Displaying items by tag: Europe

Spain: Cement consumption in Spain rose by 3% in 2024 after two consecutive years of decline, reaching 14.9Mt, according to the latest data from Oficemen.

The figure represents an increase of 0.42Mt compared to 2023, though remains similar to 2021-2022 levels. Oficemen projects 5% growth for 2025.

Alan Svaiter, Oficemen chair, said "These figures confirm the positive progression in cement consumption during the second half of 2025, following a challenging start with negative numbers".

Consumption remained behind that of 2023 until October 2024, when it showed 1% growth, before reaching the final 3% year-end figure.

Northern-Ireland based cement producer Cemcor said this week that it has completed trials of a calcined clay cement product called CalcinX. The company started its trials in 2023 and it has been supported by Queen’s University Belfast and funding from Innovate UK. Work with commercial partners has involved precast concrete paving manufacturer Tobermore producing paviours made from 50% CalcinX as a CEM II replacement and Moore Concrete has also manufactured precast units using 50% CalcinX as a CEM I replacement. So far over 3000t of CalcinX has been produced in a number of industrial-scale trials.

David Millar, the managing director of Cemcor, mentioned his company’s plans for calcined clay in June 2022 when he was interviewed by Global Cement Magazine. The company that became Cemcor bought the Cookstown cement plant and a few other assets from Holcim at the start of 2022. It then changed its name to Cemcor in November 2022. At the time of the interview the company was looking to “...develop new value-added products, including low-CO₂ options. This will allow us to use the same amount of clinker to produce more cement.” Millar couldn’t give away too many details at the time, however calcined clay was cited specifically. It was also noted that the company had the right material in its quarry and that it was already working with partners on it.

Amongst all the other decarbonisation options available for cement plants, a slow trickle of calcined clay projects keep being announced. In January 2025, for example, thyssenkrupp Polysius said it had secured a front-end engineering design contract from Circlua for the construction of the world’s largest activated clay plant in Brazil. This project in Para state will have a capacity of 3000t/day, will use renewable energy sources and will “improve the CO₂ footprint in cement production.” CBMI Construction also officially launched a flash calcination clay project in Tangshan, Hebei province in China. In December 2024, Vicat signed an agreement with the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations to develop the Lebec Net Zero (LNZ) project at its Lebec cement plant in California. This includes plans to produce calcined clay-based cement. Earlier in the autumn of 2024 Portugal-based Cimpor said it was preparing to convert a kiln at its Souselas plant to produce calcined clays, AVIC International Beijing and KHD said that they had secured a deal to build a 900t/day clay calcination plant for Ciments de l'Afrique (CIMAF) in Burkina Faso, and Holcim Česko said it was going to construct a calcined clay processing line at the Čížkovice cement plant in the Czech Republic.

One news story that stuck out in the autumn was the progress of a collaboration between Aumund and Holcim towards developing an electric linear calcination conveyor (eLCC). The two companies started work on the project in 2020 intending to look at the electrical calcination of clay using an Aumund pan conveyor. Initial tests of the eLCC reportedly demonstrated efficient thermal activation of clay through a combination of radiant heat and material circulation. The eLCC system is fully enclosed, insulated, has a compact design and can operate using electrical-powered renewable sources. The first industrial plant utilising this technology is scheduled for construction in 2025. Calcined clay technology and products by other industrial suppliers are available. The work by Aumund and its competitors show they are watching this market closely.

OneStone Consulting’s Joe Harder has found that only 14 clay calcination plants were operational worldwide in 2023 with a production capacity of just under 3.5Mt/yr. These are based in Latin America, Europe and Africa. In an article previewing a market report in the February 2025 issue of Global Cement Magazine, Harder predicts that by 2035 there will be 79 clay calcination plants with a capacity of just under 21Mt/yr. A steady growth of over 20 new plants annually is also expected subsequently from 2035 to 2050 as cement producers seek cost-effective ways to reduce their clinker factor. He identified installation costs, a lack of knowledge about clay-based cements, trouble obtaining mining rights and policy issues amongst other issues as holding back the use of clay calcination.

The current expectation is that calcined clay usage in the cement industry will be a minority option. Yet the size of global cement production can make a production share of, say, 3 - 8% a viable option for both cement manufacturers and equipment suppliers. The adoption of new cement products and standards can also take a long time and this clouds predictions of how far clay can go in the cement industry. At this point in the calcined clay story it is time to keep track of the new projects being set up.

Joe Harder will present a talk entitled ‘Calcined clay market trends by 2035’ at the Global FutureCem Conference taking place in Istanbul in early February 2025

France: Ecocem will build its first production facility dedicated to ACT, its low-carbon cement technology, at its Dunkirk site. The new site will be operational by 2026 with an initial capacity of 300,000t/yr of ACT.

The expansion will increase the plant's total production capacity to beyond 1Mt/yr and strengthen Ecocem’s operations in northern France, Paris and export markets. The first half of 2025 will see the installation of the key component of the facility, the mill, which will produce the required fillers, as well as expansion of blending and storage facilities. ACT is expected to be delivered to the market in the second half of 2026.

The total investment for the expansion is €50m, funded through a ‘green loan’ from the EthiFinance agency and supported by the French government and local authorities. France 2030's ‘Première Usine’ initiative also awarded a €3.6m grant, with additional grants from the Hauts-de-France Region and Dunkirk Urban Community.

Ecocem will partner with limestone supplier CB Green for the commercial production and delivery of ACT at the Dunkirk site.

Poland: The Polish cement industry predicts a 5% increase in production in 2025, to nearly 18Mt, driven by anticipated economic growth and potential EU fund unblocking under a national recovery plan.

Poland's statistics office reported cement production of 16.5Mt at the end of November 2024, a 5.6% year-on-year increase. The main factor impacting Poland's cement production volume was a weak construction industry and a significant increase in imports from Ukraine. According to a report by EY Poland, cement imports from Ukraine increased from just 300t in 2015 to almost 0.33Mt in 2023. Ukraine's share of cement imports to Poland in 2023 reached 29%, almost equalling the volume of supplies from Germany.

Spain: Holcim, Enagás and gas supplier Saggas have announced the ‘CO2necta’ project, a joint decarbonisation initiative that will capture, transmit and store over 0.56Mt/yr of CO₂. The project will involve the construction of a CO₂ capture plant at Holcim's Sagunto plant in Valencia. Captured CO₂ will be transported through Enagás infrastructure to the Saggas terminal in the Port of Sagunto, where it will be liquefied and then shipped for geological storage.

Spain: Heidelberg Materials Hispania has appointed Carlos Sánchez Galán as its Director General. He succeeds Jesús Ortiz Used in the post.

Sánchez Galán most recently worked as the Cement Commercial Director and Aggregates & Readymix Operations Director for the Spain-based subsidiary of Heidelberg Materials. Prior to this he was the Director Of Business Operations & Procurement. Throughout his career he has held a variety of managerial business development roles as well as working in commercial operations and purchasing. He originally joined Heidelberg Materials in 1997 as the Director for the Canary Islands.

Sánchez Galán is a graduate in Economics and Business Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid with a master's degree in business administration (MBA) from the Australian Graduate School of Management and a qualification in quarry technology from Doncaster College in the UK. He was also the president of the Spanish Association for concrete and mortar admixtures (ANFAH) from 2015 to 2017.

Europe: Capsol Technologies has been awarded an engineering services agreement for a pre-FEED (front-end engineering design) study on its CapsolEoP carbon capture technology at a cement plant in Europe, aiming to capture 600,000t/yr of CO₂.

Johan Jungholm, chief of business development at Capsol Technologies, said "We are building on our commercial traction within cement, where Capsol has emerged as a preferred carbon capture technology provider. CapsolEoP can operate with up to 50% lower energy use than traditional post-combustion technologies such as amines. This, together with reduced complexity, has the potential of reducing levelised capture costs by 20-60% for cement plant owners looking to decarbonise their operations.”

Austria: RHI Magnesita and MCi Carbon, supported by €3.8m in funding under the Australia-Austria Industrial Decarbonisation Demonstration Partnership Program, are moving forward with plans to establish the world’s first carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) plant in the refractory industry at Hochfilzen, Tyrol.

The funding, provided by the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund and the Australian Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, will support the CCUPScale project. This includes raw material analysis, pre-demonstration trials, low-carbon product development, process engineering and industrial integration.

The plant is expected to begin operations at RHI Magnesita’s facility in 2028 and aims to capture, convert and utilise 50,000t/yr of CO₂ to produce ‘CO₂-negative’ mineral products. The initiative uses MCi Carbon's mineral carbonation technology to reduce Scope 1 emissions and transform CO₂ into value-added materials.

Constantin Beelitz, regional president Europe, CIS & Türkiye at RHI Magnesita, said "This funding approval shows that we are on the right track with this project. For industries with unavoidable emissions like ours, CO₂ capture is currently the only viable path to achieve net-zero by 2050. However, we go one step further by not only capturing CO₂, but also converting it into products that provide solutions for us and other hard-to-decarbonise sectors, such as the cement industry."

Spain: Votorantim Cimentos Spain will invest €3.2m in a new clinker cooler at its Málaga plant, according to Alimarket. The upgrade will reportedly reduce thermal and electrical energy consumption and avoid approximately 11,000t/yr of CO₂ emissions. The project will receive a €725,960 subsidy from the regional government of Andalusia.

France: Bouygues Construction and Ecocem have signed a partnership to facilitate the use of Ecocem’s low-carbon ACT cement technology in Bouygues Construction’s projects.

The collaboration involves three stages of testing and validation. First, Bouygues Construction will conduct independent laboratory tests to evaluate ACT’s performance. Next, structural concrete walls will be built at Bouygues Construction’s facilities in Chilly-Mazarin, France starting in early 2025, and monitored to ensure thorough testing. Finally, a full-scale mock-up, including all structural elements, will be constructed to assess the in-situ application of ACT technology.  The testing programme aims to integrate ACT technology into Bouygues Construction projects following successful validation.