Displaying items by tag: Imerys

Valentine’s Day last week included some ‘hot’ news for the cement sector with the announcement that Electrified Thermal Solutions is preparing to build the first commercial-scale pilot of its Joule Hive thermal battery (JHTB) in San Antonio, Texas. The company is working with the Southwest Research Institute on the project along with Buzzi Unicem USA, 3M and Amy’s Kitchen as industrial partners. Advisors include Imerys. The project update follows the award of a US$5m grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE) in late January 2024.

The funding description from the DOE’s Industrial Efficiency & Decarbonization Office reports that the end goal is to “turn intermittent renewable electricity into constant industrial grade heat” that can replace fossil fuel usage. Electrified Thermal Solutions aims to test its JHTB thermal energy storage system, which uses electrically conductive refractory bricks, to convert and store electricity as heat at temperatures higher than 1700°C. The JHTB power ranges between 1 - 200MW of thermal output, with duration up to tens of hours, enabling ‘very affordable’ high temperature energy storage and on-demand heat. Notably, it can charge and discharge simultaneously, allowing a continuous heat supply.

Electrified Thermal Solutions is not alone in targeting the cement sector. As Global Cement Weekly has covered previously energy storage is a growing topic of interest with a few large-scale electrical battery units running at cement plants in Pakistan and Taiwan. The other big name in thermal batteries for cement production is Rondo Energy. Both Electrified Thermal Solutions and Rondo Energy are using modular three-dimensional arrays of refractory bricks to store thermal energy and then release it, although they are likely to have key proprietary differences. However, Rondo Energy appears to be further along the industrial adoption process so far. Titan Cement and Siam Cement Group (SCG) invested in Rondo Energy in 2022. Then in July 2023 SCG and Rondo Energy said that they were planning to expand the production capacity of a heat battery storage unit at an SCG plant from 2.4 GWh/yr in mid-2023 to 90GWh/yr. For more information on Rondo Energy read the feature by CEO John O’Donnell in the January 2023 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

The reason that this matters, as partly explained above, is that fossil fuels contribute about one third of the CO₂ emissions created by heating up the kiln in cement production to make clinker. This is dropping globally due to the uptake of alternative fuels, but burning alternative fuels emits gross CO₂, however you account for the emissions. Mass adoption of thermal batteries by the sector could potentially cut out this double-accounting and reduce that third down to the carbon footprint of the refractory bricks used. This would then create knock-on issues concerning what to do with the waste streams instead but that is not a problem for the cement sector. These are worries for another day, as we first need to see how thermal batteries work at scale at a cement plant.

A recent feature in the Economist considered whether the mass adoption of electrical power from renewable sources might be an increasingly viable path to decarbonising industry. Geopolitics, faster-than-expected growth in renewables and new technology are all doing their bit to make this possible. As with so much of the carbon agenda it may alter the very concept of the traditional cement production line or at least the speed of change. Just imagine how a future cement plant might look, decked out with a electrical micro-grid, a heat battery, an oxy-fuel kiln, a carbon capture unit and either a chemical plant or gas pipeline junction. Will it happen? Who knows… but it is an exciting time for the cement sector.

France: Private equity investment company Platinum Equity has completed its acquisition of Calderys from Imerys. It announced in July 2022 that it had agreed to pay around Euro930m to buy Imerys’ High Temperature Solutions business (HTS). Michel Cornelissen will remain as the president and chief executive officer of the refractory manufacturer.

In December 2022 Platinum Equity said that it has signed a definitive merger agreement to buy HarbisonWalker International (HWI), a supplier of refractory products and services in North America. the move is intended to create a global refractories supplier. The HWI deal is expected to complete in the first half of 2023 subject to closing conditions and regulatory approval.

India: Imerys has inaugurated a 30,000t/yr calcium aluminate binder plant at Atchatapuram in Andhra Pradesh. The Hindu newspaper has reported that the plant will supply refractory production and construction uses. Imerys plans to expand the plant's capacity to 50,000t/yr by 2030, in order to serve rising demand deriving from India's growing cement sector. This will make it Imerys' largest plant in the country.

China: The government of Jiangsu province has awarded an Environmental Protection certificate to Imerys subsidiary Calderys’ Zhangjiang refractory plant. The company said that the certification results from years of hard to enhance environmental efforts beyond national requirements. One example of the work is dust-proof partitioning around all dust-emitting equipment.

Environment, health and safety supervisor Ricken Ren said, “In 2016, the plant improved the quality of its raw materials. With major work no longer required to lessen the water content of the materials, it was able to reduce the use of its dry kiln, which uses natural gases in its drying process, in turn greatly reducing the plant’s energy consumption. ” He added, “Keeping the plant’s environmental impact as low as possible is a never-ending job, and we cannot lose focus. We perform daily checks to ensure devices such as our dust collectors are working effectively, and we are always monitoring our emissions during operation according to national laws. Every department worked together on environmental protection performance. It is a great teamwork result.”

France: Imerys has signed an agreement to buy a 60% stake of Haznedar Group, a Turkey-based monolithic refractories and refractory bricks producer for the cement, steel, iron and petrochemical markets. The acquisition is expected to conclude in the fourth quarter of 2020 subject to approval by competition authorities. No value for the deal has been released.

The acquisition will add basic and acidic refractory bricks to Imerys’ product range and extend its industrial footprint with a production base in Turkey. It is also expected to strengthen its position within the Turkish market. The business will be consolidated in Imerys’ High Temperature Solutions business area, part of its High Temperature Materials & Solutions segment.

India: France-based Imerys has announced the acquisition of calcium silicate producer Hysil by its subsidiary Calderys Indian Refractories from CK Birla Group for Euro10.1m. SeeNews has reported that the expansion to Imerys’ Indian operations is aimed at securing lower prices for raw materials for use in high temperature insulation in various industries, especially the cement sector.

RHI Magnesita has taken the step this week of raising its prices globally by 5% for its products for its industrial and steel divisions. It has applied the increase to both its basic (magnesia and dolomite based) and non-basic products, varying in a range of 3% to 20%. It has blamed this on a global scarcity of raw materials caused mostly by Chinese environmental regulations on mining and processing. It goes on to attribute the issue to increased export taxes, more restrictive allocation of explosives and the nationalisation or controlled consolidation of mining operations in China. All of this has, “...structurally altered the production, pricing and dynamics for industrial minerals.”

Graph 1: Revenue in 2018 from industrial divisions at selected refractory producers. Source: Company reports.

Other major refractory producers, including Imerys and Vesuvius, reported similar mounting raw material costs in 2018. They also implemented price changes to maintain income and/or sales growth. As can partly be seen in Graph 1 some of the major refractory producers reported mixed fortunes in 2018 for their divisions that produce products for the cement industry.

RHI Magnesita noted that 2018 was a year of steady refractory market growth and relative stability for cement and lime from a global market perspective, with some significant variances on a regional basis. Imery’s Energy Solutions & Specialties division suffered due to flat markets. However, its High Resistance Materials division (not shown in Graph 1) benefited from the ongoing integration of Kerneos into the group. The group restructured its businesses at the end of 2018 creating a High Temperature Materials & Solution segment that brings together its various refractory concerns. Vesuvius' Steel Advanced Refractories division, which include monolithic products, reported particular growth in the Americas in 2018. Although it noted some market share loss in North Asia and in certain European countries, the latter due in price increases.

Refractories aren’t the only material or commodity used by the cement industry that has been distorted by Chinese domestic policy. Regulations on imports of waste streams including plastics started in 2017 leading to European and US suppliers struggling to find alternate markets. One implications of this appears to have been waste firms focusing on separating plastic into high and low calorific fractions to fight the downward price trends of a market glut. The outcomes are different but the sheer size and variety of China’s economy is increasingly affecting the cement industry in new and different ways.

RHI Magnesita’s travails in China and the debacle of waste imports bring to mind the quote by the 19th century Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternic, ‘When Paris sneezes, Europe catches a cold.’ Metternic was referring to Napoleonic-era France and its aftermath. The modern version may have been used to reference the US but maybe it should be instead, ‘When China sneezes, the world catches a cold.’ Gesundheit.

Votorantim shone a glimmer of hope for the Brazilian cement industry with the release of its first quarter financial results this week. Increased sales volumes in Brazil, Turkey, India and Latin America led to an 11% rise in revenue to US$682m in the period. Admittedly back home in Brazil, most of this came from concrete and mortar sales, but after the slump Brazil’s had they’ll take whatever they can get. This compares to a 14% drop in sales revenue in the same period in 2017 due to falling cement consumption.

Graph 1: Accumulated 12 months local cement sales in Brazil. Source: SNIC.

SNIC, Brazil's national cement industry association, preliminary figures for April 2018 show a similar trend. Cement sales for April 2018 rose by 8.9% year-on-year to 4.35Mt from 4Mt. Sales for the first four months of the year dipped slightly by 0.2% to 16.9Mt although this is an improvement on the first quarter figures showing the benefit a strong April has had. Improvements are driven by growth in the central and southern parts of the country. SNIC’s graph of accumulated sales (Graph 1) definitely shows a slowing trend of decreasing cement sales with April 2018 being the only the second month in over two years where sales have risen.

Paulo Camillo Penna, the president of SNIC, even went as far as to speculate that the three months from April to June 2018 might see the first sustained period of improvement since 2015 and that sales could even grow by 1% for the year as a whole. This is a far cry from Penna’s description of his industry at the start of 2017 as, “One of the worst moments in its history.”

Votorantim reported that some regions of Brazil were starting to show a positive trend in the second half of 2017. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to stop the cement producer’s overall sales falling for the year. LafargeHolcim didn’t release specific figures for its Brazilian operations in 2017 but it did say that its cost savings programme had, ‘provided for material improvement versus prior year both in recurring earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) and cash flow.’ It reckoned that despite the market contracting, it had managed to increase its market share. Meanwhile, on the supplier side RHI Magnesita said in a first quarter trading update that its cement and lime business was flat due to continuing low capacity utilisation rates in China and Brazil.

If this truly is the end of the Brazilian cement market slump then it seems surprising that there haven’t been more mergers or acquisitions. Mineração Belocal, a subsidiary of Belgium’s Lhoist, said this week that it had purchased L-Imerys, a lime producer that operates a plant at Doresópolis in Minas Gerais. Local refractory producer Magnesita merged with RHI in mid-2017.

The big deal that hasn’t happened is the sale of InterCement, the country’s second largest cement producer. Owner Camargo Corrêa was reportedly selling minority stakes in the company in 2015. Then in early 2017 local press said that it was aiming for a price of US$6.5bn for the whole company with Mexico’s Cemex as a potential bidder. Since then nothing has happened publicly although the initial public offering of InterCement’s Argentine subsidiary Loma Negra in November 2017 for US$954m may have bought Camargo Corrêa the time it needed to wait for the market to improve. Rumours of a public listing of InterCement’s European and African operations have followed.

In its World Economic Outlook in April 2018 the IMF forecast a 2.8% rise in gross domestic product (GDP) in Brazil in 2018. If SNIC’s forecast for 2018 is correct then Camargo Corrêa may have survived the worst of the slump to live to trade another day. The price for InterCement at this point can only rise, as should the prospects of the Brazilian industry.

Brazil: Mineração Belocal, a subsidiary of Belgium’s Lhoist, has purchased L-Imerys, a lime producer that operates a plant at Doresópolis in Minas Gerais. L-Imerys is a subsidiary of France’s Imerys, according to the Diário do Comércio newspaper. The 0.4Mt/yr lime plant was inaugurated in 2013. The sales is depending on approval by the relevant competition bodies. No value for the acquisition has been disclosed.

France: Imerys has reorganised its Kerneos and Imerys Refractory Minerals businesses into one division: Imerys Aluminates. The new organisation will be managed by Jean-Marc Bianchi, Vice-President and General Manager, and it will become one of Imerys' 12 divisions.

Imerys Aluminates is expected to generate a yearly turnover of approximately Euro650m, it operates 23 industrial sites in seven countries, and is supported by a global commercial presence. It will offer customers a broad product portfolio across a range of segments, including refractories, building chemistry, civil engineering, investment casting industries and wastewater systems.