Displaying items by tag: US

US: Amrize has launched a 'Made in America' label for its cement to offer builders ‘the guarantee of American manufacturing and quality, while supporting American jobs and local communities.’ The label signifies that all aspects of the cement are made in the US, including all of its raw materials.

Roll-out of the label will begin at Amrize's flagship cement plants at Ste. Genevieve, (Missouri), Midlothian (Texas), Devil's Slide (Utah), Holly Hill (South Carolina) and Portland (Colorado). The company, already the largest in the US by installed capacity, is investing US$700m in its cement plants during 2025.

“Our new 'Made in America' label offers our customers the confidence that their product complies with US standards for quality, performance and reliability, with local-to-local service,” said Jaime Hill, President of Amrize Building Materials. “We are proud of the role our solutions play in building America and are committed to advancing the US building industry, supporting American jobs and serving as the partner of choice for the professional builders of America.”

US: The American Cement Association (ACA) has elected Monica Manolas as the chair of its board of directors. Manolas is the Region President at Ash Grove East. She is the first woman in the ACA history to be elected to this position. David Loomes, president of the Cement Segment at Quikrete Cement, was appointed as vice chair.

Manolas previously worked as the president of Suwannee American Cement from 2018 to 2022. Before this, she held roles at Cemex eventually becoming Vice President Cement Sales. She began her career in the cement sector working for Rinker in the 1990s. Manolas holds a master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering and a master’s in business administration (MBA) from the University of Florida.

The FLSmidth Cement divestment story took a historic turn this week with the renaming of the company to Fuller Technologies. The sale of the company to private equity firm Pacific Avenue Capital Partners completed on 31 October 2025. Pacific Avenue then publicly rebranded the firm a few days later in early November 2025.

FLSmidth Cement was sold as a complete operating business with all the intellectual property (IP), technology, employees, manufacturing facilities, sales and service organisations included. For more on this read Global Cement Weekly #716. The decision to change the name to Fuller Technologies harks back to the history of FLSmidth and related companies. Pennsylvania-based Fuller Company dates back to the mid-19th Century with the formation of the McKee-Fuller Foundry Company. Fuller Company later emerged in the 1920s when it started selling the Fuller-Kinyon pump, a pneumatic screw pump that simplified the handling of pulverised materials. This product went on to become well known for cement conveying. In 1959 Fuller acquired Traylor Engineering. It was then later acquired by FLSmidth in 1990.

What is interesting here is that Pacific Avenue has chosen to emphasise the US industrial heritage of its acquisition. Looking at the numbers last year offers one answer as to why. Purely in economic terms FLSmidth Cement’s revenue share broke down as follows in 2024: US - 24%; Denmark - 14%; India - 11%; Indonesia - 9%; Brazil - 8%; Türkiye - 7%; and China - 7%. The remainder came from export sales elsewhere.

Both Fuller and FLSmidth are well known brands in the cement sector though. One is American and the other is European. Focusing on the US brand name is a canny move given the increasing dominance of China-based equipment suppliers to the global cement market from the 2010s onwards. One of the few markets that the Chinese equipment suppliers have not made inroads into is the US. Whilst they may have supplied smaller pieces of equipment, major orders have remained the preserve of western companies. Or at least publicly they have. Partly this is because few new lines have been built recently. Yet, the three new clinker production lines in the US in recent years - Heidelberg Materials’ plant in Mitchell, Indiana, National Cement’s plant in Ragland, Alabama and GCC’s plant at Odessa, Texas - had major equipment supplied by either thyssenkrupp or KHD. Both companies are German, although KHD is majority-owned by a Chinese entity.

Western cement multinationals have focused on the US as they have retreated from the east. Key examples of this include CRH’s acquisition of Ash Grove in 2018 and the spin-off of Amrize by Holcim in 2025. Trade protectionism has then crept in under the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 and the more overt tariffs introduced by the Trump administration in 2025. The US cement market is the third largest in the world and the fundamentals for the local construction materials market look good in the medium term. With carbon taxes in the US looking like a distant prospect, it’s a fair bet that more clinker production lines are likely to be required before too long. Protectionism and demand suggest that an equipment supplier to the cement sector with a historically American sounding name and long US-roots might just have an edge. Manufacturing facilities based in the US could also help reduce the cost of tariffs too.

Of course, given that Pacific Avenue is a private equity firm, it may be preparing for a future carve-out or other forms of financial engineering by building up the perceived value of its asset. Or maybe somebody at Pacific Avenue (or elsewhere) simply likes their American industrial history!

Anyway, welcome back to Fuller Technologies and best of luck. And, lest anyone forget, it remains a multinational company with offices in Europe, India, China, Brazil, Thailand, the UAE… and the US.

US: Eagle Materials reported ‘record’ revenues of US$639m for the second quarter of the 2026 financial year, ending on 30 September 2025. Net earnings were US$137m and adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were US$233m. Cement revenues, including joint venture and intersegment sales, rose by 9% to US$385m, while operating earnings increased by 3% to US$120m, partially offset by lower cement prices. Cement sales volumes grew by 8% to 2.2Mt.

President and CEO Michael Haack said “Eagle's portfolio of businesses continued to perform well during the quarter, generating record revenues of $639m. Our cement sales volume was up by 8% as demand remained strong, driven primarily by federal, state and local spending on public infrastructure projects and continued elevated spending across private non-residential construction end markets.”

He added “We enter the second half of fiscal 2026 well-positioned to capitalise on near-and-longer-term growth opportunities, including the future recovery of the housing market, given our strong balance sheet and continued investments in upgrading our assets and network. During the second quarter, we continued to make good progress on modernising and expanding our Mountain Cement plant, and the project remains on time and within budget. This investment will lower the plant's cost structure, improve its reliability and expand its production capabilities, which will strengthen our already low-cost competitive position.”

US: Sublime Systems has appointed Rob Davies as its CEO. He succeeds Leah Ellis in the post. Ellis, who co-founded the company in 2020 says she will remain “actively engaged.”

Davies joined Sublime Systems in 2024 as an advisor and became its Chief Operating Officer (COO) at the start of 2025. He previously held the position of COO of 6K from 2022 to 2024. He worked for Cabot Corporation in a variety of roles from 2012 to 2022, eventually becoming its VP Global Manufacturing - Reinforcement Materials. Earlier in his career he was the president of Geocycle in the US from 2006 to 2010. He was the plant manager of cement plant in Portland, Colorado for Holcim from 2003 to 2006. Before this, he worked for Lafarge in the UK and Blue Circle in a number of positions including UK Technical Director and UK Operations Officer, and he managed a number of cement plants. Davies holds a master’s degree in mineral process engineering and a master of business administration (MBA) from the University of Warwick.

US: Amrize reported third-quarter 2025 revenue of US$3.68bn, up by 6.6% from US$3.45bn in 2024, driven by strong infrastructure demand and improving commercial markets. The company’s building materials revenue grew by 8.7%, supported by higher volumes in aggregates and shingles, while adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) reached US$1.07bn. Net income was US$543m, down slightly from US$552m in 2024. Cement sales volumes rose by 6% to 7.1Mt during the third quarter.

Chair and CEO Jan Jenisch said “Together, we delivered strong revenue growth of 6.6% and free cash flow generation of US$674m, up by US$221m. Our Building Materials business had strong sales with increased customer demand, while margin was affected by a temporary equipment outage in our cement network. This quarter, we made progress across our key organic growth investments and kicked off new projects to expand production and improve efficiency.”

Mexico: GCC reported sales of US$1.05bn in the first nine months of 2025, up by 2% year-on-year from US$1.03bn. The company’s US sales rose by 8% year-on-year to US$784m, while sales in Mexico fell by 13% to US$265m. Cost of sales rose by 9% year-on-year, resulting in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of US$349m.

CEO Enrique Escalante said “While the third quarter of 2025 unfolded in a mixed environment, GCC executed with discipline and delivered revenue growth, underpinned by strong performance in our US concrete business.” Looking ahead to the current, fourth quarter of 2025, Escalante said “Our focus remains on rigorous cost control, plant reliability and investing to strengthen our network, supporting our long-term strategy to compound value into 2026.”

US: Amrize has joined the American Cement Association (ACA), underscoring its commitment to advance the US building industry, according to the producer. Amrize Building Materials President Jaime Hill specified ‘American ingenuity, innovation, advanced production and jobs’ as areas for collaboration in the association.

ACA President and CEO Mike Ireland said "We are thrilled that Amrize has joined the ACA and will be contributing to our efforts to advance this industry's mission and objectives in the USA. From companies operating numerous plants, to those with one or two cement facilities — our shared goal is to produce the best materials America can provide."

The ACA’s existing members are committed to full decarbonisation by 2050. Amrize has yet to publish a sustainability strategy since its spin-off from Switzerland-based Holcim on 23 June 2025.

US: Researchers at Princeton University have developed cementitious composites with 17-times greater toughness and 19-times greater ductility than ordinary Portland cement (OPC). The materials are laser-processed into a grooved structure and laminated with elastomeric polyvinyl siloxane interlayers. The design is inspired by the nacre inner lining of seashells, also known as mother-of-pearl. This results in the toughening mechanisms of interlayer deformation, tortuous crack propagation and crack bridging. The composites have fracture toughness of 73.7MPa.mm^1/2, without any reduction in strength compared to OPC.

This week we covered Capitol Aggregates’ order of an alternative fuels (AF) system from ATS Walter USA. The story is notable because it is an AF project for a cement plant in the US. Thermal substitution rates (TSR) of AF in the US have typically been lower than in the European Union (EU), but this could be changing.

The order was confirmed publicly at the end of September 2025. The subsidiary of ATS Group will supply a solid AF metering and conveying system to the integrated plant in San Antonio, Texas. The system will include a moving floor receiving station, chain belt conveyors, a screen and a separator, dosing equipment, an air-supported belt conveyor and an injection system. ATS Walter says that, by the end of 2026, it will have supplied four AF projects in North America. As an aside, Capitol Aggregates also mentioned in the press release that it “...views sustainability as essential to long-term success.” This sentiment is backed up by the fact that the plant built an early commercial carbon capture unit in the 2010s!

Data from the American Cement Association (ACA) revealed that the AF TSR in the US reached 16% in 2023 from 14.6% in 2022. This compares to a 58% rate in the EU in 2022. It is also worth noting that, in the US the share of gas in the cement industry energy mix rose from 25% to 31%. The ACA attributed this change to a falling price of gas. It added that the coal and petroleum share of the fuel mix fell to its lowest level since 1974. The point here is that the energy mix used by cement plants changes over time regardless of sustainability trends.

Research by LEK Consulting estimated that 60 of the 87 cement plants in the US had a TSR of below 20% in 2023. 39 of these were believed to have a TSR of under 5%. It summarised that hazardous waste and tyre-derived fuels have tended to predominate in the US compared to refuse-derived fuel (RDF) in the EU and elsewhere. LEK went on to say that its research suggested that a quarter of cement plants in the US were likely to install an AF feeding system in 2024 or 2025. This is likely to be the highest rate of AF uptake in the US cement sector to date.

The ACA reckons in its sustainability roadmap that with the right policies and regulations the country’s AF TSR could reach as high as 50%. Its policy suggestions include: reduce permitting barriers to use of so-called non-hazardous secondary materials (NHSM) fuels in industrial manufacturing; treating waste-to-industrial energy as valid recycling use; building robust recycling infrastructure and markets that incentivise the use of non-recycled material streams as industrial AF; community education and support for use of low carbon AF; and increasing the use of NHSMs to divert these materials from landfills. This can be mostly summarised as supporting the uptake of RDF through better permitting and building up the infrastructure and markets for it. LEK also identified the same issue. It called for the adoption of landfill reduction targets or zero-landfill policies by commercial and industrial waste generators. However, LEK believes that, even if this were done, current sources of high-quality RDF in the US would not be able to increase the TSR to even 20%.

News from Capitol Aggregates and others about AF projects in the US are encouraging. If LEK’s research is indicative then a step change in the TSR in the country’s cement sector is already underway. The beauty of AF usage is that it can both potentially cut fuel costs and reduce CO₂ emissions. It won’t be easy as new supply chains for refuse byproducts are built and utilised. Yet, as the ACA is advocating, it is possible and worthwhile.

The 1st CemFuels Asia Conference will take place in Bangkok in February 2026 and the 19th Global CemFuels Conference will take place in September 2026 in Geneva