12 April 2023

Germany: Heidelberg Materials has appointed industrial gases and engineering company Linde to install a carbon capture and liquefaction plant at its 1Mt/yr Lengfurt, Bavaria, cement plant. The project is scheduled for delivery in 2025. When commissioned, the system will capture and liquefy 70,000t/yr of CO₂. Heidelberg Materials plans to use a small part of the liquefied CO₂ in its development of recarbonation technologies for cement and concrete, with the remainder to be marketed by Linde to industries, including chemicals and food. The German government granted Euro15m in funding for the project under its Decarbonisation of Industry programme.

Heidelberg Materials’ chief executive officer Dominik von Achten said "We are pleased to be able to implement the world's first carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) project in the cement industry on an industrial scale.”

Linde’s executive vice president Jürgen Nowicki said “With this joint venture, two companies that are world leaders in their field are combining their skills with the aim of finding a solution that is as sustainable as it is economical. After successful pilot applications, this large-scale plant paves the way for sustainable cement production.”

Image credit: Cement plant Lengfurt, Germany. Copyright: Heidelberg Materials. Photographer: Steffen Fuchs.

Saudi Arabia: The General Authority for Competition (GAC) has fined 14 local cement producers around US$37m for price fixing. The companies were found to have broken local competition law following an investigation by GAC. They are now each liable for a US$2.7m penalty. The producers concerned are: Al-Safwa Cement; Al-Madina Cement; Umm Al-Qura Cement; Al-Jawf Cement Company; Qassim Cement; Najran Cement; Southern Province Cement; United Industrial Cement; Yamama Cement; Riyadh Cement (Saudi White Cement); Arabian Cement; Saudi Cement; Yanbu Cement; and Hail Cement.

Congo: Antoine Thomas Nicéphore Fylla Saint Eudes, the Minister of Industrial Development and Private Sector Promotion, has visited the construction site of the Tao-Tao cement plant in Niari department. Accompanying the minister were the local prefect of the region and a representative of the Indian embassy, according to Les Dépêches de Brazzaville newspaper. The unit is a joint-project between the local and Indian-governments. A loan for the project with the Export-Import Bank of India was signed in 2015.

The plant will have a production capacity of 0.6Mt/yr once complete. Operation is currently planned to start in 2014. Promac is reportedly carrying out the construction work. The Republic of the Congo currently has two operational integrated cement plants, run by Dangote Cement and Société Nouvelle de Ciment du Congo (SONOCC) respectively, and a grinding plant managed by Ciments de l'Afrique (CIMAF).

Burkina Faso: Ciments de l'Afrique (CIMAF) has ordered a Polysius booster mill from Germany-based ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions (TKIS) for its grinding plant at Ouagadougou. This is the first industrial reference of the product that promises to allow a greater substitution of clinker with local filler by boosting the fineness and reactivity of the clinker. It will also maintain both cement quality to local standards and production capacity of the exiting ball mill at the unit.

Mohamed Naciri, the Regional General Manager for CIMAF, commented “Burkina Faso is a landlocked country where clinker has to travel at least 1200km to reach Ouagadougou, every technology aiming to decrease the cement clinker factor is welcome, this project is also an important milestone in our decarbonation road map, TKIS is a key partner for CIMAF to decrease our group CO₂ footprint.”

CIMAF owns and operates 13 grinding plants in Africa. It runs plants in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Mali, and Mauritania. CIMAF's parent company, Omnium des Industries et de la Promotion (OIP), is a cement supplier across north, west, and central Africa, producing about 12Mt/yr. It is the third largest cement producer in Morocco with two integrated plants.

India: Dalmia Bharat plans to expand its footprint in Central, Northern and Western India through capital expenditure investments, in order to reach a pan-India cement capacity of 54Mt/yr by the end of the 2024 financial year on 31 March 2024. This corresponds to year-on-year growth of 38% from 39Mt/yr at the start of April 2023. The Hindu BusinessLine newspaper has reported that the expansion aims to reduce Dalmia Bharat’s reliance on its native South, East and North East regions. The cement producer will fund the growth through allocations of its capital to its core business. At the same time, it plans to divest non-core assets, including its 15% stake in trading platform India Energy Exchange.

Dalmia Bharat expects growth in Indian cement demand to outstrip national GDP growth in the 2024 financial year. It has a medium-term expansion plan to grow its cement capacity to 92% to 75Mt/yr by the end of the 2027 financial year.

India: The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes has directed the district collector of Chandrapur to supply details of compensation paid to local indigenous people since 1979 for the establishment of a limestone mine on their land in Maharashtra by UltraTech Cement. The Times of India newspaper has reported that the authorities allegedly conveyed 63.6 hectares of designated tribal land for use by the cement company.

Montenegro: UK-based private equity firm Chayton Capital has agreed to fund the feasibility study for the establishment of a joint public/private building materials production complex at the site of the Plejevlja energy hub. The complex will include a cement plant and cement bonded particle boards plant. Emerging Market Watch News has reported that the firm will also be involved in the modernisation of a coal-fired power plant at the site. The total budget for the project is Euro700m.

US: A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a new method to sequester CO₂ in concrete before curing it. The method is based on the addition of bicarbonate of soda, which reacts with cement to produce a calcium carbonate-calcium silicone hydrate composite. The Journal of Engineering has reported that the method adds the benefits of CO₂ mineralisation during production and casting, doubling the mechanical performance of early-stage concrete. It also eliminates the effects of carbonation reactions in cured concrete, which weaken the concrete by lowering its alkalinity, which accelerates the corrosion of rebar. The method has the potential to sequester 15% of CO₂ emissions from cement production.

The team said “The pre-curing capacity of concrete to sequester CO₂ has been largely underestimated and underutilised. Our new discovery could further be combined with other recent innovations in the development of lower carbon footprint concrete admixtures to provide much greener, and even carbon-negative, construction materials.”