20 July 2023

Brazil: Votorantim Cimentos has secured a US$150m loan from the International Finance Corporation for an upgrade to its Salto de Pirapora cement plant in São Paulo. The producer aims to increase the alternative fuel (AF) substitution rate at the 4.8Mt/yr plant, and reduce its CO₂ emissions. It says that the loan is tied to sustainability performance indicators (SPIs), based on the reduction in the plant’s Scope 1 CO₂ emissions.

India: Shree Cement has pulled out of the race to acquire a 40 – 70% stake in Sanghi Cement for US$205 – 369m. The Financial Express newspaper has reported that Shree Cement said that it will shift its short-term focus to ‘internal expansion.’

Sanghi Cement operates 6.1Mt/yr of cement capacity and a 143MW captive power plant in Western India. It has debts of US$219m.

India: Adani Group subsidiary ACC says that it will add 16Mt/yr-worth of new cement capacity in the five years up to the end of the 2028 financial year in March 2028. CEO Ajay Kapur said that the producer may implement the expansion plan in as short a time as two years. Reuters has reported that the company expects cement demand in India to rise by 7 – 8% between the 2023 financial year and the 2028 financial year.

World: The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) and Leadership Group for Industry Transition (LeadIT) launched the Green Cement Technology Tracker on 20 July 2023. The Green Cement Technology Tracker presents users with a real-time overview of active initiatives to reduce CO₂ emissions in the global cement industry. At present, the tracker covers carbon capture projects, which account for 36% of planned emissions reductions under the GCCA’s 2050 Roadmap for Net Zero Carbon Concrete. The partners plan to subsequently expand the scope of coverage to other emissions reduction technologies.

GCCA CEO Thomas Guillot said “Unleashing technology such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage is key to achieving our net zero mission in our sector. Carbon capture pilots, projects and announcements are picking up pace across the world. This technology works, and our next goal is to scale up, working with stakeholders such as governments and the investment community to help transform the industry worldwide.”

The Green Cement Technology Tracker is freely accessible here on the LeadIT website.

UK: A team at Imperial College London has won a US$1.27m grant for its research into developing carbon negative cement from silica. The research won the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)’s Carbon Capture, Usage & Storage (CCUS) Innovation 2.0 competition. The Imperial team sources its silica from natural olivine. It says that the compound behaves in the same way as other supplementary cementitious materials. Meanwhile, magnesia from the decomposition of the olivine can serve as a carbon sink in the form of magnesium carbonate. It, in turn, could serve as a raw material for concrete block production.

The DESNZ’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, of which the CCUS Innovation 2.0 competition is a part, has a budget of US$1.29bn.

UK: A court has fined CRH subsidiary Tarmac US$516,000 for failing to ensure the provision of moveable guards fitted to an interlocking device connected to a rotary mill at its Dunbar cement plant between January 2019 and April 2021. The East Lothian Courier newspaper has reported that the failure resulted in a worker’s loss of fingers after he came into contact with the unit’s rotary valve on 30 April 2021. The producer has until 20 September 2023 to pay the fine.