September 2025

Switzerland: Dominique Drouet, CEO of Holcim Morocco, has been appointed Area Manager for Africa Middle East and member of Senior Management of Holcim with effect from 1 January 2015. He will assume this responsibility in addition to his current role. Drouet will succeed Javier de Benito, who has decided to leave Holcim effective from 1 January 2015, to take up a new challenge outside the group.

Drouet joined Holcim in 1994 as CEO of Holcim Outre Mer and was appointed CEO of Holcim Lebanon in 1999. He took over his current role in 2004. Before working for Holcim, Dominique occupied various engineering, commercial and managerial roles in the construction materials industry. He holds a degree in Engineering from the Ecole des Travaux Publics in Paris and a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the University of Toulouse.

Startling news from Hebei, China this week. The northerly province intends to move out its excess capacity in heavy industries, including cement, to other countries by 2023. 5Mt of cement production capacity is planned for transfer by 2017 and 30Mt is planned for transfer by 2023. The larger figure is about the same as the cement production capacity of France or Germany!

Hebei isn't the biggest cement-producing province in China but it has received attention as the authorities have cut down on 'out-dated' production capacity. The region was targeted in a programme to cut emissions from heavy industry due to its proximity to Beijing and that city's smog issues.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) set a target of 60Mt/yr in cement production capacity to be cut by 2017. The region was also the site of massive cement plant demolitions in late 2013 and early 2014. 18 cement plants were demolished in December 2013 followed by 17 cement plants in February 2014 alongside the destruction of connected grinding and storage capacity. Overall an incredible 74 cement plants in the area surrounding Shijiazhuang alone were targeted for demolition by March 2014.

Following this massive spate of capacity elimination, the public announcement to actively move abroad marks a stark change to China's general cement industry strategy so far. The country's equipment suppliers like Sinoma have been taking business from European rivals like FLSmidth or KHD for some time now especially in developing markets.

In 2013, FLSmidth reported a cement market order intake of US$575m and KHD reported an order intake of US$216m. In comparison Sinoma's cement equipment and engineering services reported order intake of US$5.59bn. In its annual report for 2013 FLSmidth estimated that the global market for new kiln capacity was 50Mt. At a capacity construction price of US$150/t this suggests that Sinoma took orders for nearly three quarters of the world's required capacity for new cement kilns in 2013. Order intake covers more than just building cement plants, so this quick calculation presents only a rough impression of what's going on.

More recently Chinese cement producers have started building their own cement plants or funding them outside of China. In October 2014 State Development and Investment Corp and Anhui Conch Cement Company announced plans to fund a plant in Indonesia. In September 2014 ground breaking was held for a Chinese-funded plant in Kyrgyzstan. In June 2014, Huaxin Cement invested in Cambodia Cement. This was its second overseas investment following a project in Tajikistan in 2011.

With China's government still attempting to avoid a hard economic landing as its growth slows, moving industrial overcapacity overseas makes sense. International and national players must be worried about the potential scale of this transition. On the plus side, however, those notorious inscrutable Chinese production figures in the cement industry will be far easier to analyse in plants outside of China facing international competition. Today Hebei, tomorrow the world!

Sri Lanka: W Christopher Fernando has been appointed as an executive director to the board of Tokyo Cement Company (Lanka) with effect from 30 October 2014.

Fernando was appointed as Group General Manager of the company in 1991. He is also a director of Fuji Cement Company (Lanka), Tokyo Super Cement Company (Lanka), Tokyo Cement Colombo Terminal, Tokyo Cement Power (Lanka) and Tokyo Eastern Cement Company. He holds degrees in economics, is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Management Accountants (FCMA), Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (FCA) and an attorney-at-law.

China: The board of directors of Anhui Conch have announced that Zhu Yuming has resigned as a supervisor of the company due to other work commitments. Zhu's resignation will be effective upon the appointment of a new supervisor to fill the vacancy. Anhui Conch have thanked Zhu for his 'invaluable' contributions to the company.

One highlight from the cement industry news over the last month was Skyonic's announcement that it has opened a commercial-scale carbon capture unit at the Capitol Aggregates cement plant in Texas, US. Details were light, but the press release promised that the unit was expected to generate US$48m/yr in revenue for an outlay of US$125m. Potentially, the implications for the process are profound, so it is worth considering some of the issues here.

Firstly, it is unclear from the public information released whether the process will actually make a profit. The revenue figures for the Skyonic unit are predictions and are dependent on the markets that the products (sodium biocarbonate, hydrogen and chlorine) will be sold into. Skyonic CEO and founder, Joe Jones, has said in interview that the sodium-based product market by itself could only support 200 - 250 plants worldwide using this process. Worldwide there are over 2000 integrated cement plants. Since Jones is selling his technology his market prediction might well be optimistic. It is also uncertain how existing sodium biocarbonate producers will react to this new source of competition.

Secondly, Skyonic is hoping to push the cost of carbon capture down to US$20/t. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture and transportation varies between industries depending on the purity and concentration of the by-product. For example, in 2011 the US Energy Information Administration estimated the cost for CO₂ capture to range from US$36.10/t for coal and biomass-to-liquids conversion up to US$81.08/t for cement plants. The difference being that capturing CO₂ from cement plant flue gas emissions requires more cleaning or scrubbing of other unwanted chemicals such as mercury.

With these limitations in mind, Skyonic is placing itself in competition with the existing flue gas scrubbing market rather than the carbon capture market, since the level of CO₂ removal can be scaled to local legislation. Plus, SO_x, NO₂, mercury and other heavy metals can be removed in the process.

Back on carbon capture, Skyonic is securing finance for a process it calls Skycycle, which will produce calcium-based products from CO₂, with a pilot plant planned at Capitol Aggregates for late 2015. This puts Skyonic back amongst several other pilot projects that are running around the world.

Taiwan Cement and the Industrial Technology Research Institute inaugurated their calcium looping project pilot in mid-2013. It was last reported to have a CO₂ capture rate of 1t/hr.

The Norcem cement plant in Brevik, Norway started in early 2014 to test and compare four different types of post-combustion carbon capture technologies at its pilot unit. These are Aker Solutions Amine Technology, RTI Solid Sorbent Technology, DNV GL/ NTNU/ Yodfat Engineers Membrane Technology and Alstom Power Regenerative Calcium Cycle. The project in conjunction with HeidelbergCement and the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA) is scheduled to run until 2017.

St Marys Cement in St Marys, Canada started its bioreactor pilot project in July 2014. This process uses flue gas to grow algae that can then be used for bio-oil, food, fertiliser and sewage treatment.

If Skyonic is correct then its sodium biocarbonate process in Texas is a strong step towards cutting CO₂ emissions in the cement industry. Unfortunately, it looks like it can only be a step since the market won't support large-scale adoption of this technology. Other pilots are in progress but they are unlikely to gather momentum until legislation forces cement producers to adopt these technologies or someone devises a method that pays for the capture cost.

Germany: Hendrik Rahms will be supporting Loesche ThermoProzess GmbH (LTP) in technical sales and in the product development of thermal applications. After working as a process engineer and project manager for several years at Brinkmann Industrielle Feuerungs-Systeme GmbH, Rahms is very familiar with the products of burner and process technology as well as the customer requirements in the industry.

Nigeria: Lafarge Africa has notified the Nigerian Stock Exchange of the appointment of Adepeju Adebajo and Anders Kristiansson to the board of Lafarge Africa. Both staff members were formally appointed on 27 October 2014.

Adebajo is currently the MD of WAPCO operations. Prior to this, she served as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director at Mouka Limited. She was already the CEO of UTC Nigeria Plc, where she successfully turned the business around.

She previously headed strategic planning, brand management and product development at the United Bank for Africa and has had management consulting experience at Boston Consulting Group in the UK and financial analysis experience at Citibank in the UK.

Peju holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical Engineering) from the Imperial College of Science & Technology, London; a Master of Engineering (Chemical Engineering) from the University of London; and a Master of Business Administration, Harvard University, Boston.

Anders Kristiansson is a Swedish citizen who started his career with Procter & Gamble (P&G) in Scandinavia and thereafter worked for P&G in South Africa. He has been a Global Divisional Controller for Eaton Automotive working in Europe and North America, whereafter he returned to Africa to oversee Celtel's finance departments across its African operations as Director of Financial Operations.

He moved to Nigeria in 2008 as Group CFO for PZ Cussons Nigeria, managing Finance and IT for PZ's five Nigerian companies. Prior to joining Lafarge, he was the CFO for NBC/Coca-Cola HBC's operations in Nigeria.

He holds a Master of Science Degree in Business Administration and Economics from the Gothenburg University, Sweden.

Lafarge's third quarter financial results have coincided with the alarming news that terrorists attacked one of its cement plants in Nigeria. Thankfully nobody was hurt at the Ashaka plant. The suspected Boko Haram insurgents reportedly came looking for French nationals but the plant had been mostly evacuated following an earlier more violent incident at a nearby town. Instead they stole explosives and trucks and fled.

The resonance here with Lafarge's global financial situation is that rebel action elsewhere in the world was noted as having an adverse effect on the cement producer's coffers for the third quarter of 2013. In Iraq cement volumes have reportedly fallen by 15% in the year-to-date and almost halved in the third quarter, hit by an inability to transport cement across the country since June 2014, when Islamic State fighters captured parts of northern Iraq.

Looking at the nine months so far in 2014, Lafarge's sales have fallen by varying amounts with the exception of one territory: Middle East and Africa. Here, bucking the trend, sales rose by 3% to Euro2.8bn. The area had been the group's single largest sales region so far in 2014. Of course countries such as a South Africa are much more stable, but most other countries in the territory have had recent terrorism campaigns where a European-backed cement plant might present itself as a target.

This is not good news for a corporate balance sheet relying on these same countries to keep the profits up. However, as Lafarge states in its outlook, 'emerging markets continue to be the main driver of demand and Lafarge will benefit from its well-balanced geographic spread of high quality assets.' Spreading its bets geographically should pay off.

Also in its outlook, Lafarge announced that it intends to pause its stand-alone divestments pending completion of the planned merger with Holcim. The move suggests that the company is prioritising the impending merger over debt reduction. With Lafarge's and Holcim's recent formal notification to the European Commission of their proposed merger to obtain regulatory approval, the last of its necessary notifications worldwide, the merger is getting closer. So far, the original expectation of closure in the first half of 2015 does not look unreasonable.

When former British prime minister Harold Macmillian was asked what causes governments trouble, his apocryphal reply was, "Events, dear boy, events." The same applies to building materials producers. There may be more 'events' before the merger completes.

The 'revelation' this week that South Korean cement producers have been paid US$127m to use/dispose of Japanese coal that is thought to be radioactive certainly sounds scary. If it is true that cement made with contaminated coal has led to the construction of radioactive buildings and roads, this may have prised open a 'can of worms' for coal producers, exporters and cement players alike. According to local media, four South Korean firms - Ssangyong Cement, Tongyang Cement, Lafarge Halla Cement and Hanil Cement - received the money to use the coal between March 2011, when the Fukashima nuclear power plant started to leak radiation, until 2013. A total of 3.7Mt of cement is 'under suspicion.'

Caesium-137 is formed by fission reactions that start with uranium-235 in nuclear reactors. The Fukushima reactor that started leaking in 2011 used this type of fuel. Once it leaked, caesium-137 was deposited into the sea and onto the land, presumably also making its way into nearby coal deposits.

As it is a metal with a melting point of just 28.5°C and a boiling point of 671°C, the caesium-137 would vaporise if it were to enter a cement production line operating at 1450°C as a metal. However, caesium will not enter the cement-making process as a metal due to its rapid and explosive reaction with water. An interesting slow-motion of this reaction can be seen here.

Instead, caesium will enter the cement-making process either as its oxide or a simple salt (e.g.: caesium chloride) in the coal. The salt will be ionized in the heat of the flame, sending caesium ions into the kiln and thus direct contact with the clinker as it is being formed. Here it will become part of the matrix of the clinker and hence the final cement product. All the time the caesium-137 is radioactive.

And it stays radioactive once it is in the finished product, for example in a building or road surface. Its half-life, the time that it takes for half of the caesium-137 to decay to meta-stable barium-137 (emitting radiation as it decays), is unfortunately very well matched to the life-span of concrete buildings at 30.7 years. This means that after about 100 years of building life the building would still be around 10% as radioactive as it was when it was built.

This would certainly be a problem if the coal was highly contaminated. However, a few questions come to mind. Firstly, if the coal contains 20-73 becquerels per kilogramme (Bq/kg) of caesium-137, as has been claimed by Lee In-young, an opposition spokesman for the New Politics Alliance for Democracy party and member of the National Assembly's Environment Labour Committee, why is this a problem when the Japanese legal limit for eating caesium-137 in contaminated vegetables is all the way up at 500Bq/kg? When the most dangerous mechanisms of caesium-137 poisoning relate to accumulation in soft tissue, how can driving along a caesium-137-containing highway constitute a health risk?

Also, the coal may well start the cement making process with 25-73Bq/kg of caesium-137 but the clinker will have a lower level. This is because for every 1t of clinker the plant will typically consume just 100-200kg of coal. The caseium-137 and hence the radiation will therefore be spread out over a larger mass. A level of 50Bq/kg in the coal would translate to a clinker level of 5-10Bq/kg. This is around 100 times lower than the Japanese vegetable limit. After this, the clinker is extended with additives to make cement. This is then added to aggregates and / or sand when concrete or mortars are made, further diluting the caesium-137, perhaps to as low as 1-5Bq/kg. It is arguable that South Korea has received a higher caesium-137 dose from Japan via air and sea than via coal imports.

In light of all this, it appears that those calling for investigations on scientific grounds, like Lee, may be misguided. However, there may be political gain. The histories of Japan and South Korea are long, violent and distrustful. Indeed, according to a BBC World Service poll conducted earlier in 2014, South Korea and China jointly have the most negative perceptions of Japan of all world nations. In this environment stories about radioactive coal become much easier to believe in.

In reality the Japanese vegetable limit is well above the likely levels that might be found in any cement products resulting from the use of this coal. It is consistent with EU limits set more than 20 years earlier (600Bq/kg). A search on the US Environmental Protection Agency's website fails to bring up any formal limit. Instead it states that everyone is exposed to caesium-137 from atmospheric fallout to a low level and that the most dangerous cases are where waste metal processors unwittingly come across sources.

So on the surface then, the South Korean reaction seems like a storm in a teacup. One question remains though. If the caesium-137 levels in the coal are so much lower than the Japanese vegetable limit, why are Korean firms being paid to take it out of Japan?

South Africa: On 23 October 2014 PPC confirmed the resignation of Richard Tomes, joint managing director of PPC's South African business and one of the business's key sales and marketing personnel.

The resignation of Tomes comes a month after Ketso Gordhan resigned as CEO and the company's board subsequently plunged into a tussle with group shareholders seeking a new board. PPC said that Tomes, who joined the firm in 1998 and who shared the job as head of domestic operations with Johann Claassen, had resigned effective Thursday to 'pursue other opportunities.'

With his departure, Claassen will lead PPC's South African cement business, while Pepe Meijer remains managing director of PPC's international business. While PPC has lost an experienced managing director in Tomes, it sought to assure investors that its South African business remained under strong leadership: "Johan is a professional engineer who joined PPC in 1989 and has served as executive of cement operations and of lime," said PPC. "He has also held various other senior and general management roles across the cement and lime divisions."