Displaying items by tag: UK

Ireland: Ecocem Ireland has appointed Micheál McKittrick as its Managing Director for Ireland and the UK. His role involves the management of all aspects of the Irish and UK operations. McKittrick is a Chartered Engineer and graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He previously worked in several senior roles with Atkins Consulting Engineers.

Check out this great graph that the UK Mineral Products Association (MPA) released in its latest sustainable development report this week. It lays out where the MPA says the various direct and indirect costs come from climate change policies per tonne of cement.

Graph 1: The cumulative burden of direct and indirect cost of climate change policies on the cement sector (per tonne of cement). GBP£1 = Euro0.94 at time of writing. Source: MPA. 

If it’s correct then the two biggest contributors from carbon taxes on the price of cement in the UK arise from the Carbon Price Support (CPS) mechanism and the Renewable Obligation (RO). Between them the two policies account for around two-thirds of the carbon tax burden on the price of cement. Of note to an industry advocacy body like the MPA, both of these derive from local legislation and they could be changed or dispensed with separate to the Brexit negotiations to extricate the UK from the European Union that have just officially started.

The MPA then goes on to warn that these added costs could rise from GBP£3.24/t at present to GBP£4/t in 2020 and then the truly terrifying (to energy intensive manufacturers at least) GBP£17/t. Subsequently the MPA has flagged these potentially mounting costs as the biggest threat to the UK cement industry in the near future. Failure to act could mean more foreign imports, loss of jobs and damage to the security of supply. All very heavy stuff. The MPA’s warning was nicely timed to precede the UK government’s response to a consultation on another decarbonisation scheme, the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme. Here, the government is about to exempt high-energy users, including cement producers.

Essentially, the key message from the MPA’s report is that the cement sector is picking up but it is still below sales levels in 2007. At the same time it has made all these environmental improvements and, now, steadily tightening regulations threaten its future. Just compare this with the situation in the US where the Portland Cement Association (PCA) recently applauded President Donald Trump’s executive order to roll back environmental legislation from the Obama administration. Despite this it insisted that its members were committed to manufacturing products with a ‘minimal’ environmental footprint.

Funnily enough the MPA didn’t mention environmental issues when it released its updated Brexit priorities for the UK government. This is understandable given the graph above that suggests that the majority of the carbon costs on cement production come from UK legislation. However, sharing a land border with the EU south of Northern Ireland may give rise to all sorts of market skulduggery once any sort of post-Brexit deal becomes clear. And this doesn’t even take into account moving secondary cementitious materials about, like slag, or the UK’s international market in solid recovered fuels (SRF) and the like. Differences in UK and EU overall carbon costs on cement may start to have acute implications for producers in both jurisdictions as the negotiations build. In this atmosphere moves like Ireland’s Quinn Cement’s last month, to build a terminal on the UK side of the Irish border, make a lot of sense.

UK: Laurence Millington has been appointed the managing director of Vortex’s operations based from Darlington in the UK. He succeeds Travis Young, who managed the company’s international operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asian markets since 2008. Young will become the Executive Vice President of Marketing and Global Strategy at Vortex’s corporate headquarters in Kansas, US.

Millington has been employed with the company since 2009 and was promoted to the role of Sales Director, EMEA and Asia, in 2015. Young has been with the company since 2004. Founded in 1977, Vortex designs and manufactures valves and dustless loading equipment for handling dry bulk material in the mineral, chemical and food industries.

UK: Maximus Crushing & Screening has appointed Iain Herity as Sales Director for the South England Market. Herity previously worked for Extec in England, where he expanded the brand locally. Maximus Crushing & Screening manufactures crushing and screening equipment for a range of applications as well as providing spare parts. It was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Coalisland, Northern Ireland, UK.

Once again Ecocem has shone the torch this week for a rare thing within Europe these days: a growing cement company. Its latest project is an import terminal in Sweden, as part of a deal with Bolidan, which launched on 22 September 2016. This supports an arrangement to supply cement for the Boliden Garpenberg mine. The agreement also includes supply for the Boliden Tara Mines in Ireland.

This follows the announcement to build a new slag grinding plant in Dunkirk, France in early September 2016 and the opening of a new terminal in Runcorn, UK earlier in the year. The 1.4Mt/yr Dunkirk plant is a joint-venture with the steelmaker ArcelorMittal, intended to target markets in north of France and in the UK. Once complete it will join Ecocem’s growing collection of grinding units in Ireland, France and the Netherlands. The slag-cement producer operates a 0.35Mt/yr plant at Dublin, a 0.7Mt/yr plant at Fos in the south of France and a 0.35Mt/yr plant at Moerdijk under its subsidiary Orcem Netherlands.

The focus on the UK makes sense given that Ecocem said that it had made commitments to sell more product in the UK in its first year than its total domestic sales in 2016. This followed the situation where, prior to entering the British market, Ecocem had to stop taking orders in the short term due to demand. If this is actually the case then it is unsurprising to note that Ecocem is also building a second UK terminal at Sheerness at the mouth of the River Thames near to London. As an aside, Francis Flower bought the Scunthorpe ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) plant from Hanson Cement in mid-2015 after the local market regulator requested the sale.

As Charlie Zeynel, ZAG International, says in an interview to be published in the October 2016 issues of Global Cement Magazine, that supplementary cementitous materials, including slags, in cement blends has grown worldwide, particularly in Europe and Japan, where GGBS cement represents around 25% and 30% of cement sales respectively. Zeynel goes on to say that GGBS usage is set to rise in other parts of the world, particularly the US, but this helps to explain the market Ecocem is operating in within northern Europe.

Ecocem seems well aware of the potential for slag cements in the US because it is attempting to build a Euro45m grinding plant Vallejo, California under its Orcem Americas subsidiary. The process has so far been dogged by planning problems at the proposed site as well as organised local opposition, which does not want a new industrial plant in the neighbourhood and issues such as the increased traffic it would bring. The irony here is that Ecocem bills itself as an environmentally friendly cement producer. Yet even environmentally-friendly cement needs to be manufactured and taken to site.

To misquote Kermit the Frog: it’s not easy selling green cement. However, Ecocem’s progress in Europe is encouraging both in the UK and the wider area. Roll on the opening of the Sheerness terminal.

Find out more about Ecocem's operations here: www.ecocem.fr/en/

UK: Hanson Cement’s bulk products division has promoted John Doolan to key account manager and Neil Jackson has been appointed as field sales manager. Doolan and Jackson will report to Mark Hickingbottom, the recently appointed national commercial director – bulk cement.

Doolan, who has worked for Hanson Cement for a number of years in different commercial roles, will work closely with Hanson’s key account customers to create and deliver strategic plans. He will also develop internal and external relations to carry out the company’s vision of outstanding customer service.

Jackson, previously Hanson’s area sales manager for the Midlands, will focus on sales strategy across the bulk division. He will manage a team of five district sales managers and ensure that customers’ needs are placed at the centre of the business.

UK: John King Chains has appointed John Wilson as its Chain Division Account Manager. Wilson is a production engineer with 20 years of business development. He brings practical understanding of engineering processes and experience with leading Conveyor Chain manufacturers to the company.

UK: Hanson Cement has appointed Mark Hickingbottom as its national commercial director for bulk cement and Andy Simpson as its national commercial director – packed. The appointments follow the recent retirement of commercial director Keith Ellis.

Hickingbottom has sales and marketing experience within Hanson’s bulk cement team, as well as a degree in Business Management. He is an associate member of The Institute of Concrete Technology and has spent over 12 years at Hanson delivering strategic plans across its product range.

Simpson, previously responsible for sales of all Hanson’s packed products, will build on developing trading relations with merchant customers as well as working with internal teams. He has over 15 years’ experience with Hanson and holds a degree in Business Studies.

UK: Quinn Building Products has appointed Lee Gillman as its new Sales and Marketing Director for the UK. Lee has worked for Quinn’s commercial team for three years. He has been promoted to lead on the management and development of core products within the Quinn portfolio in the UK. His experience working with merchants and contractors is intended to help the company continue to grow its client base on a national level.

Tata Steel put up its UK business for sale last week. The Indian multinational declared that enough was enough having reported losses of over Euro2.5bn in the territory over five years. Non-UK readers may well wonder what the fuss is about. UK crude steel production comprised 10.9Mt in 2015 or about 0.7% of global production according to World Steel Association data according to World Steel Association data. By contrast the country produced 9.3Mt of cement in 2014 or about 0.2% of world production according to CEMBUREAU data according to CEMBUREAU data.

The UK’s flailing steel industry is worth discussing here for two reasons. Firstly, any decline in the local iron and steel industry will have implications for the supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) market as slag levels vary. Secondly, the cement industry in Europe may have lessons for a fellow heavy industry facing capacity rationalisation.

UK ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS) production levels are low compared to total world supply. However, the UK Competition Commission certainly took note of the GGBS market in 2014. It was worried by LafargeTarmac’s and Hanson’s prominence in both the local GGBS supply chain and local cement production. At that time it ordered the HeidelbergCement subsidiary Hanson to sell one of its slag grinding plants to increase competition in the supply chain for GGBS. A GGBS plant in Scunthorpe was eventually sold to Francis Flowers in July 2015.

The general point here is that a Tata sale of its UK operations could have ramifications for the UK GGBS sector as existing deals are renegotiated following the shakeup. It would be even worse for the local slag market if any of the plants closed. No doubt the Competition Commission would also want to have its say to maintain some sort of competition in an already concentrated market. The UK cement market has been the bright spot in the multinational cement producers’ European regions in 2015. However, construction growth is starting to slow again with hints that the looming European Referendum in June 2016 may be having a negative effect. Uncertainty over GGBS supplies is not helpful in this atmosphere.

A wider lesson for other national cement industries looking in is that if Chinese steel continues flood the world market it will also hit the cement industry. Tata’s woes have been squarely blamed on China dumping its steel on the world market. Various jurisdictions promote the use of SCM cements and concrete for their low-carbon and sustainability properties. If local or existing GGBS supplies are hit then the cement industries may be penalised while the lawmakers and competition bodies play catch-up.

The wider point about heavy industry reducing its production capacity is one that the European cement industry will be well used to. Spain, for example, has seen its cement production drop from 55Mt in 2007 to 15Mt in 2014 according to Oficemen data. Alongside this, demand for cement has dropped to levels not seen since the 1960s. The European response has been to shut plants, sell assets and to merge companies.

The big question following the 2008 recession is whether ‘this’ is the new normal for mature construction markets. Eight years later global interest rates are still lagging and China’s economy is slowing down. All of the European infrastructure was built long ago meaning that steel and cement will only be required to maintain it. Luckily it looks likely that demand for SCMs should stay buoyant as industries are encouraged to decarbonise. The problem though is where the slag comes from. Oversupply in the short term in areas like Europe might be great for cement producers but as the iron and steel industries readjust to market reality there might be a hangover in store.