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Displaying items by tag: Australia
Innovative Ash Solutions launches supplementary cementitious material made from incinerator waste
27 September 2022UK: Innovative Ash Solutions, a joint venture of Levenseat and Organic Innovative Solutions, has launched a new air pollution control residue (APCR)-based supplementary cementitious material (SCM). The supplier produces the material at its Lanarkshire treatment facility using APCR local from municipal solid waste (MSW) and wood biomass incinerators. Innovative Ash Solutions has received planning permission for a 54,000t/yr industrial-scale APCR-based SCM plant, and plans to establish a total of three plants in the UK, one of which will reach a capacity of 500,000t/yr. It has also signed an exclusive licensing agreement with an Australia-based importer for the material.
The SCM is designed to replace pulverised fly ash (PFA), of which the UK imported 325,000t in 2019, more than four times its 2012 import volumes of 76,000t.
Innovative Ash Solutions director Robert Gren said “We are excited to bring this new product to market. Innovative Ash Solutions is the first and, so far, the only company in the UK to have achieved ‘End of Waste’ accreditation for a PFA replacement for this type of use. Our research shows there is potential to produce more than 500,000t/yr of PFA replacement from UK APCRs every year, which would reduce the need for importing materials and support the decarbonisation of cement and concrete products.”
Vik Bansal leadership at Boral to start in October 2022
21 September 2022Australia: Boral has announced that Vik Bansal will start work as its chief executive officer and managing director on 10 October 2022. It was previously announced that he would succeed Zlatko Todorcevski in early December 2022.
BGC cancels second attempt to sell company
05 September 2022Australia: BGC has cancelled its latest attempt to sell the company, blaming the decision on labour shortages and supply chain disruption. It said it had received “very strong interest from a range of parties” but had made the decision based on poor market conditions, according to the West Australian newspaper. A shortage of skilled tradespersons in West Australia is negatively affecting the local home construction sector and reducing BGC’s value consequently. A second attempt to sell the company started in April 2022 with Macquarie Capital appointed to run the process. The company plans resume its sale in 2023 when market conditions have improved.
Boral profit takes a tumble in year to June 2022
23 August 2022Australia: Boral has posted a slump in its annual profit, which fell by a third year-on-year for the 12 months to 30 June 2022. It made a profit of US$73.7m, down from US$98m in the 12 months to 30 June 2021
The company said that the result had been impacted by rising energy and haulage costs, while severe rains in eastern Australia at the start of 2022 had forced temporary stoppages to numerous construction projects. The company withheld profit guidance in its announcement, saying only that it expected revenue to be higher in the 2023 fiscal year as a result of annual price increases and new freight charges for customers.
Adbri feels inflation bite at Kwinana project
22 August 2022Australia: Adbri has reported that the ongoing upgrade at its Kwinana cement plant, previously estimated to cost US$137m, is now likely to cost closer to US$157m. It cited inflation and supply chain issues as the main reasons behind the 15% increase to the cost of the project, which seeks to combine its Western Australia operations at a single site, while raising its capacity by 36% to 1.5Mt/yr. The company said the upgrade was about 25% compete as at 30 June 2022, while procurement was about 75% committed. It is scheduled for commissioning in mid 2023.
Elsewhere, Adbri has also said that its definitive feasibility study for a Kalgoorlie lime kiln is on track for completion in the first half of 2023. The study includes mine planning and front-end engineering design.
James Hardie announces hiring freeze
17 August 2022Australia: James Hardie has informed investors that it has frozen all non-critical hiring. The Australian newspaper has reported that the move is designed to counteract the impacts of a rise in costs. The company also plans to announce a new round of price rises on its products.
Australia: James Hardie recorded sales of US$1bn in the first quarter of its 2023 financial year, up by 19% year-on-year from US$843m in the first quarter of its 2022 financial year. Its net profit was US$163m, up by 34% from US$121m. The group increased its North America fibre cement board sales by 28% to US$740m, its Asia Pacific fibre cement board sales by 9% to US$140m and its Europe building products sales by 7% to US$112. James Hardie launched its new European subsidiary James Hardie Fiber Cement Europe during the quarter.
James Hardie lowered its full-year adjusted net profit forecast to US$730 – 780m from US$740 – 820m. Interim chief executive officer Harold Wiens said "The current calendar year has seen the macro-economic environment change around us quite significantly, with unprecedented levels of inflation, global supply chain disruptions and a war in Europe. The current macro-economic environment is not only creating uncertainty for the housing markets in all three regions we do business in, but it is also putting pressure on our fiscal year 2023 financial results due to increased input and freight costs. That said, we are confident we will be able to deliver growth above market and strong returns in fiscal year 2023, and that is reflected in our updated guidance we provided today, which at its midpoint represents 22% growth in adjusted net income versus the prior year."
Boral tenders US$425.7m in notes
22 July 2022Australia: Boral announced the expiration of its tender offer for up to US$300m-worth of guaranteed senior notes on 21 July 2022. The producer recorded a total principal amount tendered of US$425.7m. The 3.75% notes are due in 2028.
Update on slag cements, July 2022
13 July 2022A trio of slag cement stories have been in the sector news this week with reports from Australia, France and Sri Lanka. Of note from the first two reports is a focus on supplies of slag.
The first concerns Hallett Group’s US$80m supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) project in South Australia. This will see the company process slag and fly ash sourced from sites in the region to manufacture blended cement products and standalone SCMs. These will be principally milled, blended and distributed from a site at Port Augusta. However, an additional distribution site at Port Adelaide is also planned that can both import and export the company’s products in a bid to cut down on supply chain risk, particular for its mining customers. The company says it will replace up to 1.15Mt/yr of cement when fully operational, although initial production looks set to be about a third of this based on local media reports. Commissioning of the Port Adelaide distribution hub is scheduled for May 2023, following by the Whyalla Granulator in January 2024 and the Port Augusta processing plant in June 2024. Pointedly, Hallett Group is explicit about where is plans to source its SCMs from: Nyrstar Port Pirie and, potentially, Liberty GFG.
The second slag-themed story hails from France, where Hoffmann Green Cement has acquired ABC Broyage, which operates a slag grinding plant in North Dordogne. Like the project in Australia above, Hoffmann Green is focused on its supply chain. With this acquisition it will be able to grind its own blast furnace slag instead of buying it. Raw blast furnace slag will be imported via the port of La Rochelle where the company has storage silos. It will then be ground at the former ABC Broyage site and sent on to Hoffmann Green’s H1 and H2 production sites, located at Bournezeau in the Vendée region. Finally it will use it to manufacture its H-UKR and H-IONA cement products. There is no mention of how much the acquisition is costing Hoffman Green. Instead the emphasis, according to company founders Julien Blanchard and David Hoffmann, is very much to, “strengthen our control over our supply and secure our margins in the current highly inflationary context.”
Finally, the week’s third slag-themed cement story is from Sri Lanka, where local media reports that Insee Cement has started producing Portland Composite Cement, using SCMs such as slag, at its Ruhunu grinding plant. This story follows the trend of cement producers around the world switching to greater usage of blended cements, often for sustainability reasons. Unfortunately, political events in Sri Lanka are overshadowing everything else locally, with the president having fled amid social unrest provoked by the ongoing and severe economic crisis. To this end Insee Cement has astutely also donated medical supplies this week to the intensive care unit at the Colombo National Hospital.
These slag stories are important for the cement sector can be demonstrated by a recent update to the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo’s (CICERO) research on global CO2 emissions from cement production. When it published its estimate for 2021 it found that overall emissions were 2.6Bnt in 2021 or just over 7% of the world’s total CO2 output. What is worse though, is that its data suggests that cement-based emissions have steadily grown year-on-year from 1.2Bnt in 2002. Apart from a dip in 2015 they have kept on rising! This can mostly be attributed to the growth of the Chinese cement industry in the early 2000s suggesting that a tipping point may be reached in the current decade as lowering cement production CO2 intensity finally kicks in.
Slag and other SCM-based blended cements fit in here as they are one of the ‘easiest’ ways to reduce the clinker factor of cement and concrete and thereby reduce the sector’s CO2 levels. Hence they keep popping up on the various roadmaps and reports for the cement industry to reach net zero. The flipside of this however is that slag is becoming harder to source as the demand for granulated blast furnace slag increases and less new steel plants get built, especially in North America and Europe. Hence the focus on the supply of slag in the first two news stories above. Blended cements may be the future but getting there will be far from simple.
Australia: Hallett Group plans to establish a slag cement grinding plant in Port Augusta, South Australia. Magnet News has reported the cost of the project as US$83.9m, towards which the producer has received US$13.4m in government funding. The plant will produce cement using South Australian ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) from Nyrstar’s Port Pirie and Liberty Primary Steel’s Whyalla steel refineries and fly ash from the site of the former Port Augusta power plant. Its operations will be 100% renewably powered. An accompanying new distribution facility at Port Adelaide will ship the cement to markets. The project will create 50 new jobs.
When the Port Augusta grinding plant becomes operational in 2023, its products will reduce regional CO2 emissions by 300,000t/yr, subsequently rising to 1Mt/yr, according to the company’s expansion plans.
Hallett Group chief executive officer Kane Salisbury said "We're talking about 1% of the entire country's 2030 [CO2 reduction] commitment, delivered through this project." Salisbury added "We're looking at turning South Australia into a global leader in manufacturing green cement."