Displaying items by tag: UK
Breedon Group to enter US building materials business
14 August 2023US: UK-based Breedon Group says that it is seeking a ‘beachhead’ acquisition from which to build its own building materials business in the Eastern US. CEO Rob Wood said that the top 10 US building materials companies control 40% of the market there, compared to 75% of the UK market being controlled by five leading companies. The Times newspaper has reported that Breedon Group is due to join the UK’s FTSE 250 share index in September 2023. The producer noted the slow progress of proposed reforms to UK building standards, which it says would enable it to reduce its non-fuel CO2 emissions by 25%. It also said that the government may fail to co-adopt EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) measures, leaving the UK market more open for third-party exporters of cement and other heavy materials.
Wood said “The North American market has big growth opportunities, backed by the certainty of infrastructure investment.”
Australia: Alternative cement and concrete producers have welcomed a new Australian civil engineering standard that allows builders to use reduced-CO2 geopolymer concrete in infrastructure projects. Wagners, which produces Earth Friendly Concrete (EFC), said that the revision has removed on if its key barriers to wider market acceptance. EFC replaces 100% of cement with supplementary cementitious materials, including ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) and pulverised fly ash, by virtue of its binder technology. Wagners previously supplied EFC for the London Power Tunnels project in the UK, based on local technical approval-based building codes. The producer now expects a new standard like the Australian one to follow in the EU.
Canada/UK: Carbon Upcycling has raised US$26m in a Series A funding round. The clean tech company says that the funding will support its construction of planned carbon capture systems at CRH's Mississauga cement plant in Canada and Cemex UK's Rugby cement plant in the UK. Carbon Upcycling’s technology injects captured CO2 into industrial byproducts and minerals to produce supplementary cementitious materials. BDC Capital and Climate Investment led the funding round, with strategic investments from Cemex Ventures, CRH and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures.
Carbon Upcycling chief executive officer Apoorv Sinha said "Closing this round is a major milestone on the road to becoming the most impactful carbon tech company of this decade.” He continued “Over the next year, our mission is to demonstrate our technology's versatility, scalability and operational elegance. Significant, cost-effective decarbonisation potential in the cement industry is possible without a green premium.”
Mexico-based Cemex first invested in Carbon Upcycling via its venture capital unit Cemex Ventures in February 2022. Its said “Cemex is committed to supporting decarbonisation for the built environment, and our follow-on investment in Carbon Upcycling demonstrates such ambition. Carbon Upcycling provides a scalable solution that effectively reduces the carbon footprint of cement. Increasing the supply and use of cementitious materials aligns with Cemex’s goals of reducing CO2 emissions and becoming fully net-zero by 2050”
The collaboration between Carbon Upcycling and Cemex dates to early 2020, and work towards a commercial-scale plant at the Rugby cement plant commenced in June 2022. The project will target a capture capacity of 1600t/yr, and has secured US$2.96m in government funding from UK Research and Innovation. Cemex says that it will subsequently roll out further CO2 mitigation projects in partnership with Carbon Upcycling at cement plants across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Mexico and the US.
UK: Heidelberg Materials subsidiary Hanson UK successfully replaced a 130t section of the kiln at its 1Mt/yr Ribblesdale cement plant in Lancashire earlier in 2023. The section was 22m long, 4.6m in diameter and ran at a 4° angle. Contractor Ainscough Crane Hire used its heaviest, 800t lattice boom crane, and brought the project from acceptance to completion in 18 months. Engineering firm Grayton was Hanson's service partner for the upgrade.
Breedon Group’s sales rise in first half of 2023
26 July 2023UK: Breedon Group recorded sales of US$958m during the first half of 2023, up by 11% year-on-year from US$866m during the first half of 2022. The producer’s cement sales rose by 18% in value, despite an 8.3% drop in sales volumes to 1.1Mt from 1.2Mt. Its earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) fell by 5% to US$80.2m.
UK: Private equity firm BGF has invested US$4.39m in carbon capture specialist Nuada. Nuada, formerly called MOF Technologies, is currently supplying its technology for a project at Buzzi’s Monselice cement plant in Italy. The system applies metal-organic framework (MOF) filters and vacuum swing absorption. Other partners on the project include Cementir Holding and Heidelberg Materials.
Nuada’s co-chief executive officer Conor Hamill said “There is no net zero without carbon capture. However, incumbent solutions are notoriously costly and energy intensive. Investment from BGF will further catalyse the scale-up and deployment of our technology, ensuring we are primed to efficiently decarbonise heavy industries.”
BGF’s investment is an extension to Nuada’s US$5.81m Series A funding round, which was co-led by the Clean Growth Fund and Barclays’ Sustainable Impact Capital portfolio.
UK: Aggregate Industries subsidiary Lafarge Cement has begun installing a new Euro10m bag filter system at its 1Mt/yr Cauldon cement plant in Staffordshire. The project is due for delivery in early 2024. The system consists of 2080 fabric bags to remove particulates from the plant's flue gases. It will replace the plant's existing electrostatic precipitation system. The company says that the system will triple the removal rate of particulates, reducing them to 10mg/Nm3 from 30mg/Nm3.
Cauldon cement plant manager Thierry Davila said “The installation of the new system will help us provide a step change in our efficiency and effectiveness, and optimise kiln performance. The plant and our operations will hugely benefit from up-to-date technology, which will result in more consistent running of the site, but also it will improve environmental performance and benefit the local community. The new filter system will mean less dust and emissions into the atmosphere and a reduction in pollutants, which is hugely positive and in line with our approach to sustainability.”
Imperial College London team secures government funding for carbon negative cement development
20 July 2023UK: A team at Imperial College London has won a US$1.27m grant for its research into developing carbon negative cement from silica. The research won the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)’s Carbon Capture, Usage & Storage (CCUS) Innovation 2.0 competition. The Imperial team sources its silica from natural olivine. It says that the compound behaves in the same way as other supplementary cementitious materials. Meanwhile, magnesia from the decomposition of the olivine can serve as a carbon sink in the form of magnesium carbonate. It, in turn, could serve as a raw material for concrete block production.
The DESNZ’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, of which the CCUS Innovation 2.0 competition is a part, has a budget of US$1.29bn.
UK: A court has fined CRH subsidiary Tarmac US$516,000 for failing to ensure the provision of moveable guards fitted to an interlocking device connected to a rotary mill at its Dunbar cement plant between January 2019 and April 2021. The East Lothian Courier newspaper has reported that the failure resulted in a worker’s loss of fingers after he came into contact with the unit’s rotary valve on 30 April 2021. The producer has until 20 September 2023 to pay the fine.
It’s been a good week for graphene usage in the cement and concrete industries, with a trial set to take place at Breedon Group’s Hope cement plant and the inclusion of four graphene projects in the Global Cement & Concrete Association’s (GCCA) shortlist for its second second Innovandi Open Challenge.
The trial at the Hope cement plant was scheduled to take place on 28 June 2023, alongside First Graphene, Morgan Sindall Construction and the University of Manchester. The plan was to use 1.2t of First Graphene’s PureGraph product by testing different dispersion methods and dosage rates. The graphene was going to be prepared as a grinding aid and then added to cement grinding mill feed. Dispersion into the cement production line was planned to occur over a 24-hour period using traditional grinding aid dosage lines, with minimal operational or mechanical change required to the existing plant.
The cement produced was then going to be validated by Breedon’s quality control team to assess its performance enhancement. Overall the trial was going to produce around 2000t of graphene-enhanced cement during the trial. This cement will then be passed to Morgan Sindall Construction for real-world construction demonstrations. First Graphene reckoned that the trial was going to produce the largest volume of graphene-enhanced cement manufactured to date.
First Graphene and the other partners haven’t released any information yet on how the trial went. However, the results will be used to build on data obtained from smaller scale trials previously conducted at a concrete processing laboratory in the UK.
Elsewhere, the 15 projects shortlisted by the GCCA, as part of the Innovandi Open Challenge, were set to pitch their ideas for access to the scheme. The benefits of inclusion on the scheme include access to industry plants, laboratories, networks and the expertise and infrastructure of the manufacturer members of the association. 70 applications were made for the second Innovandi round. The first round in 2021 was focused on carbon capture and utilisation and two projects eventually made it to the pilot stage. This time the emphasis is on low-carbon concrete.
The graphene-related contenders for Innovandi in the current round include Nano Crete, Nanospan India, SeaMix and Versarien Graphene. All four companies are promoting concrete admixtures that use graphene. Given the brief for this Innovandi round, these projects are focused on concrete production as opposed to the trial at the Hope cement plant, mentioned above, which is testing graphene addition during cement grinding.
Nanospan India, for example, is promoting its Spanocrete product. It says that its admixture acts as a superplasticizer and accelerator, allowing for reduced cement and water consumption, a shorter curing cycle and an increase in compressive strength. US-based SeaMix (part of MEP Group), meanwhile, has developed its own concrete admixture that uses chopped basalt fibres and graphene. It too offers greater compressive strength and reduced cement consumption for the resulting concrete. However, it also allows for the use of any non-potable water source, a compelling selling point for construction companies trying to minimise the use of drinking water.
It is early days yet for the application of graphene in the cement and concrete sectors. Graphene was first produced at the University of Manchester in 2004. Just under 20 years later and various products are emerging with test projects slowly gathering pace and even commercial applications, such as SeaMix and others, building up their portfolios. Various challenges such as reduced workability, the high cost of graphene or even concerns about simply handling graphene get raised in discussions about the wider adoption of graphene-based admixtures but so far these do not seem insurmountable. We await the outcomes of the trial at Hope and the selections of the second round of Innovandi.