Displaying items by tag: Holcim

UK: Aggregate Industries has appointed Tom Murphy as Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) Project Manager at the Cauldon Cement Plant in Staffordshire. He will play a leading role in managing the introduction of a carbon capture unit at the site.

Murphy joins the subsidiary of Holcim from Tata Chemical Europe where he was the Plant Manager for a first-of-a-kind post combustion carbon capture plant. Prior to that, he worked as an Energy Chemical Engineer for Tata and as a Research Engineer for the Materials Processing Institute. He holds an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of Manchester.

The CCUS project at the Cauldon Cement Plant is part of the wider Peak Cluster partnership, which was formed by cement and lime producers around the Derbyshire Peak District region and aims to cut collective annual carbon emissions by 3Mt/yr by 2030. More than 0.6t/yr is targeted to be cut at Cauldon. The project is being led by Progressive Energy. It aims to capture and transport CO₂ emissions from Cauldon and other partner plants before sequestering them beneath the eastern Irish Sea in one of the storage options which the project has access to, including the Liverpool Bay CCS or the Morecambe Net Zero project.

UK: Aggregate Industries has appointed Lee Sleight as its new CEO. He succeeds Dragan Maksimovic in the post, who was appointed as Region Head West Europe earlier in 2024. Sleight will take up his new position from 1 August 2024.

Sleight joined the UK subsidiary of Holcim in 2021 as the managing director of the ready-mixed concrete division. He became the head of the aggregates division in late 2023. Prior to his time with Aggregate Industries, Sleight worked for Sika in the UK from 2008 to 2019 in a variety of managerial roles. He was then appointed as Business Unit Manager for Sika in 2019.

Kaziwe Kaulule will succeed Sleight as the managing director of the company’s aggregates division. Kaziwe joined Aggregate Industries in late 2023 as Director of Strategic and Commercial Growth, having previously been CEO of Holcim’s South Africa and Zimbabwe businesses.

Croatia: Holcim Croatia's €237m 'KOdeCO' project has been declared a strategic investment by Croatia. This will reportedly make Holcim the first producer of carbon-neutral cement in Croatia and one of the first in Europe, according to a press release by the company.

In January 2024, Holcim Croatia began implementing the carbon capture and storage project at the cement plant in Koromačno, signing a contract with the European Climate, Infrastructure, and Environment Executive Agency and securing a grant from the EU Innovation Fund totalling €117m. The project will reduce annual CO₂ emissions by 367,000t/yr.

Belgium: Holcim has completed the acquisition of Mark Desmedt, a Belgium-based company that recycles more than 0.5Mt/yr of construction demolition materials. This acquisition aligns with Holcim's goal to recycle 10Mt/yr of construction demolition materials.

CEO of Holcim, Miljan Gutovic said "With the Mark Desmedt team, we are accelerating our vision to drive circular construction in the key metropolitan areas where we operate to build cities from cities. Strategically located between Brussels and Antwerp, Mark Desmedt will scale up our ECOCycle technology across Belgium, making circularity a driver of profitable growth.”

Switzerland: Holcim will close its historic site in Holderbank, Argovia, relocating approximately 200 employees to its headquarters in Zug from 2026. This move ends Holcim's 114-year presence in its founding location. Holcim will provide financial assistance for relocation or for those whose commute is affected, according to The Geneva Tribune. Prior to the transfer, the Zug headquarters will undergo renovation and expansion, eventually accommodating over 400 staff.

A spokesperson for Holcim said "The merger of the site and offices will not lead to any job cuts. There will be no layoffs."

Switzerland: Holcim plans to invest around US$278m in its three Swiss cement plants to reduce the use of fossil fuels in cement production and comply with future limits set by the Swiss Air Quality Control Ordinance. The ‘Phoenix’ project alone is expected to cost between US$78 and US$111m, according to Clemens Wögerbauer, chief commercial and sustainability officer at Holcim Central Europe West.

The Phoenix project will reduce the use of lignite for heating cement kilns. A gasifier will be constructed to process waste materials like residual wood, paper sludge and plastics into synthesis gas for heating the kilns. Additionally, a catalyst powered by the kiln's waste heat will be used to reduce nitrogen and ammonia emissions, aligning with future Swiss environmental targets. The Siggenthal plant is expected to reduce its CO₂ emissions by over 30,000t/yr from its current output of 450,000t/yr.

The new facility is scheduled to start operating in 2028 and may be replicated in other Holcim cement plants if successful. The Phoenix initiative will increase the proportion of alternative fuels used from the current 57% to 80%, targeting over 85%.

US: Holcim has invested in Travertine, utilising the startup's technology to bind CO₂ from direct air capture into advanced mineral components for permanent carbon sequestration. This investment, made through Holcim MAQER Ventures, will scale Travertine’s technology for cement decarbonisation.

Chief Sustainability Officer at Holcim, Nollaig Forrest, said, "We're excited to work with innovative startups like Travertine to advance our goal of making decarbonised cement and concrete a reality at scale this decade. Driving circularity, Travertine reduces carbon emissions by capturing and binding CO₂ into advanced mineral solutions."

Switzerland: Holcim plans to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based software at 100 production plants by 2028. The company will use the technology for predictive maintenance, in order to increase operational efficiency and resilience. It has installed the system at 45 plants to date. C3 AI is providing its predictive software products, and the group is also piloting generative AI techniques.

Holcim CEO Miljan Gutovic said "AI is a transformative technology that will revolutionise our industry. Already widely embedded across Holcim, AI catalyses operational efficiency and enhances customer service.”

Switzerland: Holcim has acquired recycling, ready-mix concrete and aggregates company Cand-Landi Group. The company employs 250 people across its operations in Western Switzerland. Holcim plans for Cand-Landi Group to supply alternative raw materials and fuels for use at its Eclépens plant. It says that the acquisition will increase its recycling capacity of construction and demolition materials by 100,000t/yr.

Holcim CEO Miljan Gutovic said "The acquisition of the Cand-Landi Group will advance decarbonisation and circularity in Switzerland, a lighthouse market for innovation at Holcim. I look forward to welcoming all 250 employees of the Cand-Landi Group and investing in our next chapter of growth together."

The Hillhead Quarrying, Construction and Recycling Show is in full flow this week, taking place near Buxton in Derbyshire. As one delegate marvelled on the panoramic minibus journey down to the quarry, “It’s like a music festival without the music and… other stuff.” Indeed. Of course what one doesn’t find at Glastonbury and the like is a near comprehensive range of suppliers, over 600 of them, to the industry all in one place… in a quarry! Where else can one get up close and see the new hydrogen-powered generators and excavating vehicles that are being piloted? The official attendance figures don’t get released until after the event but on the ground it looks as busy as ever. It’s truly the place to be this week.

The show gives us a reason to take a look at the UK cement sector. Like many other countries around the world it is an election year in the UK, with a General Election scheduled for 4 July 2024. The result of this should determine the next Prime Minister and the ruling party. So, naturally, the MPA, the trade association for the aggregates, asphalt, cement, concrete, dimension stone, lime, mortar and industrial sand industries, is taking the opportunity to remind the political parties what its priorities are. The quick version is: support for decarbonisation; a streamlined planning system; and better delivery of projects. This sounds familiar to priorities in other countries but one British spin on this includes the UK’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).

Graph 1: Domestic cement sales and imports in the UK, 2017 – 2022. Source: MPA.

Edwin Trout’s feature on the UK cement sector in the June 2024 issue of Global Cement Magazine presents a good overview of the last 12 months. The general UK economy has faced shocks in recent years such as Brexit, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. However, this has been further compounded by a downturn and high interest rates since late 2022 when the then Prime Minister Liz Truss caused market turbulence in the wake of a badly received government financial statement. As Trout relates, sales of heavy building materials have been in relative decline since mid-2022 with more of the same expected in 2024. Production of cement in 2023 is currently uncertain given the reporting time lag from the MPA but up until 2022 domestic cement sales fell somewhat but imports grew. This has created a situation where overall cement sales in 2022 were 12Mt, not far behind the annual level in the early 2000s. However, the share of imports has nearly doubled since then. More recent MPA data on mortar and ready-mixed concrete sales throughout the first nine months of 2023 suggest that market activity has decreased and poor weather at the start of 2024 looks set to have made this worse.

Despite the apparent slowdown in building materials sales the cement companies have been conducting smaller-scale maintenance and upgrade projects at their facilities and supply chain schemes such as the cement storage unit for deep sea shipping lines that Aggregate Industries said in February 2024 it was going to build at the Port of Southampton. The news the cement companies want to show off has been a steady stream of information about ongoing decarbonisation projects in the cement sector. C-Capture started a carbon capture trial at Heidelberg Materials’ Ketton cement works in Rutland in May 2024, Capsol Technologies said in March 2024 that it had been selected to conduct a study on its carbon capture technology at Aggregate Industries Cauldon cement plant in Staffordshire, Heidelberg Materials' Ribblesdale cement plant in Lancashire announced in March 2024 that it was taking part in a study to assess the use of ammonia as a hydrogen source for fuelling cement kilns and Heidelberg Materials awarded Japan-based Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) a front end engineering design contract for a carbon capture installation at its Padeswood cement plant in Flintshire in February 2024. Finally, on the divestment front, CRH completed the sale of its UK-based lime business to SigmaRoc for €155m in March 2024. The business operates from sites in Tunstead and Hindlow with five permitted lime kilns.

That’s it for this short recap on the UK for now. For a longer look at the UK cement sector read Edwin Trout’s feature in June 2024 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

Hillhead 2024 runs until 27 June 2024