Mozambique: Cimentos de Moçambique has started operating a new clinker production line at its Dondo plant in Sofala province. The upgrade project to the former grinding plant started in mid-2025, according to the O Jornal Notícias newspaper. Project work was conducted by China Railway No.20 Bureau (Mozambique). It included installing a 5MW waster heat recovery (WHR) unit. The unit’s cement grinding capacity has risen to 1.3Mt/yr from 0.75Mt/yr previously. The plant is owned by China-based Huaxin Cement.

UK: The government’s HM Revenue & Customs department has issued illustrative rates for the forthcoming Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) system set to start in 2027. Cement will be charged €10.4/tCO₂e, based on data available at the time of publication. CBAM rates will be calculated using the latest available data and published at the start of each quarter, the first of which will be published before the end of 2026.

In a worked example the department explained that the average UK emissions trading scheme (ETS) price was €69.1/t in the third quarter of 2026. This was then adjusted by the baseline free allocation percentage for the sector and the free allowance phase-out reduction factor.

Latvia: Sweden-based Cemvision has been selected by the European Union's (EU) Innovation Fund to receive a grant of up to €27.5m to build a 0.5Mt/yr low-carbon cement plant. It will be the company’s first commercial scale unit. Cemvision will now prepare the grant agreement with the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). The agreement is expected to be signed by March 2027.

Claes Kollberg, the CEO of Cemvision, said "This grant brings us a decisive step closer to building our first commercial plant, and to showing that Europe can make the cement it needs from its own industrial residues, with a fraction of the emissions."

Cemvision uses industrial by-products, including steel slag, and an electrified production process to produce cement with lower greenhouse gas emissions than ordinary Portland cement.

UK: Global construction activity is forecast to rise more than 70% by 2050, reaching a value of US$16.6tn. This will be driven by five trends - population growth and urbanisation, infrastructure and housing deficits, climate adaptation, sovereignty and strategic resilience and high-tech infrastructure - according to a new report by Oxford Economics and commissioned for the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA). Oxford Economics estimates that concrete demand from utilities, transport and social building sectors alone will reach 20Bnt/yr by 2050. The GCCA advocates that it is ‘critical’ that the cement and concrete industry is positioned as part of the solution to a more demanding global infrastructure challenge.

Thomas Guillot, Chief Executive of the GCCA, commented “…to achieve the industrial scale transformation that our world needs, we need governments to help stimulate demand for low-carbon materials, enable waste-derived fuels, promote circularity and back the deployment of carbon capture technologies.”

Adrian Hart, author of the report at Oxford Economics, added “Concrete will be central to meeting this challenge, not just in delivering the infrastructure and housing the world needs, but in supporting economic development, improving living standards and building more resilient communities. The challenge is to deliver more infrastructure and greater economic value, while also reducing emissions and improving sustainability.”