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A 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.

Philippines: Cemex Holdings Philippines has appointed Luis Guillermo Franco Carrillo as its president and chief executive with effect from 1 June 2022. He has succeeded Ignacio Mijares, who will now lead Corporate Strategic Planning at the Cemex central office.

Franco Carrillo previously worked as the Builders Segment Vice President for Cemex Mexico. He holds over 23 years of experience with Cemex, since joining the company in 1999. Prior to his assignment to the Philippines, Luis worked in senior positions in the UK, Hungary and Mexico. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) and a master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Nigeria: Guillaume Moyen has resigned as the chief financial officer (CFO) of Dangote Cement. He cited personal reasons for his departure from the post. Moyen will be succeeded by Gbenga Fapohunda as the acting CFO.

Fapohunda holds over 20 years of experience in corporate finance. He joined Dangote Cement as the Regional CFO in Nigeria in early 2021. Prior to this he held regional CFO roles for Japan Tobacco International and British American Tobacco. Earlier in his career, he was a manager within the financial advisory team at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and also worked as a consultant at KPMG Professional Services.

He holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Finance from the London Business School and a Doctor of Philosophy (Marketing) from Delta State University in the US. Gbenga holds membership of a number of professional accountancy and finance bodies in Nigeria.

Vietnam: High costs have resulted in the cancellation of four planned new integrated cement lines by a local cement producer. Viet Nam News has reported that the producer in question presently faces costs of US$59.9 - 64.1/t cement, with a net loss of US$8.55 - 10.30/t. Coal prices are US$237/t, more than triple those at the start of 2022 of US$85.5/t. Gypsum and diesel prices rose by 50% over the first half of 2022. The producer reportedly attributed the coal price rise to the effects of the Covid-19 conflict and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Kazakhstan: Steppe Cement's first-half sales were US$41.4m in 2022, up by 18% year-on-year from first-half 2021 levels. Sales volumes were 837,000t, down by 0.4% year-on-year from 841,000t.

US: Silicate-based supplementary cementitious material (SCM) developer Terra CO₂ raised US$46m in its first funding round, it announced on 12 July 2022. Fast Company News has reported that climate innovation venture capital company Breakthrough Energy Ventures led the round.

Terra CO₂'s SCM consists of silicate-containing igneous rocks and sediments, which are ground and heated to form glass spheres. The company says that these behave in a similar way to natural pozzolan and fly ash. Terra CO₂ says that its product offers a 70% CO₂ emissions reduction compared to ordinary Portland cement (OPC).

Sri Lanka: Insee Cement's Ruhunu cement plant in Galle has begun producing Portland composite cement (PCC) using slag and fly ash. Insee Cement first produced PPC at its Puttalam cement plant.

Insee Cement's head of products and solutions Moussa Baalbaki said "Insee Cement introduced PCC for the first time to the local market in 2021 as part of a two-pronged approach: to create value for our customers by augmenting the sustainability performance in their constructions, and also to steer Sri Lanka's construction industry towards ambitious, globally benchmarked sustainable goals." Baalbaki continued "We are truly encouraged by the growing demand across the local market for PCC, and trust our production expansion to Galle is testimony to our commitment towards sustainable production practices."

Pakistan: Cherat Cement and Lucky Cement are among three companies to have imported 10,000t of coal from Afghanistan in the two-month period up to 11 July 2022. Asian News International has reported the other company was Fauji Fertilizer Power Station.

The local coal price in Afghanistan was US$188/t on 11 July 2022.

Middle East: The UK-based chemical solutions Aubin Group developer and supplier has landed a two-year contract worth US $5m to make and supply additives to a Middle Eastern concrete well company. Under the deal, Aubin Group will supply the company with CFL-575, a high temperature fluid loss additive which it says is compatible with a wide range of cement types and for use in oil wells. CFL-575 sales volumes surpassed 170,000kg/yr.

Omar Raafat, Middle East North Africa general manager at Aubin Group, said “It’s a very agile product, and lots of clients are seeing success within a wide range of environments. We are now scaling up production of CFL-575 to meet this growing demand, and we are delighted to be conducting this locally at our manufacturing facility in Abu Dhabi.”

Turkmenistan: Aumund has won a contract to equip Baherden Cement’s Ahal cement plant with three 300t/hr belt bucket elevators, three 450t/hr bucket elevators with central chain, a 1030t/hr double chain bucket elevator, two 200t/hr pan conveyors and 11 silo discharge gates. The equipment will serve raw materials preparation through to clinker grinding operations at the plant’s upcoming 1Mt/yr new line. Turkey-based cement plant builder Bilim Makina will receive the order.