Displaying items by tag: Investment

Poland: Germany-based HeidelbergCement has partnered with Norway-based Sintef Energi install a pilot carbon capture and storage (CCS) system at its Górazdze cement plant. The company will deploy new enzyme-based CCS technology, which it says allows greater use of the waste heat and simplifies the control of secondary emissions. The project, known as Project ACCSess, has received Euro15m-worth of funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 industrial emissions reduction programme. 18 industry partners and research organisations will collaborate towards the deployment of the technology at the plant. The consortium will store captured CO₂ in storage fields in the Nordic countries. The project is due to conclude in April 2025. The total cost of the work is Euro18m.

HeidelbergCement chair Dominik von Achten said “The tests of an enzyme-based capture unit at our Górazdze plant in Poland will deliver important insights into how we can further reduce costs in the capture process.” He added “At the same time, it will emphasise our strategy to expand CCS further into our Eastern Europe-based assets.”

Guatemala: Cemex Latam Holdings plans to invest US$25m in installing a new mill at its 500,000t/yr Guatemala City grinding plant. The company says that the mill will increase the plant’s capacity by 80% to 900,000t/yr.

Cemex South America, Central America and Caribbean president Jesus Gonzalez said "This investment reinforces Cemex's commitment to Guatemala's development and reflects our confidence in the favourable outlook of the economy in the country and the region." Gonzalez added “We are excited about expanding our offer of products and solutions to the market which contribute to sustainable construction, like Vertua, our family of net-zero and low carbon products."

India: Shree Cement has given details of its US$67.8m solar power plant project plans. Projects Tiger News has reported that the producer intends to install 106MW-worth of solar power capacity across several Indian cement plants before October 2022. The company expressed its commitment to reducing its carbon footprint and fossil fuel dependence.

Austria: Baumit has invested Euro5.6m in a new waste heat recovery (WHR) system at its Wopfing cement plant in Lower Austria. The producer claims that the installation will enable it to make energy savings of almost 20GWh/yr, corresponding to the energy consumption of 1000 households.

Commercial director Georg Bursik said “We have been using the waste heat for drying systems in the plant for decades. Thanks to this investment, the use of waste heat can be further increased – saving 4000t/yr of CO₂.

Uzbekistan: The Minister of Investments and Foreign Trade (MIFT) says that an unnamed Singapore-based company is considering building an integrated cement plant in the country. The Uzbekistan National News Agency reports that investors from Singapore attended a meeting with Aziz Voitov, the First Deputy Minister of MIFT, and Adham Ikramov, the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

India: Ramco Cements plans to invest US$80.8m in future upgrades to its cement plants before 30 March 2022. In the first quarter of the 2022 financial year, which begun on 1 April 2021, the company invested US$53.9m in upgrades. The Hindustan Times newspaper has reported that realisation of its spending plan would bring the producer’s total upgrade investments for the 2022 financial year to US$135m.

Australia/UK: InterGroup Mining has secured just under Euro60m from Luxembourg-based investment group GEM Global Yield as part of a share subscription facility. The Australia-based mining company says it will use the funds primarily for the ongoing development and commercialisation of its Brilliant Brumby kaolin and gold project in Queensland. The company hopes to sell the kaolin for use in cement and concrete production or as a feedstock for high purity alumina (HPA). It says it will be able to drawdown the funds over a 36-month term following a public listing of its common stock.

Neil Miller, the chairman of InterGroup said, “The GEM facility provides a major accelerator for InterGroup as we continue to prove up the scale of our Brilliant Brumby project and the optimal development path for the co-mining opportunity of kaolin and gold. It likewise enables us to continue our important research and development work into the new carbon reduction markets of potential scale that our minerals serve and which complement their existing known end markets.” InterGroup is currently working towards a potential stock market flotation in the second half of 2021.

Mexico/UK: Cemex Ventures has become an investor in Carbon Clean. It joins existing investors Equinor Ventures, ICOS Capital and WAVE Equity Partners. The companies have invested US$8m in Carbon Clean extending its US$22m series B investment round, previously announced in July 2020, to US$30m in total. Cemex’s investment is part of its strategy to achieve its new climate action goals, including being net carbon neutral in concrete by 2050, under its Future in Action programme.

Carbon Clean has developed a modular CO₂ capture and separation technology that it calls CycloneCC. As well as reducing the size of installation and construction time, it is aiming to reduce operating expenditures to around US$30/t of CO₂ at an industrial scale. In 2020, the subsidiary of Cemex signed an agreement with Carbon Clean, which allowed the companies to outline a roadmap for jointly developing and implementing carbon capture technologies across cement operations.

Botswana: Rachit Josh, the managing director of Matsiloje Portland Cement, says that the company hopes to restart production by the end of 2021. The cement producer is currently in talks with an investor to support the move by establishing a partnership, according to the Mmegi newspaper. Joshconfirmed that the company’s integrated cement plant is currently closed. The plant, which is owned by Nortex Textiles, closed in January 2018 due to competition from South African imports. When operational it produced around 30,000t/yr of cement.

US: Solidia Technologies has raised US$78.0m-worth of private investment in a funding round. The latest investors include Imperative Ventures, Zero Carbon Partners and Breakthrough Energy Investors. Existing backers providing new funds include BP, John Doerr and OGCI Climate Investments, which is the venture capital arm of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a consortium of multinational oil companies. Solidia Technologies produces reduced-CO2 concrete with lower-energy cement and water-free CO2 curing.