It’s back to work for many in Europe this week following the summer break and so too for the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) with the release of its 2050 Climate Ambition mission statement. Talk about setting the bar high for the rest of us struggling to remember how to log into our computers! The short version is that the association aspires to deliver society with carbon neutral concrete by 2050. The actual detail will be published in the second half of 2021.

What it does say is that, “detailed actions and milestones” will be set out in the forthcoming roadmap. This will include, “working across the built environment value chain to deliver the vision of carbon neutral concrete in a circular economy, whole life context.” This focus on concrete and end-product life-cycles looks likely to be the wriggle room cement and building materials producers need to actually meet the goal. To put it another way, as the press release helpfully reminds us, things that people need are made out of concrete. So, until a viable alternative to clinker turns up, the cost in CO₂ emissions needs to be spread as far and wide as possible. At the same time everyone needs to be continually told how much they need cementitious products: don’t think of the CO₂ released to build your new house. Rather: think of the CO₂ saved annually by living in a well-constructed dwelling, as opposed to the alternatives, and consider what happens to the concrete once the structure is demolished.

A few ideas of what strategies the roadmap may use to reach its target are revealed. This is fairly standard current thinking including: cutting direct energy-related emissions; increasing co-processing; increased renewable electricity usage; reducing process emissions through new technologies and deployment of carbon capture at scale; reducing the content of both clinker in cement and cement in concrete; more efficient use of concrete in construction; reprocessing concrete from construction and demolition waste to produce recycled aggregates; and quantifying and enhancing the level of CO₂ uptake of concrete through recarbonation in a circular economy, whole life context.

It’s early days yet, with the roadmap not due for at least a year, but deploying carbon capture methods at scale will be expensive and difficult. Whatever target the GCCA sets here will be keenly observed, especially so given that the association is a global concern. So far carbon capture in the cement industry has generally been linked to regions with market or legislative encouragement. How, for example, would a producer in a country with low environmental restrictions react to its peers trying to get it to make cement production more expensive? The rest of the points seems more tangible at the moment but will require lots of work to realise. They are also interlinked and this reinforces the need for someone to continually remind society about the life cycle of concrete. Taking concrete recycling into the mainstream is great but the world has to be told that it is happening.

This last point brings us to the perceived success of the GCCA’s ambitions: will a successfully realised strategy to make carbon neutral concrete by 2050 be enough to make environmental activists like Greta Thunberg happy? Probably not. Pure environmentalists seem unlikely to accept whole lifecycle thinking while limestone decomposition in kilns continues without capture or cessation. Even if the cement and concrete industries hit the target they will have to shake off the taint that the achievement was at least partly down to sneaky carbon accounting. Suddenly saying that concrete buildings have been sucking up CO₂ all along and that the industry is now, say, 20% closer to its carbon neutral target may feel like cheating to some observers. Step forward a global association to say otherwise. The need for industry associations making the case for the sector’s aspirations seems more essential than ever.

In case you missed it, last week we covered a news story about Taiheiyo Cement’s plans to step up its lithium-ion battery recycling business at its integrated Tsuruga plant. It’s the latest step in the Japan-based cement producer’s collaboration with recycling company Matsuda Sangyo. The work is timely given that electric cars accounted for 2.6% of global car sales in 2019 and this share is growing. Many of these electric vehicles use lithium-ion batteries and moving away from fossil fuel powered transport creates new problems such as how to manage old batteries that can no longer be used.

Figure 1: Lithium-ion battery recycling process by Taiheiyo Cement and Matsuda Sangyo. Source: Translated from Taiheiyo Cement CEMS technical magazine.

Taiheiyo Cement and Matsuda Sangyo have been working on their process since 2011. First, they dismantle the batteries to extract base metals and plastics. They then heat the batteries in a dedicated ‘roaster’ using waste heat from the cement production process, before crushing and sorting them to remove cobalt, lithium, aluminium and scrap iron. Hydrogen fluoride produced in this stage is sent to the kiln where it is detoxified by calcium. Remaining elements from the battery that are not reclaimed are then used as an alternative fuel by the cement plant.

Taiheiyo Cement says that its roasting equipment can process up to 10t/day but it’s difficult at this stage to assess what demand for this service they might encounter. If, one estimate of 2m/yr used lithium-ion batteries by 2030 is correct and Taiheiyo Cement’s processing rate doesn’t get much higher, then 500 cement plants could possibly solve this problem. Yet, Taiheiyo Cement and Matsuda Sangyo have made no mention of the economics of their process. Other recycling methods also exist and research into new ones is ongoing. Cement plants recycling batteries might be economic compared to these alternatives or it might not, only time will tell.

The wider point here is that here is yet another industrial and logistical process that can potentially be linked to cement production. It follows well known ones, such as using alternatives fuels or captive power plants, or more novel ones, such as CO₂ or hydrogen networks. In each case the business of making cement changes as new methods are learned, new commodities are sought and new markets are connected. The cement company then has a choice about how involved it wants to become with each new process. The classic example here is the waste processing companies that surround co-processing, with some cement companies having their own dedicated subsidiaries, for example LafargeHolcim and Geocycle.

As it all becomes more complicated the role of a cement plant slowly becomes redefined. If a cement plant disposes of municipal waste and car batteries for its local community, generates electricity from its solar or wind plant for a nearby city and uses its CO₂ to either produce biofuels, plastics or baking soda is it still just a cement plant? The pivot by building materials manufacturers in recent years from a focus on cement to concrete suggests that once the societal or economic conditions are right it could change. For the time being cement plants remain cement plants but give it a thought next time you buy a new car.

Back on 11 March 2020, this column drew attention to the seemingly intractable overcapacity situation in Vietnam. On that day, incidentally the day that the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the Covid-19 outbreak to be a full-blown pandemic, Vietnam held firm on its previous estimate that it would produce 103Mt of cement in 2020. 70Mt would be consumed domestically, with 33Mt exported. At the time much of the world was heading down the coronavirus rabbit hole and we were incredulous. South East Asia was worst affected by lockdowns at that point and demand was poor. It was clear that the country would struggle to find buyers, even with its famously reasonable prices.

Fast forward five months and figures from last week show that Vietnam’s cement producers actually exported an incredible 19.5Mt in the first seven months of 2020. The volume was 11% higher than the 17.6Mt exported in the corresponding period of 2019. However, prices suffered, with the value of exports falling by 5.4% to US$732m. That works out at US$37.54/t in 2020 against US$43.98/t in 2019 - a drop of US$6.44/t. Now, just as in March, the Ministry of Construction has maintained again that Vietnam will export 32-33Mt of cement and clinker in 2020. The volumes seem impressive, but it’s ‘sales for show, profit for dough.’ How much longer can the country continue to pour such vast amounts of cement into the global market at these low prices?

Well it seems the answer is ‘not any more.’ Following an announcement in May 2020 that no new cement plant projects would go ahead in 2020 after all, there is now a new cement industry development strategy to help move the sector forward. Under the plans, all plants with a capacity under 0.9Mt/yr will be forced to improve their productivity, product quality, energy efficiency and, crucially, environmental performance, by 2025. While the government says it will help to facilitate the changes, we can be reasonably sure that it wants to reduce its domestic capacity to a fairly meaningful extent. The Global Cement Directory shows that Vietnam has at least 28 plants of less than 0.9Mt/yr capacity, jointly contributing around 16.6Mt/yr. While we should be clear that the government is not calling for the wholesale elimination of capacity, removing these plants would leave the country with around 86Mt/yr of cement production and halve exports to around 16.4Mt/yr, assuming 70Mt/yr of domestic consumption. On the surface the government says it will help plants ‘facilitate’ the changes, but it remains to be seen whether its many older, less efficient plants will actually be able to jump through the hoops the authorities put in their way. Of course, one need look no further than neighbouring China to see how effective such directives from the top of government can be.

For its part the Vietnamese government is clear: Plants that don’t pick up the pace will be closed. It says that the strategy aims to “Develop the cement industry to an advanced and modern level, to produce cement of international standard quality with economical and efficient use of energy, giving high competitiveness in the international market, while meeting the needs of the domestic market, completely eliminating out-dated, natural resource-consuming and polluting technology.” The government stops just short of mentioning profitability, but it is clear that this would be another nice effect of reduced capacity in an economy where the state is effectively selling the cement by itself. China again shows what should happen next. Following major profitability improvements in 2017, 2018 and 2019, China’s producers continue to go from strength-to-strength in 2020, even taking coronavirus closures into account. This week Anhui Conch reported a 5.3% increase in its first half net profit (to a tidy US$2.33bn), with China Resources Cement chiming in with an 11% rise to US$541m. While it is unclear from outside of China just how much capacity has been terminated, the changes are having the desired effect.

So, after looking for perhaps slightly too long at dwindling returns, Vietnam’s government appears to be serious about overcapacity. Its (larger) cement producers look set to gain from supply-side reforms in the same way that many in China have. The industry will shrink over the next few years and, while closures and job losses will be unpopular, the country, its economy and its environment will benefit from this policy in the long run.

There has been good news from the German Cement Works Association (VDZ) this week. Following a strong start to the year, the association expects cement consumption in 2020 to remain similar to the level, 28.7Mt, reported in 2019. VDZ president Christian Knell acknowledged the difficulty in making forecasts, this year of all years, but said that the association remained positive since demand had held up so well. He noted the continued operation of construction sites, despite the local coronavirus-related lockdown from March 2020, and the ‘quick action’ of politicians.

Graph 1: German cement deliveries, 2015 – 2019: Source: German Cement Works Association (VDZ).

The year certainly started well, with a 33% year-on-year increase in domestic cement deliveries to 1.43Mt in January 2020 from 1.07Mt in January 2019. This was due in part to good weather, although it also looks good because 2019 started badly compared to 2018. Yet, the VDZ’s assessment has been supported by the results of the main producers operating in the country. HeidelbergCement reported that Germany bucked the trend of its Western and Southern Europe Group area in the first half of 2020 with a ‘positive market development’ whereas deliveries declined significantly everywhere else. Similarly, LafargeHolcim noted a ‘resilient’ performance in Germany. Buzzi Unicem released a more detailed assessment, with shipments of hydraulic binders down in April and May 2020 but then back up with a recovery in June 2020. Overall its cement plants reported a slight decline in sales for the first half of the year. Concrete production grew however, by 6% year-on-year, possibly aided by the plants that the group purchased in 2019.

Germany’s success appears to be down to two factors. The first, as Knell mentioned above, is that it was able to keep much of its construction industry open through its lockdown. Dieter Babiel, the head of Hauptverband der Deutschen Bauindustrie – the main German construction industry association - reckoned that the industry was operating at about 80% capacity in May 2020 compared to the situation in other large European countries like France, the UK, Spain and Italy where building sites totally closed at the height of local lockdowns before gradual reopening. Bauindustrie has since reported falling monthly order intake as coronavirus-effects on the general economy filter through to construction. The other reason is that the country has managed to control its outbreak better compared to other European countries. It has reported the third most cases in Europe but its fatality rate is only 4% compared to 14% in the UK, Italy and France. This has been attributed to strong public health measures and high levels of testing, particularly with respect to elderly residential care.

It’s not all plain sailing though since the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected a 7.8% decline in Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020. Likewise, the VDZ is predicting weakening construction markets and cement demand in the fourth quarter of 2020. It cited falling orders and requests for building permits as mounting evidence for this trend. From here a gloomier outlook is foreseen for 2021 as construction budgets for commercial and government projects are cut. At the same time uncertainty in the labour market is expected to drag down the residential market. With this in mind the VDZ is predicting cement demand to drop by 3 – 5% in 2021.

To end on an upbeat note, if the VDZ’s forecasts are accurate, then the German cement sector looks like it might weather the coronavirus-downturn better than other industries. It knows a downturn in construction is coming and it can prepare for it.