Displaying items by tag: Partnership

Germany/UK: The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) and the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA) have announced a formal partnership agreement. The strategic alliance is aimed at fostering innovation in the cement and concrete sectors and across their value chain partners.

Under the terms of the agreement, the GCCA and ECRA have granted each other mutual membership in order to aid collaboration. In addition, ECRA’s managing director will join the GCCA’s Partnership Council and the GCCA’s cement director will join ECRA’s Technical Advisory Council. The two parties will share their current work programs and identify key areas for future collaboration and input.

“ECRA’s mission to advance innovation in the cement industry within the context of sustainable development, as well as communicating key knowledge and research findings in technology, fits perfectly with the GCCA’s aim of driving advances in sustainable construction,” said Benjamin Sporton, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the GCCA.

US/Austria: Sempertrans USA, part of Semperit Group, and Shaw Almex Industries have agreed to end a cooperation agreement for the North American conveyor belt market. The agreement was originally set up in 2016. Sempertrans USA has set up a sales and distribution organisation for conveyor belts in North America and it will use this to serve its customers. Tim Shaw, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Shaw Almex, said that both companies had agreed that it would be better if they acted independently so that they could be more ‘flexible’ in handling their respective customers.

Germany: Fuchs Petrolub and DMG Mori have signed a contract for a technology partnership. The goal of the partnership is to jointly develop new lubricant solutions and services for machine tool applications. The plan also includes further progress in digitisation of production processes and condition monitoring of machines and plants.

"Use of the correct lubricant is decisive for optimal productivity when machine tools are used for intensive processing of components. In Fuchs, we are pleased to have acquired a globally-based technology partner, and together we want to continue expanding our technology- and service-excellence," said Christian Thönes, chairman of the executive board of DMG Mori.

DMG Mori manufactures machine tools with sales revenue of over Euro3.5bn. Fuchs develops, produces and distributes lubricants and related specialties.

Germany: Schmersal Group has entered into a sales partnership with ScanMin Africa to extend its range of system solutions for the bulk goods industry. Schmersal will add spectral analysis and measurement systems for bulk goods on conveyor belts to its range of integrated system products. ScanMin Africa will distribute safety products made by Schmersal.

“We can now offer extended system solutions that contribute to our customer’s ability to produce more productively and profitably in bulk goods conveying and also the downstream processes,” said Udo Sekin, Business Development Manager Heavy Industry within the Schmersal Group.

Germany’s Schmersal Group develops and produces a range of about 25,000 different switchgear and control devices. South Africa’s ScanMin Africa specialises in the manufacture and distribution of on line process analysers.

India: 15 companies have expressed interest in building cemeunt plants near to NTPC’s power stations. The electricity generation company sought cement producers in early 2017 to submit expressions of interest for partnerships to build 1Mt/yr cement plants, according to the Mint newspaper. NTPC wants its partners to sign long-term agreements with it to exclusively use fly ash and electricity from its power plants. The company has declined to name the companies that have expressed interest in the scheme. However, the power plants it wants to set up cement plants near include Barh, Farakka, Bongaigaon, Dadri, Badarpur, Moda and Aravali Power.

India: Calderys India and Magnesita have entered into a strategic alliance to work together in India and to increase their product portfolios for the cement industry. Calderys India will be the lead contact for the sales, marketing and after sales for Magnesita in the region as well as continuing to sell its own refractory product line. Alongside this Magnesita will supply technical support to Calderys India to support the shared market.

India: NTPC is looking for cement producers to help it build cement plants to take advantage of its fly ash and electricity. The power generation company is asking cement producers to submit expressions of interest for partnerships to build 1Mt/yr cement plants near its power stations, according to the Times of India. Partners will have to source their fly ash from NTPC but will be responsible for marketing their own products. NTPC has previously tried to enter the cement market since 2008 with both partners including the Cement Corporation of India and on its own. It produces 65Mt/yr of fly ash.

Sri Lanka: Insee Cement has signed research and development partnership deal’s with the Universities of Peradeniya, Moratuwa and Ruhuna. The agreements are intended to enhance the local construction industry through education, innovation and knowledge sharing, according to the Sunday Observer newspaper. The agreement was signed by Janaka Weerakoon of Siam City Cement and Upul Dissanayake of the University of Peradeniya, Ananda Jayawardena of the University of Moratuwa and SGJN Senanayake of the University of Ruhuna. Insee Cement was previously known as Holcim Lanka before it was purchased by Thailand’s Siam Cement in 2016.

Morocco: LafargeHolcim, ArcelorMittal, Evonik and Solvay have formed a Low Carbon Technology Partnerships Initiative across the steel, cement and chemicals industries. This new partnership will look at the potential synergies that exist between the manufacturing processes of these three energy intensive sectors, and how these synergies could be harnessed to reduce CO₂ emissions.

As a first step, and following preliminary research, the innovative partnership will produce a study with the technical support of Arthur D Little to identify potential ways to valorise industrial off-gases and other by-products from their manufacturing processes to produce goods with a lower carbon footprint than through the fossil path. The preliminary research has already allowed identification of significant potential in selected trans-sector pathways.

The study is aimed at bringing a fact-based overview of carbon and energy sources from industrial off-gases (first at a European level), and evaluating the technical, environmental and economic feasibility of different Carbon Capture and Usage (CCU) pathways and their potential.

Initial findings from the first step already underway suggest that deploying cross-sector carbon capture and reuse opportunities on an industrial scale could reduce up to 3 GT/yr or 7% of global anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. Existing conversion technologies that could be deployed across the three sectors could utilise by-products in the off-gases to create building materials, organic chemicals and fuel. Increased availability and greater access to renewable energy sources would significantly boost net carbon reduction efforts by those three sectors, within a supportive legislative framework. Cross sector carbon capture and reuse should also result in job creation, to be further investigated.

The study, carried out at European level, is building the ground for similar investigation extended at global level and paves the way for identifying and assessing industrial scale projects on CCU at the interface between the sectors.

“Concrete offers the highest level of life-cycle sustainability performance and we are continuously developing new products and solutions for a low carbon society. This new ambitious partnership will support our mission to cut our net emissions per ton of cement by 40% towards 2030 (versus 1990) and to develop and further deploy low carbon solutions for the construction sector. But to make this a reality, we will need an enabling regulatory framework and support for innovation,” said Bernard Mathieu, Head Group Sustainable Development of LafargeHolcim.

Denmark/US: FLSmidth and GE (formerly General Electric) have announced a partnership to create digital solutions for increasing productivity in the cement and minerals industries. The new solutions developed on GE's cloud-based Predix platform will use FLSmidth's knowledge of cement and minerals processing along with GE's industrial application of networked physical objects (the internet of things) to increase the productivity of connected equipment units in the cement and mining industry.

FLSmidth will build their solutions on top of the Predix platform with applications for managing process flows. This should allow customers to leverage process data and analytics for monitoring, benchmarking their performance and predicting maintenance of their equipment.

"Cement and mining companies already collect significant volumes of data, but currently, only a fraction of it is used. This will be the first available solution for a full coherent process monitoring to leverage optimisation solutions offered by a full service provider like FLSmidth," said FLSmidth’s head of Global Research & Development Jens Almdal.