Displaying items by tag: US

US: Vulcan Materials has elected Michael Wilson to its board of directors. He will serve on the Audit and Safety, Health and Environmental Affairs Committees of the construction aggregates producer. Wilson is the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Ingevity Corporation and a member of Ingevity's board of directors. Ingevity is a global supplier of specialty chemicals, carbon materials and engineered polymers. With the addition of Wilson, Vulcan's 10-member board consists of nine independent directors.

Germany/US: Germany’s Baltrader and US-based United Bulk Carriers (UBC) have launched the Cement Carrier Alliance (CCA) to cooperate the marketing of their respective fleets of pneumatic cement carriers. The aim of the deal is to offer a wider range of vessel sizes to existing and new customers while enhancing marketing to current and developing markets. The two companies operate 15 self-discharging cement carriers with a range of 3000 – 15,000DWT vessels.

Both companies will remain independent entities each operating out of their own offices while offering continuity in their customer relationships. CCA will be jointly represented by the UBC office in Philadelphia and the Baltrader office in Hamburg.

US: Lehigh Cement has received permission from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for a US$600m upgrade to its integrated Mitchell plant. IDEM's Office of Air Quality granted a modification to the unit’s air permit in late June 2019 following a period of public comment, according to the Times-Mail newspaper. The subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement plans to increases the production capacity at the plant to 2.8Mt/yr from 0.8Mt/yr. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2020 and completion of the new plant is anticipated by the end of 2022. Once finished the upgrades will create 52 new jobs at the unit.

US: Hawaii’s Department of Transportation plans to use carbon-injected concrete for its new projects. This will include a new structure to protect a highway tunnel from rockfalls, according to Reuters. The Department of Transportation was testing CO₂-injected concrete on an access road project with CarbonCure Technologies in May 2019. The latest decision follows a resolution by state legislators that city administrators ‘consider’ using CO₂-injected concrete in city and county infrastructure where concrete is used.

In late June 2019 CarbonCure announced that its had formed a partnership with HC&D Ready Mix, a local concrete producer, to use its CO₂-injected concrete process. It is the second deal with a concrete producer in the state that CarbonCure has arranged.

US: Mississippi Lime Company has executed a definitive agreement to acquire Southern Lime, the lime business of Covia based in Calera, Alabama. No value for the transaction has been disclosed. The deal is also subject to regulatory approval.

Southern Lime supplies high-calcium quicklime and hydrated lime products to customers in the Southeastern US, and across a range of end uses and applications. The Calera operation will increase Mississippi Lime’s production facilities to nine locations, supported by a network of distribution sites throughout the country. The business will be fully integrated into existing Mississippi Lime operations.

Turkey: Turkish Cement Manufacturers’ Association (TÇMB) chairman Nihat Özdemir says that the local industry needs to focus on exports rather than for local consumption. He made the comments at a meeting between the TÇMB and the Cement Industry Employers' Association (ÇEİS) hosted by Deloitte, according to the Dünya newspaper. Exports grew by 46% year-on-year in the first half of 2019 to a value of US$444m driven by deliveries to the US, Ghana and Israel. ÇEİS chairman Suat Çalbıyık called on the Turkish State Railway company to abolish its fixed tariff for goods moved up to 150km to further support the industry.
TÇMB data shows that local consumption fell by 24% year-on-year to 5.12Mt in the first quarter of 2019 from 6.74Mt in 2018. Domestic sales fell by 34% to 3.98Mt from 5.99Mt. Exports rose by 37% to 0.94Mt from 0.68Mt. Local decline in the market has been blamed on a weak housing market and a slowdown in the Turkish economy.

Charah Solutions has been steadily building up its fly ash distribution business in recent years with an eye on the supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) market. This week it opened the third of its new series of SCM grinding plants, at Oxnard in California, US. The unit sticks out because it is focusing on grinding natural pozzolans. The plant will receive natural pozzolan by truck and rail and then use Charah’s patented grinding technology to produce pozzolan marketed under its MultiPozz brand. The previous plants in this series mentioned natural pozzolans but this is the first to promote it explicitly.

The change is potentially telling because global demand for granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) outstrips supply. Both performance benefits and environmental regulations are pushing this. It’s a similar situation for fly ash, also driven by trends to close coal-fired power stations in some countries. As Charles Zeynel of SCM trading firm ZAG International explained in the March 2019 issue of Global Cement Magazine, “...volcanic pozzolans are a potential SCM of the future. This is gaining traction, but it’s slow progress at the moment. This will be the answer for some users in some locations.”

The problem though is that natural pozzolans are down the list of preferred SCMs for their chemical properties after silica fume, GBFS and fly ash. The first is expensive but the latter two were traditionally cheap and easy to obtain if a cement or concrete producer had access to a source or a distribution network. Natural pozzolans are very much subject to variations in availability.

It’s no surprise then that Charah is promoting natural pozzolans in a Californian plant given that state’s environmental stance. It’s unclear where Charah is sourcing their pozzolan from but they are not the only company thinking about this in the US. Sunrise Resources, for example, is working on the environmental permits for a natural pozzolan mine near Tonopah in Nevada. As it described in its company presentation, California and Nevada are the most affected states in the fly ash supply crisis because they are, “...at the end of the line when it comes to rail deliveries from power stations in central and eastern USA.” It also estimated that California used 0.9Mt of pozzolan in its cement production of which about 90% is fly ash. The state produced 9.6Mt in 2015. Other companies are also mining and distributing natural pozzolans in the US as the website for the National Pozzolan Association (NPA) lists. Although, if this line-up is comprehensive, then the field is still fairly select. Most of these companies are based in the west of the country.

One last thing to consider is that various groups are tackling a potential future lack of SCMs for the cement industry by making their own pozzolanic materials through the use of calcined clay. These groups include the Swiss-government backed LC3 project and Cementir’s Futurecem products. Using clay should bypass the supply issues with natural pozzolans but the cost of calcining it requires at the very least an investment to get started.

As concrete enthusiasts often point out, a variant of pozzolanic concrete was used by the Romans to build many of their iconic structures, some of which survive to the present day. To give the last word to the NPA, “What is old is new again: natural pozzolan is back!” If environmental trends continue and steel and coal plants continue to be shut then it might just be right.

US: Researchers from CalPortland have published a peer-reviewed study looking at the absorption or carbonation of CO₂ by buildings, pavements and structures made from concrete. The authors argue that this negative effect on CO₂ emissions is not being considered in global, national and regional greenhouse gas accounting methods. The paper calls for focused studies on CO₂ uptake in concrete within the context of its overall Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

“It is time to further examine the value of concrete in the built environment as a significant carbon sink,” said Allen Hamblen, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of CalPortland. “To do so accurately, we must specifically look at the net effects of CO₂ sequestration in concrete and evaluate all structures over their lifetime within a circular economy.”

The study looks at previous attempts to quantify the effect of concrete carbonation, notably using work by the Swedish Environmental Research Institute (SERI) that examined data from several European countries to develop practical models to gauge the extent of CO₂ uptake by concrete globally in the built environment. Different models estimated that 15 - 20% of CO₂ emissions from clinker production were reabsorbed over the lifetime of concrete structures.

US: Charah Solutions plans to open a grinding plant to make supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) from natural pozzolan at Oxnard in California. The unit will be accessible by truck and railway. It will sell pozzolan and other materials to concrete product manufacturers throughout south California.

The Oxnard plant will be operated in partnership with Diversified Minerals, a supplier and manufacturer of standard and custom blend cement and concrete products. It will receive natural pozzolan by truck and rail and then grind pozzolan marketed under the brand MultiPozz pozzolan. MultiPozz pozzolan will be distributed throughout Charah Solutions’ MultiSource materials network of more than 40 nationwide in the US with international sourcing and distribution.

“Fly ash is becoming more difficult to source in California, which is forcing the construction industry to look for viable alternatives. Natural pozzolan and other SCMs that meet ASTM specifications are generating very high interest. With Charah Solutions’ resources and DMI’s strategic partnership with the only active pozzolan mine in Southern California, we are both the closest and the first to bring these products to market,” said Jim Price, chief executive officer (CEO) of Diversified Minerals.

Colombia: Cemex Colombia has been accused by the news division of Caracol Televisión of allegedly making payments to the Juan Manuel Santos presidential campaign in 2014 in return for preferential treatment on construction contracts. Santos subsequently won the 2014 presidential election and served until 2018.

Sources, quoted by Noticias Caracol from a US police investigation into the company, say that it paid US$1m in cash and contributed cement to local candidates. They say that the local candidates then sold the donated cement at a discount for additional campaign funds. The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia is also investigating the matter. The report by Noticias Caracol follows an expose by Semana magazine.