Global Cement News

Pakistan: The Peshawar High Court has rejected a petition by local residents to prevent the construction of a US$245m cement plant in Haripur by the military Frontier Works Organisation. The Balochistan Times has reported that the project will entail the relocation of people from an area of 0.66km2 and the felling of ‘thousands of trees.’ The Supreme Court gave a preliminary hearing to the case on 2 December 2019, giving the Attorney General, Advocate General Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Defence Ministry until 9 December 2019 to submit their replies.

Azerbaijan: Cement producers in Azerbaijan produced 2.8Mt in the 10-month period ending 31 October 2019, down by 3.4% from 2.9Mt in the corresponding period of 2018. Ready-mix concrete production swelled by 25% to 1.5Mt from 1.2Mt in 2018’s first 10 months. Trend has reported the total value of construction materials produced in Azerbaijan over the period at US$382m.

Belgium: A team of researchers from the University of Mons in Hainaut province has concluded a study in the use of amine-based solvents for carbon capture on between 20% and 60% CO₂ flue gas with funding from HeidelbergCement and the European Cement Research Academy. Lab tests and industrial-scale simulations showed that the solvents lowered regeneration energy, equivalent work and operating costs of carbon capture across the CO₂ concentration range of flue gases tested.

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement has installed an ash washing facility at a waste incineration plant in Kumagaya, Saitama prefecture for desalination and lowering of chloride content. After rinsing, the installation will supplement cement production at Taiheiyo Cement’s 1.8Mt/yr integrated Kumagaya plant with up to 69,400t/yr of ash. The total cost of investment was US$7.17m.

India: The government of the state of Odisha will invest US$1.25bn in infrastructure development, including construction of several industrial facilities. These will include a 1.0Mt/yr integrated plant owned by JSW Cement subsidiary Shiva Cement and a total of 4.0Mt/yr grinding capacity in new Shiva Cement and Shree Cement plants. The projects will source their cement from Odisha’s existing installed capacity of 7.3Mt/yr, consisting of 3.8Mt/yr integrated and 3.5Mt/yr grinding capacity at plants owned and operated by Dalmia Bharat’s OCC India, Toshali Cement, UltraTech Cement and Lafarge Holcim’s ACC Cement.