Displaying items by tag: UK

UK: A new study by the Mineral Products Association (MPA), supported by Innovate UK, has found that incorporating reclaimed clays and finely ground brick powder into cement production can reportedly lower the embodied CO₂ by up to 3%. The materials are used as calcined clay in the cement production process. The project aims to offer a viable alternative to fly ash and ground granulated blast-furnace slag, as resources diminish due to the steel industry's decarbonisation efforts.

MPA director Diana Casey said "Using discarded bricks and reclaimed clays will not only lower carbon and reduce the amount of materials sent to landfill but has the potential to create a whole new market if these clays become widely used in the construction industry, helping to retain economic value in the UK, secure jobs and attract investment."

Ireland: Sabancı Holding subsidiary Çimsa Çimento has signed a share purchase agreement to acquire a 95% stake in Mannok. Reuters has reported the total enterprise value of Mannok as €330m. In determining the eventual purchase price, Çimsa Çimento says that it will make adjustments for any debt or related items. The deal marks the group’s entry into Ireland and the UK, where Mannok also distributes cement.

Mannok chair Adrian Barden said "Çimsa and the broader Sabancı group are a superb fit for Mannok as new long-term strategic owners, with excellent sustainability credentials and know-how. The group is steeped in cement manufacture and building products and, as a diverse conglomerate, it also has interests in retail and food, important sectors for our packaging business. We are very pleased that Sabancı has endorsed the Mannok brand and has agreed to back local management's plans to accelerate our sustainability and growth ambitions.”

Çimsa Çimento CEO Umut Zenar said "We believe this agreement marks the beginning of a new era for Mannok. At Çimsa, our model is to back great local businesses and management, and we look forward to creating new employment opportunities in the region as we support Mannok's continuing growth and sustainability ambitions. Given its border location, Mannok has unique access to UK and EU markets, and we see it as a key stepping stone in expanding our footprint in Western Europe. For Mannok staff, joining the Sabancı ecosystem will also present a world of opportunity for career development and progression and exposure to innovation in product development, sustainability and digitisation."

UK: Material Evolution will launch the UK's ‘largest ultra-low carbon cement plant’ in Wrexham in October 2024, reports the Construction Enquirer. The new facility will produce 150,000t/yr of a cement that emits up to 85% less embodied CO₂ than Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), according to the company. Material Evolution is the driving force behind the €9m Mevocrete project, funded by government-led Innovate UK, and utilises byproducts from the steel industry. Business co-founder Liz Gilligan said that Material Evolution aims to remove one gigatonne of carbon by 2040, while replacing OPC as the ‘go-to’ product for UK construction. The company plans to replicate and scale its production across the UK and Europe.

Chief science officer at Material Evolution and co-lead of the ‘Mevocrete’ project, David Hughes, said "Cement is a binder and what we’re looking at here is creating a net zero embodied carbon cement which is inherently more durable, which means our houses, infrastructure and transport highways would be transformed on mass industry scale, really tapping into a local and national picture of a net zero environment.”

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: Following a successful trial in mid 2024, Aggregate Industries will deploy the ‘first electric cement truck in the UK’, according to the company, with more to follow. The trucks will be based at the Cauldon cement plant, alongside the company’s existing fleet of 60 trucks. The vehicles are equipped with a 600kW motor to deliver both bulk and bagged cement. Aggregate Industries has partnered with Lomas Distribution, its contracted haulier for the UK domestic market.

Gareth Durnall, general manager at Lomas Distribution, said "We are excited to work together with Aggregate Industries in adopting sustainable practices."

Steve Curley, Aggregate Industries’ managing director of cement division, said "Introducing electric trucks in our operations marks a pivotal shift towards efficiency and sustainability and is all part of our ongoing effort to decarbonise the business and contribute to our own net zero Strategy."

UK: Jon Prichard has resigned as the CEO of the Mineral Products Association (MPA) with immediate effect. He announced in late July 2024 that he was stepping down for personal reasons. He started in the post in October 2022. The MPA has established an executive management committee (EMC) as an interim measure to take responsibility for the ongoing and effective management of the organisation. This will be chaired by Lex Russell in his capacity as MPA chair, supported by MPA’s two executive directors, Diana Casey and Mark Russell, and MPA advisor Chris Leese.

Heidelberg Materials inaugurated a plant near Katowice in Poland this week for separating and sorting demolition concrete. This gives us the chance to catch up with the state of construction and demolition waste (CDW) for the cement and concrete sectors and consider the differences between the strategies of the multinational heavy building materials companies in Europe and the US.

The new CDW recycling unit has a capacity of up to 100t/hr. Heidelberg Materials says that it is the “first company in the industry to introduce high-quality, selective concrete separation at this scale.” The company is using its proprietary ReConcrete process to sort out fractions from the CDW including sand, gravel and, finest of all, recycled concrete paste (RCP). That last one is particularly valuable because it can either be used as an alternative raw material for clinker production by replacing limestone or as a secondary cementitious material. Heidelberg Materials is also promoting the potential use of RCP as a carbon sink over the lifetime of a concrete structure via ‘enforced carbonation.’ The RCP is exposed to raw exhaust gases from cement production allowing it to both mineralise CO₂ and act as a clinker substitute. To further explore this option Heidelberg Materials is building an industrial pilot at its Górażdże plant to test the concept with construction expected by the end of 2024.

Both Holcim and Heidelberg Materials have been visibly busy buying up more aggregate recycling companies over the last nine months since Global Cement Weekly last reported on CDW. Holcim acquired Germany-based Mendiger Basalt in January 2024, Switzerland-based Cand-Landi Group and UK-based Land Recovery in June 2024, and Belgium-based Mark Desmedt in July 2024. It also said at the start of the year that it aimed to conclude 15 - 20 new acquisitions in 2024 with a focus on CDW companies in Belgium, France, Germany and the UK. Heidelberg Materials bought UK-based B&A Group in May 2024 and US-based Highway Materials and Aaron Materials in July 2024. Holcim has set itself a target of recycling 12Mt/yr of CDW by 2030 by using its ECOCycle technology. It reported 8.4Mt/yr in 2023 and hopes to reach 10Mt/yr in 2024.

Some of the recycling companies mentioned above are based in the US but the pace of CDW acquisitions have generally been faster in Europe. In the US, meanwhile, the heavy building materials producers have tended to buy more general aggregates companies. Heidelberg Materials announced on 30 July 2024 that it was buying Albany-based Carver Sand & Gravel. This followed the companies mentioned above and Texas-based Victory Rock, also in July 2024. Holcim said in its first half-year results for 2024 that it had ‘executed’ a bolt-on acquisition in the US that would strengthen its aggregate and ready-mixed concrete business. Cemex also revealed a joint-venture agreement with sand and gravel supplier Couch Aggregates and marine bulk product distributor Premier Holdings in July 2024. It said that the move was part of its “ongoing strategy to accelerate growth in the US and expand its aggregates business.” A big recent deal in the sector was the merger of the US-based operations of Summit Materials and Cementos Argos that completed in January 2024. Although at the time we concentrated on the cement-side of the transaction, it also gave the organisation just under 5Bnt of aggregate reserves.

It may be a stretch to call what’s going on here a trend. Yet the large heavy building materials companies do appear to be acting differently in the US and Europe with regards to aggregate companies and CDW recyclers. The main drivers here are the strength of the US market and the stricter environmental legislation in Europe. Higher population density in Europe compared to the US may also be playing a part in the differences in speed of adoption between the two markets. The ongoing Holcim spinoff demonstrates the differences between the two market regions in bold terms. In short, the company has decided to split itself in two in order to meet the different needs of each market. As for CDW, the trickle of acquisitions keep coming and momentum is steadily building.

UK: Aggregate Industries has appointed Tom Murphy as Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) Project Manager at the Cauldon Cement Plant in Staffordshire. He will play a leading role in managing the introduction of a carbon capture unit at the site.

Murphy joins the subsidiary of Holcim from Tata Chemical Europe where he was the Plant Manager for a first-of-a-kind post combustion carbon capture plant. Prior to that, he worked as an Energy Chemical Engineer for Tata and as a Research Engineer for the Materials Processing Institute. He holds an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of Manchester.

The CCUS project at the Cauldon Cement Plant is part of the wider Peak Cluster partnership, which was formed by cement and lime producers around the Derbyshire Peak District region and aims to cut collective annual carbon emissions by 3Mt/yr by 2030. More than 0.6t/yr is targeted to be cut at Cauldon. The project is being led by Progressive Energy. It aims to capture and transport CO₂ emissions from Cauldon and other partner plants before sequestering them beneath the eastern Irish Sea in one of the storage options which the project has access to, including the Liverpool Bay CCS or the Morecambe Net Zero project.

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.

UK: Breedon Group has announced its results for the six-month period ending on 30 June 2024. The company recorded revenues of US$984m, up by 3% year-on-year from US$956m in the same period in 2023. Net income was US$44m, representing a year-on-year decline of 28%. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) stood at US$133m, slightly less than US$134m reported previously.

Breedon Group anticipates growth in ‘all of its markets’ from 2025 as economic and political landscapes stabilise.