Displaying items by tag: US
World Cement Association welcomes Industrial Deep Decarbonisation Initiative’s low-CO2 cement procurement commitments
14 December 2023UAE/UK: The World Cement Association has endorsed new commitments agreed upon by Industrial Deep Decarbonisation Initiative (IDDI) member countries Canada, Germany, the UK and the US at the COP28 climate conference. The commitments include the development of time-bound low CO2 cement procurement plans. The WCA says that IDDI members’ collective leverage of national purchasing power will help to accelerate the decarbonisation of construction globally.
CEO Ian Riley said “The WCA has always emphasised the need for immediate and collaborative action between government and industry to make carbon-negative concrete a reality at scale. Creating demand for low-emission materials is essential for decarbonisation. Now is the moment to work together to make necessary progress this decade.”
Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies signs exclusive licensing agreement for new units in Florida
13 December 2023US: France-based Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with a partner in the US to build and operate ‘several’ new units to produce its clinkerless cement in Florida. Business Wire News has reported that the units will employ the same model as Hoffmann Green France Cement Technologies’ existing H2 unit in France.
Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies co-founders Julien Blanchard and David Hoffmann said "Following on from the contract signed with Shurfah in Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago, we are delighted to continue our international expansion with the announcement of this future site in the United States. This agreement with a Florida-based partner demonstrates the appeal, beyond our borders, of our clinker-free cement and our vertical production model. We are proud to be working alongside our partner to decarbonise the construction sector in a state as strategic as Florida, the third most populous state in the US.”
GCC to expand Odessa cement plant
07 December 2023US: Mexico-based GCC has hired ThyssenKrupp Polysius North America to build a 3000t/day clinker production line at its Odessa plant in Texas. When commissioned in late 2025, the line is expected to more than double the plant’s clinker capacity to 2Mt/yr across three kilns. The supplier says the project will also lower the plant’s annual CO2 emissions by 13%.
GCC chief executive officer Enrique Escalante said "We remain strongly committed to delivering strong stakeholder value, while investing in the future growth of our business. With the expansion of the Odessa plant, we will ensure GCC is prepared for a new phase of the industry cycle."
Belarus: The US government sanctioned the management company of Belarusian Cement Company on 6 December 2023. PrimePress News has reported that 10 other Belarus-based companies and eight individuals were also added to the US sanctions list. This is the latest group of additions since the US and its allies began sanctioning Belarusian entities in connection to election rigging, human rights abuses and complicity in the on-going Russian invasion of Ukraine.
US: Germany-based drives supplier Flender has received the Supplier Excellence Recognition Award 2023 from engineering firm Caterpillar. The award recognises suppliers that demonstrate a commitment to excellence and drive a zero-defect culture. Caterpillar said that Flender exceeded 95% delivery reliability, with zero defects, during 2023. Contracts included gearboxes, remanufactured gearboxes, spare parts and couplings for Caterpillar’s 7495 Rope Shovel. The 7495 Rope Shovel is used in quarrying, including in the cement industry.
Caterpillar’s senior vice president strategic procurement and planning Pam Heminger said “Caterpillar’s reputation for world-class products and services stands on the shoulders of our global and diverse team – and that team includes our international and diverse supply network. By working together, we can deliver on our purpose to help our customers build a better, more sustainable world.”
Massimo Toso elected as chair of Portland Cement Association
06 December 2023US: The Portland Cement Association (PCA) has elected Massimo Toso as its next chair. He is the current president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Buzzi Unicem USA and has worked as the vice chair of the association. He succeeds Filiberto Ruiz, president and CEO of Votorantim Cimentos North America, in the post.
Monica Manolas has been elected as vice chair. She is the first woman in the 21st century to be elected to the position and she currently works as the president of Ash Grove East. Jorge Wagner, CEO of Votorantim Cimentos North America, was also elected to the PCA Board of Directors.
Eagle Materials to deploy Terra CO2 supplementary cementitious materials plants in three US markets
06 December 2023US: Terra CO2 has entered into an exclusive agreement with Eagle Materials, under which the cement producer will set up plants to produce Terra CO2’s supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) in three cities, including Greater Denver in Colorado. Terra CO2's SCM consists of ground, heated glass spheres made from silicate-containing igneous rocks and sediments, which can be used in cement production to lower CO2 emissions by 70% compared to ordinary Portland cement (OPC).
Terra CO2's chief executive officer Bill Yearsley said “New climate tech needs to be deployed quickly to meet 2030 and 2050 climate goals. Terra is working hard to accelerate the deployment of its commercial plants through strategic partnerships, deploying more capital and shortening timelines. We are thrilled to work with a partner like Eagle Materials to build commercial plants for sustainable construction, and act on this urgency through our shared commitment to action. In the absence of a 'climate tech express lane' from the government, working with industry leaders is key to innovating and expediting low-carbon solutions for the industry."
Hunter becomes the hunted
22 November 2023The Hunter cement plant in Texas looks set to become one of the most expensive integrated units in the world following the announcement this week that CRH is preparing to buy it for US$2.1bn. The Ireland-headquartered company said that it has agreed to acquire the plant at New Braunfels near San Antonio from Martin Marietta Material. The deal also includes four cement terminals around and near to Houston and 20 ready-mixed concrete (RMX) plants near to San Antonio and Austin. It is expected to complete in the first half of 2024 subject to regulatory approval.
Assessing the value of this deal is tricky given the various RMX plants and terminals in strategic locations. However, solely based on integrated cement production capacity, this one works out at US$1000/t given that the Hunter plant has a production capacity of 2.1Mt/yr. The value of terminals and RMX plants in the right locations cannot be overstated, but it still appears to price the cement plant dearly. CRH bought Ash Grove in 2018 for US$350/t. Five years later and the price it is paying for cement production capacity in the US has nearly tripled.
Other more recent purchases in the US include US$395/t for UNACEM’s acquisition of the Redding cement plant in California earlier in November 2023, around US$525/t for the valuation of Argos North America’s four integrated plants in September 2023, or just over US$310/t for the proposed purchase of the Redding cement plant by CalPortland from Martin Marietta Materials in March 2022. The Argos North America valuation is another awkward one given that it is part of the proposed merger between it and Summit Materials and it also includes two grinding plants, 140 ready-mix concrete plants, and a distribution network of eight maritime ports and 10 inland terminals.
Figure 1: Map of CRH production assets in Texas. Source: CRH earnings presentation.
In a statement, CRH’s chief executive officer Albert Manifold highlighted the usual synergy benefits but he also mentioned the expected “self-supply opportunities.” He added that the company believed that there was “significant potential to unlock additional growth opportunities across an expanded footprint in this attractive growth market.” If the acquisition completes, the company will become the largest cement producer in the state, based on integrated production capacity, at around 3.2Mt/yr. Plus, as the company pointed out in its third quarter earnings update, it also operates the Foreman cement plant in Arkansas, just across the state border to the north-east. This then gives CRH and its subsidiary Ash Grove a cement plant and/or terminals in the main population areas in Texas, namely: Houston; San Antonio and Austin; and Dallas and Fort Worth.
One reason why CRH may have gone all out for a cement plant in Texas is because it is one of the few states in the US where cement shipments have actually increased so far in 2023. Data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) shows that shipments of Portland and blended cement fell by 2% year-on-year to just under 71Mt in January to August 2023. Yet Texas comprehensively bucked this trend with shipments rising by 10% to 8.04Mt. The only other states with this kind of growth were Maine and New York. At the start of 2023 the Portland Cement Association (PCA) predicted a 3.5% decline in cement consumption in 2023 and based on the January to August 2023 data from the USGS it isn’t far off at present.
Meanwhile, selling its cement assets in Houston and San Antonio nearly brings Martin Marietta Materials’ decade-long excursion into the sector to an end. It purchased its cement plants in Texas in 2014 when it acquired Texas Industries (TXI). Plants in California were soon sold to CalPortland but Martin Marietta Materials later picked up two more cement plants in the state when it bought the US West Region of Lehigh Hanson from Heidelberg Materials in 2021. Then, once again, the plants were sold, this time to CalPortland and UNACEM, respectively. This now leaves Martin Marietta Materials with one integrated cement plant, Midlothian, and two terminals. The size of the Midlothian plant, at 2.4Mt/yr, still gives the company a decent presence in the state.
With US cement consumption expected to bounce back to growth in 2024 and the Texas market ahead of this, CRH’s decision to buy big from Martin Marietta Materials seems like a logical move given its focus on North America. The price may seem high, but the investment seems as close to a steady bet as it gets. The day after the Texas announcement CRH revealed that it was selling its lime business in Europe to SigmaRoc for US$1.1bn. The key bit though was that these assets generated earnings of around US$137m in 2022 but, by comparison, the new units in Texas are expected to earn US$170m in 2023. This suddenly makes the price agreed for Hunter seem more reasonable. Let’s check back in a couple of years to see how well CRH’s acquisition in Texas works out. In the meantime all eyes are likely to be on what Martin Marietta Materials does next with the Midlothian plant.
CRH to acquire Hunter cement plant from Martin Marietta Materials
21 November 2023US: Ireland-based CRH has concluded a deal for the acquisition of Martin Marietta Materials’ South Texas business. This includes the 2.1Mt/yr Hunter cement plant, a network of cement terminals on the Gulf of Mexico and 20 ready-mix concrete batching plants. The value of the transaction is US$2.1bn.
CRH chief executive officer Albert Manifold said “The acquisition of these high-quality assets further strengthens our market leading position in Texas and increases our exposure to attractive, high-growth markets. Our ability to leverage our cement expertise and technical capabilities will enable us to enhance and optimise our existing footprint in Texas, resulting in significant synergies and self-supply opportunities. This transaction reflects our disciplined approach to capital allocation as well as our commitment to deliver further growth and value creation for our shareholders. We also believe there is significant potential to unlock additional growth opportunities across an expanded footprint in this attractive growth market.”
Building codes and low-embodied carbon building materials
15 November 2023Last week the US General Services Administration (GSA) announced that it was investing US$2bn on over 150 construction projects that use low-embodied carbon (LEC) materials. The funding is intended to support the use of US-manufactured low carbon asphalt, concrete, glass and steel as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. For readers who don’t know, the GSA manages federal government property and provides contracting options for government agencies. As part of this new message, it will spend US$767m on LEC concrete on federal government buildings projects following a pilot that started in May 2023. The full list of the projects can be found here.
This is relevant because the US-based ready-mixed concrete (RMX) market has been valued roughly at around US$60bn/yr. One estimate of how much the US federal government spent on concrete was around US$5bn in 2018. So the government buys a significant minority of RMX in the country, and if it starts specifying LEC products, this will affect the industry. And, at present at least, a key ingredient of all that concrete is cement.
This isn’t the first time that legislators in the US have specified LEC concrete. In 2019 Marin County in California introduced what it said was the world’s first building code that attempted to minimise carbon emissions from concrete production. It did this by setting maximum ordinary Portland cement (OPC) and embodied carbon levels and offering several ways suppliers can achieve this, including increasing the use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCM), using admixtures, optimising concrete mixtures and so on. Unlike the GSA’s approach in November 2023 though, this applies to all plain and reinforced concrete installed in the area, not just a portion of procured concrete via a government agency. Other similar regional schemes in the US include limits on embodied carbon levels in RMX in Denver, Colorado, and a reduction in the cement used in RMX in Berkeley, California. Environmental services company Tangible compiled a wider list of embodied carbon building codes in North America that can be viewed here. This grouping also includes the use of building intensity policies, whole building life cycle assessments (LCA), environmental product declarations (EPD), demolition and deconstruction directives, tax incentives and building reuse plans.
Government-backed procurement codes promoting or requiring the use of LEC building materials for infrastructure projects have been around for a while in various places. The general trend has been to start with measurement via tools such as LCAs and EPDs, move on to government procurement and then start setting embodied carbon limits for buildings. In the US the GSA’s latest pronouncement follows on from the Federal Buy Clean Initiative and from when California introduced its Buy Clean California Act in 2017. Outside of the US similar programmes have been introduced in countries including Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. On the corporate side members of the World Economic Forum’s First Movers’ Coalition have committed to purchasing or specifying volumes of LEC cement and/or concrete by 2030. Examples of whole countries actually setting embodied carbon emissions limits for non-government buildings are rarer, but some are emerging. Both France and Sweden, for example, introduced laws in 2022 that start by analysing life-cycle emissions of buildings and will move on to setting embodied carbon limits in the late 2020s. Denmark, Finland and New Zealand are also in the process of introducing similar schemes. The next big move could be in the EU, where legislators are considering embodied carbon limits for building materials as part of its ongoing revisions to its Energy Performance of Buildings Directive or the Construction Products Regulation legislations. Lobbying, debate and arguing remains ongoing at present.
To finish, Ireland-based Ecocem spent a period in the 2010s attempting to build a slag cement grinding plant at Vallejo, Solano County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. The project met with considerable local opposition on environmental grounds and was eventually refused planning permission. The irony is that slag cement is one of those SCM-style cements that Marin County, also in the San Francisco Bay Area, started encouraging the use of just a few years later. Ecocem held its inaugural science symposium in Paris this week. A number of scientists who attended the event called for existing low carbon technologies to be adopted by the cement and concrete sectors as fast as possible. One such approach is to lower the clinker factor in cement through the use of products that Ecocem and other companies sell. A point to consider is, if Marin County’s code or the GSA’s recent procurement directive came earlier, then that slag plant in Vallejo might have been built. Encouraging the use of LEC building materials by governments looks set to proliferate but it may not be a straightforward process. Clear and consistent policies will be key.