
Displaying items by tag: Slag cement
Indonesia: Suvo Strategic Minerals has reached a non-binding agreement to form a joint venture (JV) with PT Huadi Bantaeng Industry Park (PT HBIP) to commercialise and manufacture low-carbon cement and concrete products that contains nickel slag and other byproducts. The JV will produce geopolymer cement and related products in Indonesia.
PT HBIP will supply nickel slag and other raw materials from its stockpiles at Bantaeng Industry Park and provide infrastructure, including land, port facilities and utilities like power and water. Suvo’s subsidiary, Climate Tech Cement, will deliver the low carbon cement formulations.
Aaron Banks, Suvo’s executive chair, said “The formation of this partnership is a key milestone for the company as it adds significant scale for potential future operations. The consumption of Portland cement within the broader region is around 300 - 400Mt/yr. Huadi, in alliance with other smelters, produce around 15Mt/yr of nickel slag. This partnership has the potential to lock in the necessary supply chains and give the company the best chance for success in delivering this low carbon cement to market.”
Banks also confirmed that Suvo has started preliminary offtake discussions for its low carbon cement product with ‘large users’ in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
Jindal Panther Cement launches new grinding unit in Angul
22 October 2024India: Jindal Panther Cement (JPC), part of the Jindal Group, has commissioned its first cement grinding unit with a capacity of 1.5Mt/yr at Angul, Odisha. The unit will use about 1Mt/yr of blast furnace slag from Jindal subsidiary Jindal Steel & Power’s (JSPL) nearby integrated steel plant, operating with the industry's lowest clinker factor as part of its decarbonisation strategy. The Angul grinding unit will produce low-carbon Portland slag and composite cement for central and eastern India, repurposing waste from JSPL's operations and aligning with the group's decarbonisation goals. In the future, JPC plans to increase production capacity at both of its facilities, Angul and Raigarh, to 7Mt/yr, with an investment of US$257m.
CEO of JPC, Rohit Vohra, said "The commissioning of our Angul grinding unit marks a significant step in our journey towards a sustainable future. Our low-carbon cement and innovative distribution model position us uniquely to support eastern India's infrastructure growth while contributing to a greener planet."
Suvo Strategic Minerals develops cement from nickel slag
10 October 2024Indonesia: Suvo Strategic Minerals has reported successful laboratory tests in collaboration with Makassar State University (UNM) in Indonesia, transforming nickel slag into a ‘high-strength, low-cost and low-carbon’ cement, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The trials used slag from PT Huadi Nickel-Alloy Indonesia's operations in South Sulawesi, achieving a compressive strength of 37.5MPa after seven days. The company is now looking to conduct further testing and will provide the results to PT Huadi, with the aim of forming a partnership for the commercialisation of low-carbon cement using nickel slag.
Aaron Bank, executive chair of Suvo Strategic Minerals, said “We are excited to have commenced this workstream in Indonesia testing the byproduct of one of the country’s largest mining companies, with our ultimate goal being to manufacture an environmentally-friendly and low-carbon alternative to Portland cement. Achieving up to 37.5MPa after only seven days is an outstanding first round trial result for the company and could provide an entry into a large industry.”
Ecocem appoints Mike Donovan as Technical Director for US business
11 September 2024US: Ireland-based Ecocem has appointed Mike Donovan as Technical Director for its US business operations. He will be responsible for overseeing key aspects of Ecocem’s business in the US, with a focus on widespread commercial adoption of the company’s low-carbon cement technologies, including ACT, by the US market.
Donovan most recently developed and brought a new natural pozzolan to market with Geofortis. He started his career in concrete in the 1980s working at companies including as Sherman Industries, Blue Circle Cement Tarmac and Central Concrete Supply (US Concrete). He is a graduate in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
No imports into my backyard
21 August 2024A couple of stories have popped up this week regarding restrictions on cement imports. First, authorities in Taiwan have launched an anti-dumping investigation into Vietnamese cement. Secondly, and perhaps more surprisingly given its growing economy, the authorities in Kyrgyzstan are planning to ban overland imports of cement from within Central Asia. More on that later…
First, to the Far East, where Taiwan’s Trade Remedies Authority has launched an anti-dumping investigation into cement and clinker imported from Vietnam. It will assess imports covering the year from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024 and target seven specific Vietnamese cement producers among others. The Vietnamese companies are mandatory respondents – they will be compelled to answer investigators’ questions.
Vietnamese cement has long been among the cheapest in the region due to the country’s drive to hit production targets, rather than simply meeting demand. The situation has resulted in a vast amount of cement available for export. This, coupled to Vietnam’s long, indented coastline, makes it easy to ship cement overseas.
Even with export volumes falling by 1.2% year-on-year to 31.3Mt in 2023, around a third of Vietnam’s capacity, this is a massive volume of cement - and it’s only getting cheaper. The average export value of Vietnamese cement and clinker fell from US$46-48/t at the start of 2023 to just US$31-32/t in May 2024, a decline of 30-35%. These changes have been due, in part, to an increase in tax on clinker exports from 5% to 10% on 1 January 2023 and an anti-dumping investigation launched by the Philippines in March 2023. Falling prices and volumes represent a ‘double-whammy’ for producers, several of which have announced that they made losses in the first half of 2024. Vicem’s top management said that challenges also arose at home due to a reduced demand following limited civil engineering projects and a stagnant real estate market.
It is easy to see why Taiwanese cement producers may feel threatened by the prospect of greater volumes of cheap cement on their doorstep. Taiwan only made 4.9Mt/yr of cement in the first half of 2024. With domestic prices in the region of US$65-70/t according to Cement Network, this provides a very attractive margin of US$33-39/t for Vietnamese producers to export to Taiwan. It will be interesting to see how far the country’s authorities are willing to go to protect the country’s producers and whether any anti-dumping policies lead to further falls in the landed volumes of Vietnamese cement.
Meanwhile, 4600km to the west, Kyrgyzstan has announced that it will enforce a six-month road import ban on several types of cement including Portland cement, alumina cement and slag cement. The ban, affecting both cement and clinker, will take effect on 1 October 2024 and last for six months. According to the State Statistical Committee of Kyrgyzstan, the country saw a 76% year-on-year increase in cement imports – mainly from Iran, Kazakhstan, China and Uzbekistan - between January 2024 and May 2024. The total import volume over the five months was 125,737t. For a country that made just 1Mt over the same period, this is a major change.
The overland import ban is more of a surprise than the Taiwan / Vietnam situation, as Kyrgyzstan recently reported that the North of the country was experiencing a ‘construction boom’ and cement shortages. However, two new plants due to start production in the coming months could help the country out... unless it too would like to export its newly-developed cement production capacity.
And here we arrive at a ‘classic’ impasse. From Pakistani cement in South Africa, to price arguments in West Africa, import bans in Central Asia and Vietnamese cement in Philippines and Taiwan, more and more exporters are finding that their markets are already self-sufficient in cement, with the US perhaps the notable exception. Soon there will be nowhere left for cement to be exported to. Are we at peak cement?
UK: UK-based startup Cocoon has raised €4.9m in pre-seed funding to develop technology that repurposes byproducts from electrified steel furnaces into a ‘near-identical replacement’ for blast furnace slag, according to the company. The modular technology integrates into existing steel-making processes without disrupting operations or requiring high capital expenditure, reports UK Tech News. Cocoon targets a 50% replacement of cement in concrete, aiming to reduce emissions for producers. Initial tests are underway at a steel plant in northern England, followed by another in the US.
Cocoon CEO Eliot Brooks said "We’re turning a byproduct with little use into a valuable product that the market badly needs and can be easily integrated into existing supply chains. By repairing a broken link in the circular economy, Cocoon provides steel makers with a new revenue stream while meeting the low-carbon material needs of the concrete industry. For every 1t of Cocoon’s slag-based cementitious material used, 1t of CO₂ can be avoided."
Brooks hopes Cocoon's climate technology will be integrated into a pilot plant by late 2025.
UK: A steel and cement co-recycling process developed at the University of Cambridge has received US$2.9m in seed funding. Cambridge Electric Cement is utilising slag produced during the steelmaking process, which uses electric arc furnaces instead of blast furnaces, as clinker for cement. The researchers are conducting a US$8.4m trial called Cement 2 Zero to test the production process, aiming to produce 110t of recycled cement during the two-year program.
US: St Marys Cement won three national awards at the Slag Cement in Sustainable Concrete Awards 2023. The producer won the awards for supplying its slag cement for the construction of Wixom Assembly Park in Wixom, Michigan; of 333 North Water in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and of Excellerate Manufacturing in Appleton, Wisconsin.
New slag cement facility in Houston
10 April 2024US: Eagle Materials and Heidelberg Materials North America, through their joint venture Texas Lehigh Cement Company, will start up a new slag cement facility. The facility will be located in Houston, Texas and will start production in the summer of 2024. When completed, it will have a production capacity of 500,000t/yr. This is in addition to Texas Lehigh’s cement plant in Buda, Texas.
Netherlands: Ireland-based Ecocem has agreed a deal with Overslagbedrijf Moerdijk (OBM) to expand production and storage capacity at the company’s Moerdijk slag cement grinding plant. The project is intended to allow the unit to both produce and store the company’s advanced cement technology (ACT) product. It will quadruple the storage capacity for key materials at the site up to 40,000t. Ecocem has signed a long-term agreement to lease the site from OBM, who will manage the handling and storing materials on Ecocem’s behalf.
This expansion of the Moerdijk plant is part of Ecocem’s plans to expand its manufacturing and storage capacity to support the commercialisation of ACT across all its plants. It follows the expansion of its Dunkirk plant in France, which was announced in June 2023. These expansion plans will be supported by licencing and partnership strategies to accelerate availability and adoption of scalable low clinker cement at speed.
Conor O’Riain, Managing Director (Europe), at Ecocem, said: “We are increasing our capacity at all of our locations and our deal with OBM is a hugely important aspect of our expansion strategy. It will accelerate our ability to manufacture ACT our low clinker cement technology and make it available commercially by 2026. At the same time, we are actively pursuing licensing and partnership agreements in the construction industry to ensure the benefits of this technology are shared widely and we accelerate progress to Net Zero.”
In February 2024 Ecocem said that its ACT technology received an ETA (European Technical Assessment), which provides the technology with a route to full commercialisation by 2026.