Displaying items by tag: Refractory

France: Refractories supplier Calderys has announced the launch of its new brand platform following its integration of HWI (formerly HarbisonWalker International) earlier in 2023. The platform is comprised of four values, reflecting the personality of Calderys’ company culture, namely accountability, authenticity, multiculturalism and tenacity.

Chief people officer Melissa Bihary and global vice president communications Aurélie de Chassey-Hayot said “These new values and the overall platform have been developed through an employee-led exercise. Therefore, they truly define the essence of who we are and how we do business. They guide our actions and behaviors and help us make the best decisions for the benefit of our customers.”

Austria: RHI Magnesita says that its sales volumes declined quarter-on-quarter during the third quarter of 2023, with its refractories plants operating at 70% capacity. The company noted ‘under-absorption’ of fixed costs. However it succeeded in maintaining constant earnings before interest, taxation and amortisation (EBITA) levels in line with the second quarter of the year. As such, RHI Magnesita revised its adjusted EBITA guidance for full-year 2023 to Euro380m from Euro360m. It said that its order book visibility is at ‘normal’ levels, with limited signs of a recovery in demand volumes in 2024, as global construction activity continues to be weak.

Chief executive officer Stefan Borgas said “I am pleased by the strong execution demonstrated by RHI Magnesita during difficult conditions for our key end markets. We are currently benefitting from the strategic investments we have made in reducing our cost base and rationalising our production network, together with improved planning and careful management of our assets through this period of weaker demand. Pricing discipline has helped to maintain EBITA margins at over 11%, offsetting the impact of lower production on our fixed cost base. We have also been able to progress our mergers and acquisitions strategy, with six acquisitions completed in the first nine months of 2023 and a total of nine in the past 24 months.

Central Europe: Austria-based RHI Magnesita has acquired P-D Refractories from Germany-based Preiss-Daimler Group for Euro45m. P-D Refractories produces refractories in the Czech Republic and Germany, and operates other sites in the Czech Republic and Slovenia.

RHI-Magnesita’s CEO Stefan Borgas said “The production capabilities and vertical integration of P-D Refractories, combined with RHI Magnesita’s know-how and renowned research and development capabilities, will complement our product portfolio and enlarge our production footprint and sales channels on a global scale. This acquisition is our sixth transaction to close in the year to date and marks a major milestone for both companies in the process industries sector. Together we look forward to expanding our footprint and strengthening our market presence by offering high-grade refractory products and solutions to an enlarged customer base.”

Taiwan Cement has just commissioned a 107MWh energy storage project at its Yingde plant in Guangdong province, China. Subsidiary NHOA Energy worked on the installation and has been promoting it this week. The battery storage works in conjunction with a 42MW waste heat recovery (WHR) unit, a 8MWp solar photovoltaic unit and a proprietary energy management system. It is expected to store about 46,000MWh/yr of electricity and save just under US$3m/yr in electricity costs.

NHOA Energy, formerly known as Engie EPS before Taiwan Cement bought a majority stake in it, claims it is one of the largest industrial microgrids in the world. We can’t verify this for sure, but it is definitely large. For comparison, the 750MW Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California often gets cited as the largest such facility in the world. This is run by a power company, as are many other large battery energy storage systems. In its annual report for 2022 Taiwan Cement said it was planning to using NHOA’s technology to build seven other large-scale energy storage projects at sites in Taiwan including its integrated Suao, Ho-Ping and Hualien cement plants.

The aim here appears to be supplying renewable electricity to the national grid in Taiwan. Taiwan Cement is diversifying away from cement production, with an aim to derive over 50% of its revenues from other activities besides cement by 2025. In 2022 cement and concrete represented 68% of its sales, while its electricity and energy division, including power supply and rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, represented 29%. The company is also not using its own batteries at the Yingde plant. Instead it is using lithium iron phosphate batteries supplied by Ningde Times. This is worth noting, as the cement producer’s batteries are used in vehicles.

Global Cement regularly reports news stories on cement plants that are building photovoltaic solar power arrays. However, so far at least, energy storage projects at scale have been rarer. One earlier example of an energy storage system loosely associated with a cement plant includes the now decommissioned Tehachapi Energy Storage Project that was situated next to the Tehachapi cement plant in California. That project tested using lithium ion batteries to improve grid performance and integrate intermittent generation from nearby wind farms. It is also worth noting that Sumitomo Osaka Cement’s sister company Sumitomo Electric is one of the world’s larger manufacturers of flow batteries, although no installation at a cement plant appears to have happened yet. In simple terms, flow batteries are an alternative to lithium ion batteries that don’t store as much energy but last longer.

More recently, Lucky Cement in Pakistan started commercial operation of a 34MW solar power plant with a 5.59MWh energy storage unit at its Pezu plant in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in late 2022. Reon Energy provided the equipment including a lithium-ion based battery approach to the storage. Then, in March 2023, Holcim US said that it was working with TotalEnergies to build solar power capacity and a battery energy storage unit at the Florence cement plant in Colorado. TotalEnergies will install, maintain and operate a 33MW DC ground-mounted solar array and a 38.5MWh battery energy storage system at the site. Operation of the renewable energy system is expected to start in 2025.

Away from electrical batteries, the other approach to energy storage at cement plants that has received attention recently from several quite different companies has been thermal batteries. The two prominent groups using them at different scales are Rondo Energy and Synhelion. The former company has developed its Heat Battery technology, which uses refractory bricks to absorb intermittent renewable energy and then supply the energy back as a steady stream of hot gas for use in a cement plant mill, dryer, calciner or kiln. Both Siam Cement Group (SCG) and Titan Cement have invested in Rondo Energy. In July 2023 SCG and Rondo Energy said that they were planning to expand the production capacity of a heat battery storage unit at a SCG plant to 90GWh/yr. Synhelion, meanwhile, has been working with Cemex on using concentrated solar power to manufacture clinker. It achieved this on an ‘industrially viable scale’ in August 2023. It has since been reported that the companies are working on building a small scale industrial plant at Móstoles near Madrid by 2026. Crucially for this discussion though, the process also uses a thermal energy storage unit filled with ceramic refractory material to allow thermal energy to be released at night, and thus ensure continuous operation.

The examples above demonstrate that some cement companies are actively testing out storing energy at scale. Whilst this will not solve the cement sector’s process emissions, it does potentially start to make using renewable energy sources more reliable and reduce the variable costs of renewable power. Whether it catches on remains to be seen. Most of these kinds of projects have been run by power companies and that is where it may stay. It is instructive to note that Reon Energy was the only company to state that its battery-based energy storage system has a life-span of 8 - 12 years. Our current vision of a net-zero future points to high electrical usage but it may be shaped by how good the batteries are… from our phones to our cars to our cement plants.

For more information on Rondo Energy read the January 2023 issue of Global Cement Magazine

Thailand: US-based Rondo Energy and Siam Cement Group (SCG) plan to expand the production capacity of a heat battery storage unit at a SCG plant to 90GWh/yr. Once complete the site will reportedly have a production capacity larger than any current heat battery-supported manufacturing facility worldwide and will save up to 12Mt/yr of CO₂. The SCG site already has a capacity of 2.4GWh/yr.

SCG’s executive vice president Thammasak Sethaudom said “Rondo offers an innovative solution to reduce the carbon emissions from industrial process heat used in factories worldwide. SCG can use Rondo’s technology to lower our own carbon emissions and SCG Cleanergy can partner with Rondo to help our customers cut emissions.” He added “We also realised that we can leverage our 70 years of technical expertise in the refractory business and supply chain.”

Rondo heat batteries consist of refractory bricks capable of storing renewable energy as heat. The heat energy can then be returned to an industrial process as hot air or steam. SCG invested in Rondo Energy in 2022.

This story was amended on 4 July 2023, after a previous version erroneously stated the location of the plant as Ukraine. Global Cement apologises for this error.

Austria: RHI Magnesita says that its earnings before interest, taxation and amortisation (EBITA) continued to grow year-on-year during the first quarter of 2023. This was despite an 8% year-on-year drop in refractory sales during the period under review. The refractory supplier attributed its declining sales to reduced construction activity outside of China and India. It said that this slowed demand both for cement and steel. RHI Magnesita noted higher energy costs, while raw materials costs 'remained low.' During the first quarter of 2023, the company acquired India-based refractory producers Dalmia OCL and Hi-Tech. These give it a 20 - 30% market share in India. This advanced its goal of strategic growth in markets in which it is under-represented, including China, India and Türkiye.

Chief executive officer Stefan Borgas said “RHI Magnesita benefited from resilient pricing in the first quarter, as we fulfilled orders placed in the fourth quarter of 2022 during the peak inflationary period. Our improved refractory margin performance benefits from the investments we have made to rationalise our network, and leaves us well placed to meet expectations for the year. We have continued to make steady progress in mergers and acquisitions as we identify value-adding opportunities to grow our business through consolidation in key target geographies and product areas, whilst carefully managing our balance sheet."

Austria: RHI Magnesita reported revenues of Euro3.3bn throughout 2022, up by 30% year-on-year from 2021 levels. The refractories supplier's raw materials and shipping costs rose, but it was able to offset the rise by increasing its prices. The company said that this generated Euro600m in additional revenues, enabling it to maintain profitability 'through a challenging economic cycle.' It noted global volatility and uncertainty, which it expects to continue into 2023, for which it forecast a full-year drop in global cement demand. It expects 'strong growth' in India to offset any resulting decline in its sales in other markets.

RHI Magnesita CEO Stefan Borgas said "I am pleased to report growing progress on our mergers and acquisitions strategy, with acquisitions in India, China, Türkiye and Europe agreed or completed during the year. Whilst the outlook for 2023 is more uncertain than prior years due to slowing demand for refractories and softer pricing in certain regions, RHI Magnesita is able to face these challenges in a much stronger condition as a result of the implementation of its strategic cost savings and sales strategies over the past four years."

Austria: RHI Magnesita has invested in Australia-based MCi Carbon as part of a long-term strategic cooperation agreement to research and develop technologies to decarbonise the production of refractories. MCi Carbon sells a mineral carbonation process that creates a range of low-carbon embodied materials, including calcium and magnesium carbonate by carbonating minerals in by-products of industrial processes. RHI Magnesita intends to use this process to reduce its Scope 1 emissions from mineral processing during its refractory production process.

Stefan Borgas, the chief executive officer of RHI Magnesita, said "This partnership could become a breakthrough towards decarbonising the industry. It fits seamlessly with RHI Magnesita's ambitious sustainability strategy." He added "We still have a long way to go but our early-stage investment and the clear intention of a long-term collaboration make this day so memorable. Together with the like-minded team from MCi we will pave the way for a greener industry."

So far, both companies have worked together on CO₂ mitigation studies, mineral carbonisation feedstock assessments and techno-economic analyses at RHI Magnesita's sites around the world. In a next step, the companies' joint efforts will focus on industrial scale-up, expected to start in 2024 with the set-up of a demonstration plant by MCi at Newcastle in Australia, supported by the Australian government.

France: Private equity investment company Platinum Equity has completed its acquisition of Calderys from Imerys. It announced in July 2022 that it had agreed to pay around Euro930m to buy Imerys’ High Temperature Solutions business (HTS). Michel Cornelissen will remain as the president and chief executive officer of the refractory manufacturer.

In December 2022 Platinum Equity said that it has signed a definitive merger agreement to buy HarbisonWalker International (HWI), a supplier of refractory products and services in North America. the move is intended to create a global refractories supplier. The HWI deal is expected to complete in the first half of 2023 subject to closing conditions and regulatory approval.

Demark: Hasle Refractories has appointed Carsten Riisberg Lund as chair of its board of directors.

Riisberg Lund has worked in the cement industry for 35 years mostly for equipment supplier FLSmidth. His most recent role was as FLSmidth’s Cement Industry President since late 2020. Before this he worked as the President for Region Europe, North Africa and Russia (ENAR). He started his career as a Process and Commissioning Engineer for FLSmidth. Since then he led FLSmidth’s former Material Handling division and spent three years as managing director in India.