Displaying items by tag: Japan

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement says it started using an artificial intelligence-based (AI) ship allocation optimisation system in May 2025. Software company Grid provided the technology for the project. The companies say that this is the first such application in the domestic cement industry.

The new ship allocation system analyses large volumess of transportation data and generates optimal ship allocation plans while considering various constraints. It is intended to: reduce transportation costs such as fuel; optimise courses and loading efficiency, with an expected 10% reduction of fuel consumption at the planning stage; enhance inventory management; and reduce planning time by more than 50% compared to manual planning methods.

Sri Lanka: KPN Cement Lanka has launched a fly ash cement product in conjunction with Japan-based Taiheiyo Cement. The product, called Taishi Cement, will be available for large-scale infrastructure projects, real estate developments and government initiatives, according to the Daily Financial Times newspaper. KPN Cement Lanka and Taiheiyo Cement are also intending to promote an awareness programme for sustainable construction practices in the country.

Taiheiyo Cement launched an export hub for blended cements in June 2025 called the Saiki Ash Center in Saiki City, Oita Prefecture. The site is intended to export fly ash-based blended cement products to Southeast Asia. It has an export capacity 0.8Mt/yr.

Japan: Cement producers used 21.9Mt of post-consumer materials and by-products in the 2024 financial year, down by 3% year-on-year, marking the third consecutive annual decline, according to the Japan Cement Association.

Coal ash and blast furnace slag, which together make up over 50% of the total, both declined, although post-consumer plastics increased for a fourth consecutive year.

Cement production, including clinker for export, also fell by 3% to 45.7Mt. The amount of byproducts used per tonne of cement dropped from 480kg in 2023 to 478kg, but remained above 400kg for the 21st year in a row.

Japan: Mitsubishi UBE Cement’s joint project with the city of Kitakyushu to pilot carbon recycled materials in public infrastructure has been selected for the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s 2024 grant programme.

Centred around the producer’s Kyushu plant in Kurosaki, Kitakyushu, the project will recycle CO₂ and waste cement from local sources for use in municipal construction. Mitsubishi UBE Cement said it aims to establish a model for resource circulation that can be expanded nationwide.

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement has announced that it will expand the export of blended cement through the establishment of a new facility at its Saiki Ash Centre in Saiki City, Oita Prefecture. Taiheiyo Cement says that the facility, which will meet growing demand for blended cement in South East Asia, is part of its sustainability strategy. The blended cement will use fly ash from domestic coal-fired power plants.

The new facility will expand Taiheiyo Cement’s blended cement export capacity from 0.8Mt/yr to 1.3Mt/yr.

Japan: Domestic cement sales in April 2025 fell by 5% year-on-year to 2.6Mt, according to the Japan Cement Association. This marked the 32nd consecutive monthly decline, attributed to reduced construction hours under overtime restrictions. The Tohoku and Chugoku regions recorded the steepest falls, with labour shortages and rising construction costs driving the decline in Chugoku. Domestic demand has been in decline for six consecutive years, and continues to decline due to a combination of factors including the chronic labour shortage at construction sites, rising construction costs and the longer construction period due to the introduction of a full two-day weekend system at construction sites in recent years.

The Pacific Cement Corporation (PACEMCO) held a groundbreaking ceremony this week officially ‘reopening’ its cement plant in Surigao City. The revival of the plant has been supported by investments by San Miguel Corporation (SMC). Various dignitaries attended the event including John Paul Ang, the chief operating officer of SMC, the mayor of Surigao City mayor and the governor of Surigao del Norte.

The plant has been closed since 2014 due to financial problems. At the time, Global Cement reported that the cement plant stopped operations in May 2014 after the Surigao del Norte Electric Cooperative cut its power supply for unsettled debts worth at least US$0.5m. PACEMCO was originally set up in 1967 and the plant had a production capacity of 0.22Mt/yr via one production line in 2014.

Earlier in March 2025 the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) was keen to highlight the efforts that Taiheiyo Cement Philippines (TCP) is making towards supporting the country's infrastructure capacity. Company executives met with the DTI and revealed plans including building a distribution terminal in Calaca, Batangas with the aim of targeting the Luzon market. This follows the construction of a new US$220m production line at TCP’s San Fernando plant in Cebu in July 2024.

Both announcements follow the implementation in late February 2025 of a provisional tariff on cement imports. The DTI started investigating imports in the autumn of 2024 and later decided to initiate a ‘preliminary safeguard measure’ following the discovery of a “causal link between the increased imports of the products under consideration and serious injury to the domestic industry.” The tariff takes the form of a cash bond of US$6.95/t or US$0.28/40kg bag of cement. It will be in place for 200 days, to mid-September 2025, while the Philippine Tariff Commission conducts a final investigation. The two main countries that will be affected are Vietnam and Japan. A large number of countries are exempt from the tariff including, notably, China and Indonesia. Both of these two countries were larger sources of imports to the Philippines during the five-year period the DTI is investigating. However, imports from these places have declined since 2021 and 2023 respectively.

Graph 1: Import of cement to the Philippines, 2019 - 2024. Source: Department of Trade and Industry.

A preliminary report by the DTI published in late February 2025 outlines the reasons for the provisional tariff. In summary it found that imports rose from 2019 and 2024 and the share of imports increased also pushing down the domestic share of sales. In the view of the report, the domestic cement sector experienced declining sales, production, capacity utilisation, profitability and employment for each year apart from 2021. One point to note is that the imports were split roughly 50:50 between local and foreign companies. Local company Philcement, for example, was the largest importer for cement to the Philippines from 2019 to 2024. In its statement to the DTI it said that it had invested in manufacturing the processing sites in the country. It argued that overprotection of the market discouraged competition and might not be aligned with the economic goals of the country.

Last time Global Cement Weekly covered the Philippines (GCW669) in July 2024 it looked likely that the government would take further action on imports. This has now happened on a temporary basis but it looks likely that it will become permanent. Recent investment announcements from local producers such as PACEMCO and TCP may be coincidental but they suggest a tentative confidence in the local sector.

UBE Mitsubishi Cement recently released an update on its commercial scale demonstration using ammonia as a fuel at its Ube plant. It is currently testing the use of ammonia in both the cement kiln and calciner at the site. It has set the aim of reaching a 30% coal substitution rate with ammonia in the cement kiln by the end of March 2025. It has described the project as a world first. Planned future work includes running ammonia combustion tests alongside post-consumer plastics.

The company announced the three-year project in mid-2023. Utilities company Chubu Electric Power has been working on it and UBE Corporation has been supplying the ammonia for the test. The scheme dates back to before Mitsubishi Materials and Ube Industries merged their cement businesses in 2022. Ube Industries previously took part in a government research project looking at the topic, running combustion tests and numerical analysis in small industrial furnaces.

Another ammonia research project in the cement sector was revealed in 2024 by Heidelberg Materials in the UK. The company was awarded just under €0.40m in funding by Innovate UK through its UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) fund, together with engineering consultants Stopford and Cranfield University. The 12-month feasibility study aimed to assess the use of ammonia as a hydrogen carrier and evaluate the most economical method of on-site ammonia cracking to generate hydrogen for use by clinker kilns. It also intended to investigate the various tiers of the UK's existing ammonia supply chain network for the suitable transportation, offloading and storage of ammonia.

The UK project explained that it was looking at ammonia as a hydrogen carrier due to its high volumetric energy density. This, potentially, makes ammonia easier and cheaper to store and transport than hydrogen. It pointed out that storing and transporting hydrogen is difficult and the chemical is expensive. It also noted that the volumetric energy density of ammonia is 45% higher than that of liquid hydrogen. The benefit of switching to a zero-carbon fuel was that it could cut CO₂ emissions by the cement and concrete sector in the UK by 16%.

The attraction of ammonia to the cement industry is similar to that of hydrogen. Both are versatile chemicals that can be produced and used in a variety of ways. The production processes and supply chains of both chemicals are linked. The Haber–Bosch process, for example, uses hydrogen to manufacture ammonia. It can also be cracked to release the hydrogen. When used as fuels neither release CO₂ emissions directly. This comes down to the method of production. Like hydrogen, there is a similar informal colour scheme indicating carbon intensity (Grey, Blue, Green and Turquoise). Despite the advantages listed above, the disadvantages of using ammonia include toxicity and NO_x emissions, as well as the fact that there is little experience of using ammonia as a fuel. The worldwide ammonia market was bigger by volume in 2023 with production of just under 200Mt compared to hydrogen production of just under 100Mt.

Back in Japan, the national government has been promoting the use of ammonia technology for the power generation sector. It added ammonia to the country’s national energy plan in the early 2020s following research on running power plants with a mixture of ammonia and coal. The ambition is to build up levels of ammonia co-firing at power plants, develop the necessary technology and grow supply chains. This, it is hoped, will broaden, diversify and decarbonise the domestic energy mix and pull together a new international market too. Unfortunately, this strategy has had criticism. One study by BloombergNEF in 2022 estimated, for example, that the electricity cost of Japan-based power stations switching to firing ammonia by 2050 would be more expensive than generation from renewables such as solar or wind.

This explains why the ammonia project by UBE Mitsubishi Cement is leading the way. The interest by a European cement company shows that others are thinking the same way too. Yet again, the potential decarbonisation solution for cement is likely to lead towards more complex industrial supply chains. The next steps to watch will be whether a cement plant in Japan actually starts to co-fire ammonia on a regular basis and if any more ammonia projects pop up elsewhere around the world.

Japan: Mitsubishi UBE Cement Corporation has started a commercial-scale demonstration test using ammonia as a heat energy source in a cement kiln and calciner at Ube cement plant.

The project, supported by Yamaguchi Prefecture’s 2023 Carbon Neutral Complex Development Promotion Subsidy, follows an ammonia co-combustion test in 2023. In collaboration with UBE Corporation, a test facility for ammonia co-firing was installed.

The company has set a target of replacing 30% of its coal consumption with ammonia in the cement kiln, with similar levels targeted for the calciner by the end of the 2025 financial year. Mitsubishi UBE Cement is also planning further ammonia combustion tests with post-consumer plastics and other materials as energy sources.

Japan: Sumitomo Osaka Cement's sales declined by 0.8% year-on-year to US$1.09bn in the first nine months of the 2025 financial year. Nonetheless, the producer succeeded in raising its pre-tax profit, by 16%, to US$44.9m. The company forecasts full-year sales of US$1.47bn (up by 0.6%) and profit of US$54.4m (down by 2%), maintaining previous estimates.