Displaying items by tag: SigmaRoc

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

UK/Poland: SigmaRoc announced it has entered a share purchase agreement and exercised a call option to acquire the Polish lime operations of CRH. The deal, valued at €100m for deferred consideration, follows SigmaRoc's acquisition of CRH's lime operations in Germany, Ireland, the Czech Republic and the UK. The acquisition includes two production sites in Kujawy and Sitkowka, along with an associated distribution network. Completion is contingent upon clearance from the Polish Competition Office, anticipated by the end of September 2024.

SigmaRoc said it is ‘pleased’ with the progress to date on the integration of the German, Czech, Irish and UK entities, and will provide a further update alongside its interim results for the period ending on 30 June 2024.

Europe: Ireland CRH announced the completion of its divestment of its lime operations in the Czech Republic, Germany and Ireland on 4 January 2024. The deal marks the first phase of the group’s divestment of its entire European lime business, for US$1.1bn.

Europe: Ireland-based CRH has agreed to sell its European lime business to UK-based SigmaRoc for US$1.1bn. The business controls 16 sites across the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Poland and the UK. CRH says that the first phase of the transaction, which is scheduled for completion in early 2024, will hand over control of the Czech Republic, Germany and Ireland businesses to SigmaRoc, while control of the Poland and UK business will pass over in two subsequent phases.

CRH chief executive officer Albert Manifold said “The decision to divest at an attractive valuation follows a comprehensive review of the Business and demonstrates CRH’s active approach to portfolio management. The proceeds from the divestment will provide us with significant additional capital allocation opportunities to deliver further growth and value creation for our shareholders.”

UK: Material Evolution raised US$19m in a Series A funding round to scale production of its 85% reduced-CO₂ cement. Material Evolution produces cement at ambient temperature using its own ambient fusion process. Its inputs consist of industrial wastes and feedstocks. Tech Crunch News has reported that venture capital firm Kompas VC led the funding, with participation from fellow venture capital firms Norrsken VC and Circle Rock Capital, as well as quarried materials producer SigmaRoc.

Material Evolution's CEO Elizabeth Gilligan said “Fusion technology has been hailed as the way to meet humanity’s energy needs for millions of years, whilst emitting no CO₂ or other greenhouse gases."

Finland: UK-based SigmaRoc has acquired dolomitic limestone supplier Juuan Dolomiittikalkki. Juuan Dolomiittikalkki’s mines command 1.5Mt of reserves, with viability until 2053. SigmaRoc will integrate the company into its subsidiary Nordkalk’s Nordics platform.

SigmaRoc CEO Max Vermorken said “We are making good progress on the acquisitions pipeline to deliver on our objective to become the leading European quarried materials group.”

Scandinavia: Norway-based Aqualung Carbon Capture has secured a contract to supply a membrane-based carbon capture and storage (CCS) system for a Nordkalk lime plant in Scandinavia. The supplier said that each Aqualung Carbon Capture unit has the capture capacity to remove 25% of an average Nordkalk lime kiln's CO₂ emissions. The project will commence in early 2023.

Nordkalk plans to roll out Aqualung Carbon Capture CCS systems across all of its kilns before 2030. Accordingly, parent company SigmaRoc has newly committed to tightened group CO₂ reduction targets under the guidance of the Science-Based Target Initiative (SBTi).

SigmaRoc CEO Max Vermorken said “Our partnership with Aqualung is an exciting next step for the group and the fruit of many months of diligent work by Aqualung and our technical teams in the UK and at Nordkalk. It demonstrates that capturing all process emissions is possible, with existing technology and at industrial scale. Once we roll this out across the group, I believe we will be industry-leading when it comes to our carbon capture strategy, demonstrating again the agility of our business and our business model.”

Aqualung Carbon Capture president and chief technical officer Henrik Utvik said “Aqualung Carbon Capture is extremely pleased to partner with a pioneering company like SigmaRoc to apply our decarbonisation concept in lime production. Due to the size and energy advantages, we believe our technology is ideally suited for this application, and the collaboration with SigmaRoc will fast-track the deployment of full-scale carbon capture installations.”

UK: SigmaRoc has announced the ratification of its Greenbloc cement-free concrete block’s environmental credentials with an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). The EPD is a Type III environmental declaration with ISO 14025, providing full-lifecycle information on the product’s impacts. Greenbloc, an ultra-low carbon alternative to traditional concrete blocks, is the first product of its kind.

Managing Director Michael Roddy said “With the launch of Greenbloc, we believe that we can now offer architects, contractors and housebuilders a competitive, reliable and – thanks to our EPD certification – proven low-carbon alternative to ordinary Portland cement (OPC) blocks. Making the switch from traditional blocks to Greenbloc can reduce the embodied carbon of a typical three-bedroom house by 73%, saving the equivalent of 2.7t of CO₂ per dwelling. It is also worth noting that we have obtained additional third-party test results against the declaration of performance certificate.” He added “The world is changing for the better, and technology is facilitating greater accessibility to materials that can bring about meaningful change for the construction industry. The reception for Greenbloc has already exceeded all expectations, and we are incredibly excited for the potential it has to offer.”

Finland: UK-based minerals group SigmaRoc has acquired Nordkalk for Euro500m. The group says that Nordkalk, SigmaRoc’s sixth platform, adds a core limestone business from more than 30 locations across 10 European countries. Circular economy products comprise 13% of Nordkalk’s sales volumes. It currently makes careful use of by-products and SigmaRoc says it has a clear ambition towards fossil-free and carbon neutral operations in the future.

SigmaRoc Chair David Barrett said “Nordkalk is a well-established and well-respected business with a substantial asset footprint spanning Northern Europe. It has a long history of success and much future potential. This acquisition creates a raft of new opportunities for SigmaRoc to capitalise on in the months and years ahead.”

Chief executive officer Max Vermorken said “The acquisition of Nordkalk, Northern Europe’s leading limestone products company, is a great stepping stone in the evolution of our group, expanding our footprint across Northern European markets. We are purchasing a high-quality business at the right point in the cycle and at an attractive valuation. Nordkalk meets all our stringent investment criteria as a self-contained and asset-backed business which will bring the Group significant earnings growth. We look forward to helping Nordkalk and its experienced management team on its path to continued success as we perpetuate its 120-year history, name and success.”

UK: SigmaRoc intends to offer a cement-free alternative for every product in its precast concrete portfolio from January 2022. The producer claims it is the only company to do this. The change will effect products made by its Product Group including Allen Concrete, CCP Building Products and Poundfield Precast. The move follows the launch of its Ordinary Portland Cement free Greenbloc product in February 2021.

Managing director Michael Roddy said, “Greenbloc sets the bar for bringing a cement-free alternative to a traditional building material into mainstream use, but it was only ever the start of our low-carbon journey.” He added “The benefits of using cement as a building material are undisputed from an application perspective, however the carbon required in the manufacturing process cannot be ignored. Our aim is simple. The market is changing and understands the need to acknowledge, address and action a tangible approach to decarbonisation. We want to give architects, contractors and specifiers the choice of using an ultra-low carbon cement-free alternative to precast cementitious products.”