Germany: Flender has officially completed construction work on an expansion at its site in Voerde with the opening of its new logistics and storage hall for the assembly of large gear units. The hall has been built on an open area on the company's premises covering almost 8000m². The new building is part of the drive manufacturer’s investments to be able to handle the expected growth in the global wind energy business and to drive the energy transition in Europe. In addition to large components for wind power gearboxes, the logistics hall will also serve its industrial business. The company has also leased another 10,000m² hall, directly next door to its Voerde unit, to further support its logistics.

Flender’s chief executive officer Andreas Evertz said "With the new storage areas, we are making our logistics processes sustainable and thus reducing a considerable part of the previous transport routes and the associated CO2 emissions. Components that were previously stored elsewhere can now be stored centrally and made available for assembly more quickly with optimised transport routes.”

Flender’s Voerde plant is the company’s largest in Germany with an area of 276,000m². It employs 1500 people.

India: UltraTech Nathdwara Cement has commissioned its upgraded Neem Ka Thana grinding plant following an 800t/yr capacity expansion. The project expanded the plant's capacity by 57% to 2.2Mt/yr.

The Hindu Business Line newspaper has reported that parent company UltraTech Cement's 22 integrated cement plants, one clinker plant and 27 grinding plants give it an 80% market reach in India.

Canada: Lafarge Canada signed a tri-partite agreement with Dimensional Energy and Svante Technologies for the construction of a synthetic hydrocarbons plant to use captured CO₂ from its Richmond cement plant on 15 May 2023. The upcoming plant will convert the Richmond cement plant's 1t/day captured CO₂ emissions into 1.5 barrels/day of synthetic hydrocarbons. The producer, a subsidiary of Holcim, selected this particular solution due to the lack of CO₂ transport and sequestration infrastructure in the area of British Columbia where the Richmond plant is located. The project marks Phase 3 of the installation of Lafarge Canada and Svante's carbon capture project at the Richmond plant.

Holcim's Western Canada regional head of sustainability and environment, Stephanie Voysey, said "Carbon capture is an important lever in our net-zero roadmap. However, for a carbon capture project to succeed, it must be paired with permanent geologic sequestration or utilisation technology that will permanently isolate the CO₂ in a specific media or product. If this pilot can be scaled to capture and use all facility emissions, it would be a first-of-its-kind project for Lafarge and advance export and global adoption of this technology.”

Australia: James Hardie's sales were US$3.77bn during the 2023 financial year, up by 4% year-on-year from 2022 financial year levels. Its flagship North America fibre cement segment increased its sales by 9% to US$2.79bn, its Asia Pacific fibre cement segment increased its sales by 1% to US$527m and its Europe Building Products segment increased its sales by 3% to US$470m.

James Hardie's CEO, Aaron Erter, said “We delivered full-year adjusted net income and operating cash flows of US$606m and US$608m respectively. I am pleased with how the team adjusted during the 2023 financial year to prepare the company to thrive through this cycle. This is reflected in our strong fourth quarter results, including all three regions delivering significant earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) margin improvement sequentially in the fourth quarter.”

Looking forward to the first quarter of the 2024 financial year, James Hardie forecast adjusted net income growth of between -6% and +6.9%, to US$145 - 165m, throughout the quarter.