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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

Russia: Sibirsky Cement has appointed Dmitry Kireev as the managing director of the Krasnoyarsk cement plant and Vladimir Afanasin as the managing director of the Angarskcement plant.

Kireev worked at Sibirsky Cement’s Topkinsky cement plant from 2001 until 2013, eventually becoming the director for equipment maintenance and repair. He was then appointed as the managing director of TimlyuiCement before becoming the head of the Angarskcement plant in 2016. He is a graduate of the Belgorod Technological Institute of Building Materials and the Kuzbass State Technical University. He also holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the Moscow International Higher School of Business (MIRBIS).

Afanasin became the deputy chief engineer at the Topkinsky cement plant in 2007. He later worked at Krasnoyarsk cement plant until 2011 as the chief engineer, technical director and the production director. In 2011, he became the head of Angarskcement and then managed the Krasnoyarsk cement plant from 2016. Afanasin is a graduate of the Belgorod Technological Institute of Building Materials and holds an MBA from MIRBIS.

US: Fortera has appointed Eric Olsen to its board of directors. Olsen is the former chief executive officer (CEO) of LafargeHolcim.

He started his career in the field of mergers and acquisitions at Deloitte & Touche, Banque Paribas and was one of the managing partners of Trinity Associates for six years. He studied business at the University of Colorado and holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from HEC international business school in Paris. He joined Lafarge Group in 1999 and was a member of its executive committee from 2007 until its merger with Holcim in 2015 to form LafargeHolcim. He then worked as the CEO of LafargeHolcim until April 2017 when he resigned following a review into a conduct of a cement plant in Syria. Legal charges of financing a terrorist organisation were dropped by French authorities in 2019.

Fortera is a materials technology company that has developed a recarbonation process that uses captured CO2 and mineralises it into a secondary cementitious material. In March 2021 it signed a collaboration agreement with Lehigh Hanson to build a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system at the producer’s 0.8Mt/yr integrated Redding Cement plant in California.

Germany: Bosch Rexroth has appointed Holger von Hebel as its chief financial officer (CFO) and the Director of Industrial Relations with effect from 1 October 2021. He will retain his position as head of the Mobile Hydraulics business unit. Von Hebel succeeds Markus Forschner, who will join the board of management of Robert Bosch as CFO and chief performance officer in 2022.

Von Hebel studied industrial engineering in Berlin and Karlsruhe. He joined the Bosch Group in 1990 as a trainee. After serving in a range of management positions in Germany and other countries, he became the commercial director of Switzerland-based Bosch subsidiary SIG Pack International in 2004. In 2005, von Hebel was given additional responsibility for finances, controlling and IT at the former Packaging Technology division of Bosch. Afterward, he became chairman of the divisional board of management of Bosch Solar Energy. Von Hebel has worked in a variety of areas at Bosch Rexroth since 2013 when he became the commercial director of the former Industrial Applications business unit. He has been the managing director of the Mobile Hydraulics division since 2017.

Bosch Rexroth supplies drive and control technologies to a variety of industries including the cement sector.

France: Vicat’s consolidated sales rose by 19.6% year-on-year to Euro1.56bn in the first half of 2021 from US$1.30bn in the same period in 2020. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 41% to Euro300m from Euro213m. Sales and earnings rose in all territories on an adjusted basis as markets recovered from a poor second quarter in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in India and France.

“Focused on its carbon footprint reduction targets, the group has accelerated the commercialisation of its low-carbon product lines, adapted to the global climate challenge,” said Guy Sidos, the group’s chairman and chief executive officer. The company added that the upgrade of its Ragland cement plant in the US is on track for expected commissioning in the first half of 2022 and that it is ramping up a new mill in Mali.

Mexico: GCC’s sales rose by 9.7% year-on-year to US$466m in the first half of 2021 from US$424m in the same period in 2020. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 15.3% to US$147m from US$127m. Cement sales volumes grew by 3.2% and 11.5% in the US and Mexico respectively. Concrete sales volumes fell by 21.1% in the US but grew by 22.8% in Mexico.

“Cement demand is stronger than pre-pandemic levels and construction activity is expected to remain robust throughout the year. Every kiln at GCC is up and running,” said Enrique Escalante, GCC’s chief executive officer.

India: Dalmia Bharat’s first-quarter consolidated income net sales were US$348m in the 2022 financial year, up by 36% year-on-year from US$256m in the first quarter of the 2021 financial year. The group’s cement sales totalled 4.89Mt, up by 33% from 3.66Mt. Profit after tax increased by 45% to US$37.2m from US$25.7m.

Managing director Puneet Dalmia said “Despite the challenges posed by the second wave of Covid-19, our business has once again shown resilience and successfully delivered an all-round performance. We are very excited about the opportunities that we see in the marketplace, and our consistent performance over the past quarters gives us immense confidence as we embark on an aggressive growth journey over the next decade.” He added “Our vision is to build an institution based on the principles of growth, profitability, sustainability and respect, and also to be able to participate meaningfully in our country’s growth story. We are committed to delivering industry-leading returns to our stakeholders through our sustainable business model and a robust governance mechanism.”

India: Ramco Cements recorded standalone net sales of US$166m in the first quarter of the 2022 financial year, up by 17% year-on-year from US$141m in the corresponding quarter of the 2021 financial year. Its earnings before interest, taxation depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 37% to US$49.7m from US$36.3m. The company’s net profit growth for the quarter was 54%, taking this to US$22.7m from US$14.8m.

Chief executive officer Aahvan Dharmakrishnan said “With lot of uncertainties and commodity prices going up without corrections, we were able to control the cost reasonably well and performed well.”

India: Ramco Cements plans to invest US$64m in a modernisation and capacity expansion of its Ramasay Raja Nagar cement plant in Tamil Nadu. The Hindu newspaper has reported that the project involves building a new 3000t/day clinker line to replace a 1450t/day line. This will increase the plant’s overall capacity by 32% to 1.44Mt/yr from 1.09Mt/yr. The company has placed equipment orders for the project and plans to commissions the upgrade in December 2022. It expects to receive environmental clearance for the work in September 2021.

Philippines: Japan-based Taiheiyo Cement has underwritten a US$250m capital increase for its subsidiary Taiheiyo Cement Philippines. Nikkei Business Trends News has reported that the company has scheduled six payments between July 2021 and January 2024. The funding will increase Taiheiyo Cement Philippines’ total capital to US$291m.