Displaying items by tag: Quarry

India: Shree Cement has secured mining rights for a limestone quarry spanning 912 hectares. The reserve has a capacity of 211Mt and is situated in Jaisalmer District, Rajasthan.

Iraq: Kurdistan Region prime minister Masrour Barzani will inaugurate the Dabin cement plant and power station in Erbil Governorate today, 12 May 2025, according to Kurdistan24 news. The foundation stone was laid nearly two years ago, on 22 June 2023.

The project spans 212,000m² and was built by China Power Investment Corporation. It includes a 6300t/day capacity cement plant and a 52MW power station, intended to both support the energy needs of the plant and feed into the broader grid to alleviate strain on regional electricity supplies. A limestone quarry 1km away from the plant supplies the limestone for production, where geological surveys have reportedly confirmed reserves of 150Mt, sufficient to sustain operations for at least 50 years.

Raw material is transported to the plant using a 1400t/hr capacity industrial crusher. The processed material is stored in four 10,000t silos, each 18m in diameter and 56m tall.  

Sweden: A court has granted Heidelberg Materials a 30-year licence to continue limestone mining at its Slite quarry on the island of Gotland, securing the future of the plant that produces 75% of Sweden’s cement. The court ruling replaces a 2022 four-year concession and follows a 2021 rejection of a long-term extension that had threatened cement rationing and job losses, according to Reuters.

Heidelberg Materials deputy CEO Karin Comstedt Webb said “The permit ensures a robust supply of cement to Sweden's construction sector for many years.”

Philippines: Governor Gwen Garcia has called for an investigation into all cement plants in Cebu over environmental and safety risks from large-scale quarrying operations, according to Sugbo News.

The governor called attention to mineral production sharing agreements (MPSAs) granted to companies like Apo Land and Quarry Corporation (ALQC), which cover over 3300 hectares, including populated areas. ALQC supplied materials to Cemex Philippines. Garcia also requested a review of other cement plants, including Solid Earth (owned by Taiheiyo Cement), Mabuhay Filcement and Republic Cement, advocating for stricter oversight.

Kenya: The Ministry of Mining has ordered the shut down all mining operations at East Africa Portland Cement Company due to a US$4m debt the company owes the government. The cement producer has also been accused of operating illegally since 2016, according to Citizen Digital. Its sites have reportedly been lacking safety equipment, not registering vehicles that transport limestone and other infringements. Police have been sent to the company’s quarries to ensure they stop work.

The East Africa Portland Cement Company runs quarries at Portland and Sparetech in Kajiado and Kibini in Sultan Hamud.

Brazil: China-based Huaxin Cement has signed a deal worth US$187m to buy aggregates producer Embu. Embu owns four quarries in the metropolitan region of São Paulo with a production capacity of nearly 9Mt/yr, according to the Rio Times newspaper. In 2023 it produced 6.3Mt and reported a net profit of around US$3.2m.

Italy: Cementir Holding has blamed a fall in earnings in the first nine months of 2024 on “lower results achieved in all geographical areas except Egypt.” It added that sales had fallen due to a decrease in volumes in some places and negative currency effects in Türkiye and Egypt. The group’s revenue fell by 5% year-on-year to €1.24bn in the first nine months of 2024, from €1.30bn in the same period in 2023. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 9% to €296m from €326m. Sales volumes of cement and clinker remained stable at 7.98Mt. It noted that volumes increases were reported in Türkiye and, to a lesser extent, in Malaysia and the US. However, volumes of ready-mixed concrete rose by 5% to 3.33Mm³ from 3.18Mm³.

Francesco Caltagirone Jr, chair and CEO, said “The results for the first nine months of 2024 are in line with our expectations and, after several quarters of contraction, signs of a market turnaround in some geographies are emerging in the third quarter of 2024. We are strengthening our competitive position through initiatives such as: the investment on Kiln 4 in Belgium, the restart of the second line in Egypt, the acquisition in concrete in Nordic & Baltic, a new limestone quarry in Malaysia, and the repurchase of a large part of the minority interest in our Egyptian subsidiary, to prepare ourselves for any upcoming market opportunities”.

Belgium: Heidelberg Materials Lixhe (formerly CBR) has applied to expand the Romont quarry towards Kanne, ensuring the Lixhe plant's operations for the next 20 years with an additional 94.75 hectares. This expansion marks the third and final phase, intending to continue marl extraction on Walloon territory. A public inquiry is scheduled from 16 September - 30 October 2024.

Director Benoit Gastout said "Based on a recent environmental impact report, we are now requesting the partial revision of the regional plan and an environmental permit for the desired extension. We are very aware of the impact of the quarry on the region. That is why we have been taking various measures for years to ensure that Romont is embedded in the landscape as well as possible and that the fauna and flora are respected because of the rich biodiversity. The priority in all of this remains that we want to live in harmony with the local population.”

Vietnam: The Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has expressed environmental concerns about Duyen Ha's plan to convert 423,000m² of forest and and agricultural land into a quarry for its expansion of its Diep cement plant in Ninh Binh province. The expansion will increase limestone supply for a second production line at the plant, Vietnam News has reported. According to an environmental impact assessment report, the expansion will affect 382,000m² of forest and 41,000m² of agricultural land. The total project area will eventually reach 988,000m², capable of producing 2Mt/yr of limestone. The total investment is valued at US$8.8m.

The Hillhead Quarrying, Construction and Recycling Show is in full flow this week, taking place near Buxton in Derbyshire. As one delegate marvelled on the panoramic minibus journey down to the quarry, “It’s like a music festival without the music and… other stuff.” Indeed. Of course what one doesn’t find at Glastonbury and the like is a near comprehensive range of suppliers, over 600 of them, to the industry all in one place… in a quarry! Where else can one get up close and see the new hydrogen-powered generators and excavating vehicles that are being piloted? The official attendance figures don’t get released until after the event but on the ground it looks as busy as ever. It’s truly the place to be this week.

The show gives us a reason to take a look at the UK cement sector. Like many other countries around the world it is an election year in the UK, with a General Election scheduled for 4 July 2024. The result of this should determine the next Prime Minister and the ruling party. So, naturally, the MPA, the trade association for the aggregates, asphalt, cement, concrete, dimension stone, lime, mortar and industrial sand industries, is taking the opportunity to remind the political parties what its priorities are. The quick version is: support for decarbonisation; a streamlined planning system; and better delivery of projects. This sounds familiar to priorities in other countries but one British spin on this includes the UK’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).

Graph 1: Domestic cement sales and imports in the UK, 2017 – 2022. Source: MPA.

Edwin Trout’s feature on the UK cement sector in the June 2024 issue of Global Cement Magazine presents a good overview of the last 12 months. The general UK economy has faced shocks in recent years such as Brexit, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. However, this has been further compounded by a downturn and high interest rates since late 2022 when the then Prime Minister Liz Truss caused market turbulence in the wake of a badly received government financial statement. As Trout relates, sales of heavy building materials have been in relative decline since mid-2022 with more of the same expected in 2024. Production of cement in 2023 is currently uncertain given the reporting time lag from the MPA but up until 2022 domestic cement sales fell somewhat but imports grew. This has created a situation where overall cement sales in 2022 were 12Mt, not far behind the annual level in the early 2000s. However, the share of imports has nearly doubled since then. More recent MPA data on mortar and ready-mixed concrete sales throughout the first nine months of 2023 suggest that market activity has decreased and poor weather at the start of 2024 looks set to have made this worse.

Despite the apparent slowdown in building materials sales the cement companies have been conducting smaller-scale maintenance and upgrade projects at their facilities and supply chain schemes such as the cement storage unit for deep sea shipping lines that Aggregate Industries said in February 2024 it was going to build at the Port of Southampton. The news the cement companies want to show off has been a steady stream of information about ongoing decarbonisation projects in the cement sector. C-Capture started a carbon capture trial at Heidelberg Materials’ Ketton cement works in Rutland in May 2024, Capsol Technologies said in March 2024 that it had been selected to conduct a study on its carbon capture technology at Aggregate Industries Cauldon cement plant in Staffordshire, Heidelberg Materials' Ribblesdale cement plant in Lancashire announced in March 2024 that it was taking part in a study to assess the use of ammonia as a hydrogen source for fuelling cement kilns and Heidelberg Materials awarded Japan-based Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) a front end engineering design contract for a carbon capture installation at its Padeswood cement plant in Flintshire in February 2024. Finally, on the divestment front, CRH completed the sale of its UK-based lime business to SigmaRoc for €155m in March 2024. The business operates from sites in Tunstead and Hindlow with five permitted lime kilns.

That’s it for this short recap on the UK for now. For a longer look at the UK cement sector read Edwin Trout’s feature in June 2024 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

Hillhead 2024 runs until 27 June 2024