cement Group respectively). Titan Cement Group also controls single-plant Kosovo and North Macedonia, and competes in the Serbian cement industry alongside larger and smaller plants belonging to Switzerland-based Holcim and Ireland-based CRH, respectively. Lastly, Bosnia & Herzegovina’s capacity is shared evenly between Germany-based Heidelberg Materials and Hungary-based Talentis International Construction, with one plant each.

Lafarge Srbija, Holcim's subsidiary in Serbia, announced plans for its second plant in the country, at Ratari in Belgrade, last week. No capacity has yet emerged, but the plant will cost €110m, making something in the region of the country’s existing 0.6 – 1.2Mt/yr plants seem likely. This would give Serbia over a third of total capacity in the Central Balkans and twice the number of plants of any other country there, expanding its per-capita capacity by 22 – 44%, from a regionally low 408kg/yr to 500 – 590kg/yr.

In announcing the upcoming Ratari cement plant, Lafarge Srbija laid emphasis on its sustainability. The plant will use 1Mt/yr of ash from the adjacent Nikola Tesla B thermal power plant as a raw material in its cement production. In this way, it will help to clear the Nikola Tesla B plant’s 1600 hectare ash dumps, from which only 180,000t of ash was harvested in 2023. Circularity has been front and centre of Holcim’s discussions of its growth in Serbia for some time. When Lafarge Srbija acquired aggregates producer Teko Mining Serbia in 2022, the group indicated that the business would play a part in its development of construction and demolition materials (CDM)-based cement and concrete.

Holcim’s Strategy 2025 growth plan entails bolt-on acquisitions in ‘mature markets,’ backed by strategic divestments elsewhere. Other companies have been more explicit about a realignment towards metropolitan markets, above all in North America, at a time when they are also diversifying away from cement and into other materials. Just why a leading producer should look to build cement capacity in Serbia warrants investigation.

Serbia is the only Central Balkan member of Cembureau, the European cement association. In a European market report for 2022, the association attributed to it the continent’s fastest declining cement consumption (jointly with Slovakia), down by 11% year-on-year. Like the rest of Europe, Serbia is also gradually shrinking, its population dwindling by 0.7% year-on-year to 6.62m in 2023, which limits hopes for a longer-term recovery. Serbia remains the largest country in the Central Balkans, with 39% of the total regional population.

Several factors have compounded Serbia’s difficulties as a cement-producing country. Firstly, like the Nikola Tesla B thermal power plant, its kilns run on coal. 50% of this coal originated in Russia and Ukraine in 2021, causing the entire operation to become ‘imperilled’ after the former’s brutal invasion of the latter in February 2022, according to the Serbian Cement Industry Association. In planning terms, this was a case of putting half one’s eggs in two baskets – and dropping them both.

Secondly, Serbia’s choice of export markets is mainly confined to either the EU or global markets via the River Danube, Black Sea and Mediterranean. Either way, it is in competition with a cement exporting giant: Türkiye. Serbia sold €19.7m-worth of cement in the EU in 2023, up by 63% over the three-year period since 2020 – 31% behind Türkiye’s €28.8m (more than double its 2020 figure).¹ One other Central Balkan country had a greater reliance on the EU market: Bosnia & Herzegovina. It exported €48.4m-worth of cement there, quadruple its 2020 figure and behind only China (€133m) and the UK (€54.7) in cement exports to the bloc by value.

Bosnia & Herzegovina’s cement industry underwent a different permutation at the start of 2024: an acquisition, replacing one EU-based player with another. Lukavac Cement, which operates the 800,000t/yr Lukavac cement plant in Tuzla, changed hands from Austria-based building materials producer Asamer Baustoffe to Hungary-based property developer Talentis International Construction. Talentis International Construction belongs to one of Hungary’s major family-owned conglomerates, Mészáros Csoport.

Besides Central Europe, Balkan countries have found a ready source of investments in the past decade in China. In construction alone, Chinese investments total €13.2bn in Serbia, €2.4bn in Bosnia & Herzegovina, €915m in Montenegro and €650m in North Macedonia.² This can be a booster shot to all-important domestic cement markets, but has some risks. Montenegro previously faced bankruptcy after Export-Import Bank of China began to call in an €847m loan for construction of the still upcoming A1 motorway in the country’s Northern Region. This did not put off the Montenegrin government from signing a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China-based Shandong Foreign Economic and Technical Cooperation and Shandong Luqiao Group for construction of a new €54m coast road in the Coastal Region in mid-2023.

In Montenegro, UK-based private equity firm Chayton Capital is currently funding a feasibility study for a partly state-owned cement plant and building materials complex at the Pljevlja energy hub in the Northern Region. Along with an upgrade to the existing Pljevlja coal-fired power plant, the project will cost €700m.

In 2026, EU member states will begin to partly tax third-country imports of cement and other products against their specific CO₂ emissions, progressing to the implementation of a 100% Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) by 2034. Montenegro led the Central Balkans’ preparations for the EU’s CBAM roll-out with the introduction of its own emissions trading system in early 2021. Bosnia & Herzegovina will follow its example by 2026, but other countries in the region have struggled to conceive of the arrangement except as part of future EU accession agreements.

Based on the average specific CO₂ emissions of cement produced in the EU, the World Bank has forecast that exporters to the bloc will be disadvantaged if their own specific emissions exceed 5.52kg CO₂eq/€.³ By contrast, any figure below this ought to offer an increased competitive edge. Albanian cement has average emissions of 4.71kg CO₂eq/€, 15% below ‘biting point’ and 13% below Türkiye’s 5.39CO₂eq/€. Albania’s government consolidated its anticipated gains by quintupling the coal tax for 2024 to €0.15/kg. The figure is based on the International Monetary Fund’s recommended minimum CO₂ emissions tax of €55.80/t, 21% shy of the current EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) credit price of €70.49/t.⁴

The Central Balkans is a region of apparently slow markets and industry growth regardless – to 11 cement plants, following the completion of current and upcoming projects. A recurrent theme of capital expenditure investments and the way investors talk about them may help to explain this: sustainability. Looking at the mix of technologies in the current nine plants, these include wet kilns and fuels lines built for conventional fossil fuels. This is not to presume that any given plant might not be happy with its existing equipment as is. Nonetheless, the overall picture is of a set of veteran plants with scope to benefit from the kind of investments which all four global cement producers active in the region are already carrying out elsewhere in Europe. Such plans may already be in motion. In late 2023, Titan Cement Group’s North Macedonian subsidiary Cementarnica Usje secured shareholder approval to take two new loans of up to €27m combined.

As the latest news from Serbia showed, taking care of existing plants does not preclude also building new ones. The cement industry of the Central Balkans is finding its position in the new reduced-CO₂ global cement trade – one in which old and new work together.

References

1. Trend Economy, ‘European Union – Imports and Exports – Articles of cement,’ 28 January 2024, https://trendeconomy.com/data/h2/EuropeanUnion/6810#

2. American Enterprise Institute, 'China Global Investment Tracker,' 3 February 2024 https://www.aei.org/china-global-investment-tracker/

3. World Bank Group, ‘Relative CBAM Exposure Index,’ 15 June 2023, https://www.worldbank.org/en/data/interactive/2023/06/15/relative-cbam-exposure-index

4. Ember, 'Carbon Price Tracker,' 26 August 2024, https://ember-climate.org/data/data-tools/carbon-price-viewer/

Italy: The President of the Italian cement association Federbeton, Stefano Gallini, has highlighted the disadvantages of cement and clinker production relocating to non-EU countries with lower costs, according to Milan Finance.

New data from from the Federation of Italian Cement Producers reports that imports of non-European cement into Italy rose by 22.6% year-on-year in 2023 to 3.6Mt. From 2018 to 2023, the import of intercontinental cement has increased by 572%, compared to a 6.5% increase in European purchases.

Ukraine: The Ukrainian cement industry, represented by the Ukrcement Association, is urging the government to revise the recent changes in electricity import regulations under martial law. Following the increase from a 30% EU electricity import requirement to 80%, mandated by Resolution No. 661 on 1 June 2024, the industry faces heightened costs and technical challenges due to limited border crossing capacities.

The association said "Given that cement production is energy-intensive and it is the main component for military and civilian construction, we ask the Ukrainian government to return to the previous 30/70 proportion. This proportion will ensure reliable energy supply to industrial enterprises of Ukraine, which will help maintain the current pace of economic recovery in Ukraine in the face of military aggression by the Russian Federation."

The industry's proposals to mitigate the situation include reducing the minimum import share to 50%, enhancing interstate crossing capacities and revising the distribution of mandatory imported electricity purchases.

Germany: Calix's subsidiary Leilac and Heidelberg Materials have formed a joint venture to build the Leilac-2 low emission cement demonstration plant at Heidelberg's Ennigerloh facility. Construction is set to begin in 2025, with the plant's commissioning scheduled for mid-2026. The Leilac-2 plant will showcase a module capable of capturing up to 100,000t/yr of CO₂ emissions from cement and lime production. Following construction and commissioning, Leilac-2 will be operated for up to three years to test the performance of the technology.

The project benefits from €16m in funding from the EU's Horizons 2020 programme and contributions from partner cement companies. Following construction, Heidelberg Materials may repay Leilac's capital contribution, and the partners will consider a full-scale commercial installation of Leilac technology at a Heidelberg plant. Plans for Leilac-3 envisage a significantly increased capture capacity, potentially capturing 0.5–1Mt/yr of CO₂.

Leilac CEO Daniel Rennie said "The formation of a joint venture with Heidelberg Materials for the Leilac-2 plant marks another important milestone for commercialisation of the Leilac technology. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with Heidelberg Materials to demonstrate and deploy cost-effective solutions to decarbonise cement production at commercial scale.”