Displaying items by tag: Canada
Canada: Lafarge Canada has clarified its role in supporting the Vision Zero road safety campaign following a city council meeting in Edmonton. The construction materials producer explained that its focus is on health and safety and that it is not intending to use its trucks to monitor the speed of other drivers. In a statement the company explained that as one of the largest trucking companies in Edmonton it has dozens of concrete trucks moving around the Greater Edmonton Area, interacting with vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. Due to this the Zero Vision campaign caught its attention and it expressed its interest in supporting it including speed reduction measures and reducing heavy acceleration and braking in its fleet.
Following the meeting in mid-April 2017 local press including the Edmonton Sun newspaper reported remarks by Bruce Willmer, regional vice-president for Lafarge Canada that on-truck cameras could potentially be used to record speeding vehicles and that this information could be passed on to the authorities. The comments received a mixed response in the local media.
Canada: The Greater Vancouver Water District (GVWD) has struck a deal with Lafarge Canada to sell drinking water treatment residuals to the Richmond cement plant for use in cement production. The contract is for a three-year agreement up to a total cost of just under US$1m, according to Postmedia News. The deal follows a 12-month industrial trial that started in mid-2016.
The residuals will be used as a substitute for shale in the production process. Around 10,000t/yr of residuals will be used to replace 2100t/yr of red shale and conglomerate that are currently supplied from a quarry at Sumas Mountain, Abbotsford. The use of residuals doesn’t affect the plant’s Air Quality Permit following stack tests. As part of the agreement Lafarge will need to build additional storage capacity at its plant.
Local government votes against Colacem plant project in Ontario
26 January 2017Canada: The Champlain Township council in Ontario has voted against planning changes to allow Colacem to build a cement plant in nearby L’Orignal. However, the United Counties of Prescott and Russell have voted in favour of the project, according to the Review newspaper. The cement producer requires approval from both bodies in order to proceed with the project. It wants to build a 3000t/day cement plant at the site next to a limestone quarry it already operates.
McInnis Cement to use Gaspesian Rail for distribution of cement
03 January 2017Canada: McInnis Cement has signed an agreement with the Gaspé railway corporation (SCFG) to distribute cement from New Richmond, Quebec to various Canadian and US markets. The agreement covers the transportation of 140,000t of cement over a five-year period.
“The use of rail combined with the efficiency of maritime transport provides McInnis the flexibility and competitiveness needed for the distribution of cement that will be produced by the company commencing in the Spring of 2017,” said McInnis Cement chief executive officer, Hervé Mallet. He added that the company might increase its volumes when conditions permit.
The cement will be loaded onto trucks at the plant site in Port-Daniel–Gascons, transported to New Richmond, and then trans-shipped onto tenders through a weight bin to be installed by SCFG. The first shipments are expected to start a few weeks after the plant becomes operational.
Workers at LafargeHolcim highlight human rights’ violations
07 December 2016World: Workers at LafargeHolcim are holding a ‘global day of action’ in advance of International Human Rights Day on 10 December 2016 to draw attention to the world’s largest cement maker’s alleged widespread violations of workers’ rights, according to the IndustriAll Global Union federation. Workers in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas will ‘mobilise, take actions and demand’ that LafargeHolcim respect workers’ rights.
The union action intends to highlight alleged worker rights violations including an increase in workplace fatalities in 2015, an increasing use of precarious employment, illegal replacement of striking workers in Canada, use of child labour and targeting of union members for dismissal in Uganda, unfair treatment of displaced families due to the development of a plant in Ambuja in India and a ‘poor’ response to workplace accidents in Indonesia.
Unions in the federation are demanding that LafargeHolcim use less precarious work, cooperate better with trade unions on health and safety and restructuring, and enter into ‘meaningful’ negotiations with them about the future of labour relations and social dialogue.
“We expect that the world number one in the cement sector is not only number one in figures and cement sales, but also in labour standards and workers’ rights,” said general secretary of the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW) Sam Hägglund.
Hervé Mallet appointed head of McInnis Cement
30 November 2016Canada: McInnis Cement has appointed Hervé Mallet as its president and chief executive officer. Other new appointments include the assignment of Gaétan Vézina as Vice-President, Cement and Sustainable Development and Alexandre Rail as Vice-President, Operations – Port-Daniel–Gascons.
Previously Mallet was the Executive Vice-President – North America for Dynacast. He is a graduate of the University of Wolverhampton and Brunel University in the UK.
FCT Combustion report service updates in the Americas
14 November 2016US: FCT Combustion has reported service updates to its clients in Ecuador, the US and Canada.
Hormicreto in Cuenca, Ecuador is preparing for commissioning of its G-Jet Hot Gas Generator for alternative liquid fuels firing, with a thermal capacity of 5.2MW. The system will provide hot air for the raw and cement swing mill application. FCT is responsible for the complete supply from the waste oil tank to the hot gas generator. Hormicreto is also commissioning a new riser duct natural gas firing system. FCT has also supplied two K-Jet Calciner Burners at the riser.
The Lehigh Cement Leeds plant in Alabama, US has awarded FCT with a new contract for a natural gas firing system for their riser duct. The system, rated at 30MW, will consist of a NPFA 86 Valve Train and K-JetCalciner Burner.
St Marys Cement, part of the Votorantim Group, has ordered, via Arctic Combustion, two K-Jet Calciner Burners for natural gas at the riser for its Ontario, Canada plant. The K-Jet Burner has a cutter block system that adjusts gas velocity on the fly during operation.
The CRH Mississauga plant in Canada has hired FCT to make an audit of several of its pieces of combustion equipment of the plant.
McInnis Cement plant reported 75% complete
02 November 2016Canada: McInnis Cement has completed nearly 75% of the construction phase of the 2.5Mt/yr plant it is building at Port-Daniel-Gascons in Quebec. It also announced that it has closed the financing for the project.
“With the significant turnaround of operations and approximately US$209m in new financing, everything is in place to complete the project on schedule,” said Christian Dubé, Executive Vice-President of Québec at la Caisse, the pension fund manager that took control of the project in August 2016. The first cement deliveries from the plant are scheduled for the spring of 2017.
McInnis Cement began the operating phase in October 2016, with tests on the crushing line and the conveyers used to transport limestone extracted from the quarry to the warehouse. The company expects to receive its first ship at its marine terminal in early November 2016.
By the end of 2016, the company expects to finalise and begin operations of the crushing unit, receive several ships transporting raw materials in its marine terminal and conduct the first operational checks for the grinding of raw materials. Distribution terminals at Sainte-Catherine and Providence are also under construction and other sites under development will soon be added to the company’s distribution network.
Canada: The board of directors of Italcementi have met in Milan, Italy and have decided on integrate its operations in the Canadian market with the operations of HeidelbergCement, which from 1 July 2016 has been holding the majority stake in Italcementi and will take over the entire company following a mandatory takeover bid. The transaction involves the acquisition by Canadian Lehigh Hanson Materials (LHM), indirectly owned by HeidelbergCement, of the entire share capital, including ordinary and preference shares, of US-based Essroc Canada, which is indirectly owned by Italcementi, through vehicle company Essroc Netherlands. The price which Essroc will receive for the sale of Essroc Canada to LHM, equal to some US$281m, will be paid by assigning to Essroc 42,288 LHM shares of the new issue, or 15.5% in LHM share capital, and for the remainder - in cash US$151,000.
Lafarge Canada to test burning tyres at its Brookfield plant
30 September 2016Canada: Lafarge Canada has started a partnership with Dalhousie University researcher Mark Gibson to test tyre-derived fuel on an industrial scale at the Brookfield cement plant in Nova Scotia. Working under a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant, this initiative will research the adoption of low carbon fuels in the cement industry. The research will continue the partnership between Lafarge Canada and Dalhousie's Faculty of Engineering.
"My students and I are very pleased to see this work enter the real world. Based on our research, we expect to see significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the Brookfield cement plant and thereby help Nova Scotia move one step closer to a low carbon economy," said Gibson. He added that the use of tires will also reduce NOx emissions. In 2015, Gibson and his team published a report entitled ‘Use of scrap tyres as an alternative fuel source at the Lafarge cement kiln, Brookfield, Nova Scotia.’
Due to different initiatives including previous work with Dalhousie's Faculty of Engineering, the Brookfield plant has substituted alternative fuels for conventional ones by using front-end burner injection in its kiln. The plant is expected to reach a substitution rate of up to 30% by the end of 2016. Following the test using tyres the cement producer expects to use 15% of its fuel requirements from 450,000 tyres per year, or just under half the amount of tyres generated in Nova Scotia. The project proposal will be explained in further detail at a Public Meeting planned for 20 October 2016 in Brookfield.