Displaying items by tag: South Korea

South Korea: Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki has announced plans for a further increase to his country’s coal imports from Australia in order to enable cement production to continue and prevent a shortage. The Yonhap News Agency News has reported that the government plans to accelerate customs clearance processes around the fossil fuel. Hong added that the government will ‘sternly deal with any illegal hoarding or price fixing’ of cement.

South Korea: Seven cement producers have agreed to produce 3.77Mt of cement in the second quarter of 2022, up by 36% quarter-on-quarter from first-quarter 2022 levels, to alleviate a shortage. 380,000t of cement which would previously have been exported will now supply the domestic market instead. The Yonhap News Agency has reported that bituminous coal supply issues have hampered the domestic cement industry's ability to increase its production in line with demand growth. In the first quarter of 2022, South Korea's coal imports consisted of 54% Russian coal and 46% Australian coal, compared to 75% Russian and 25% Australian coal in 2021.

The government plans to invest US$764m between 2023 and 2030 in improving the sustainability of South Korean cement production, including moving it away from reliance on coal through increased alternative fuel use.

Peru: Cement production grew by 41% year-on-year to 12.9Mt in 2021 from 9.14Mt in 2020. Data from the Association of Cement Producers (ASOCEM) shows that cement and clinker exports increased by 43% to 205,000t and by 128% to 707,000t respectively. Cement and clinker imports rose by 23% to 884,000t and 131% to 1.55Mt respectively. In December 2021 94% of cement imports came from Vietnam and the majority of clinker imports came from South Korea. ASOCEM added that the recovery of local cement despatch levels from July 2020 was a sign that the market had recovered after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

South Korea: A TEC says that it has installed and commissioned a ReduDust dust treatment plantin the chlorine bypass system of Ssangyong Cement’s Donghae cement plant in Gangwon. The ReduDust plant will recover salts from dust, enabling the producer to reuse the dust in its cement production. The supplier says that it will yield 35,000t/yr of useable dust. Ssangyong Cement already uses an A TEC Rocket Mill grinding unit in its alternative fuel (AF) production at the Donghae cement plant.

South Korea: Researchers at Incheon National University have discovered an optimal conductive carbon fibre volume for cement-based conductive composites for use in net-zero energy buildings. The team reported that a 1% conductive carbon fibre content facilitates maximum energy generation from the movements of occupants and the weather against floors and walls. It also enables the storage of electricity at safe voltages. The product is based on triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) technology.

The team published its results in the journal Nano Energy in November 2021.

South Korea: Sampyo Group has announced a planned investment of US$171m before 2030 to reduce Scope 1 and 2 CO₂ emissions by 35% over the period from an August 2021 baseline. The parent company of Sampyo Cement plans to achieve this in the first phase by increased its use of alternative fuels, improving energy efficiency, introducing low-carbon raw materials such as fly ash and developing sustainable products. The company is targeting net zero CO₂ production by 2050.

There has been a significant investment in the South Korean cement industry this week with the news that Hanil Hyundai Cement has ordered a steam-based waste heat recovery (WHR) system from Japan-based Kawasaki Heavy Industries. The 22.6MW system will be used on two of the production lines at the Yeongwol plant in Gangwon Province. The supplier says that installation is expected to generate about 30% of the energy the plant needs and save around 10,000t/yr of CO₂ in the process. Delivery is scheduled for late 2022.

This order may be the first investment following the announcement in late June 2021 that the state-owned Korea Development Bank had pledged around US$870m towards supporting the cement sector in making carbon reduction upgrades by 2025. These are intended to include moving away from burning fossil fuels in cement production and increasing the use of recycling materials. At the time of the agreement between the bank and the Korea Cement Association (KCA), Hanil Hyundai Cement noted that the local alternative fuels substitution rate was 24% compared to 46% in the European Union and 68% in Germany.

Graph 1: Cement production in South Korea, 2010 – 2020. Source: Korea Cement Association

By European or American standards South Korea kept its coronavirus cases under control in 2020. A robust testing and contract tracing regime (K-Quarantine) managed to prevent the country enforcing stricter measures until late in 2020. A fourth wave of infections, currently underway in July 2021, due to the more contagious Delta variant, has started to change this. Despite being able to keep its economy open though, the construction sector still took a hit although not as bad as initially feared.

Cement production fell by 6% year-on-year to 47.5Mt in 2020 from 50.6Mt in 2019 following a downward trend since 2017. The KCA expected worse after a poor third quarter in 2020 when it was preparing for shipments to fall below the level last seen in the midst of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis in the late 1990s. On top of this the industry was also potentially facing a new tax on production towards the end of 2020. One large local producer, Ssangyong C&E, reported a 5% year-on-year drop in sales to US$864m in 2020 from US$910m in 2019. However, it managed to increase its operating profit over the same period. So far in 2021 the sector faced supply shortages in the spring. The KSA blamed the winter plant maintenance schedule and a lack of railway wagons and trucks.

The timing of the Korea Development Bank investment in the cement sector is interesting given the movement on the European Union carbon border adjustment mechanism. Cement exports seem unlikely to be affected but business lobbyists like the Federation of Korean Industries are well aware of the effects schemes like this might have upon commodities like steel and aluminium in the first phase and then the implications for car production later on. Target markets for cement exports such as the US, Peru, Chile and the Philippines might all become vulnerable should carbon-based trade restrictions become more prevalent. Of course export markets remain vulnerable to more usual hindrances. For example, in March 2021 the Philippines extended its safeguard measures on cement imports to various countries including South Korea.

Following a round of market consolidation in the late 2010s, the South Korean cement sector now appears to be entering a phase of sustainable realignment. In late May 2021 Prime Minister Moon Jae-in announced plans to hasten the country’s carbon reduction targets ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference scheduled for November 2021, including a carbon tax. With cement production on a downward trend since 2017 and the coronavirus crisis far from gone it will be instructive to see how far the intervention of the Korea Development Bank will go.

South Korea: Hanil Hyundai Cement has placed an order with Japan-based Kawasaki Heavy Industries for the design and installation of a 22.6MW waste heat recovery (WHR) unit at its Yeongwol cement plant in Gangwon. The WHR plant will generate power from heat from two of the plant’s production lines when commissioned in December 2022. The supplier says that it will serve 30% of the plant’s energy needs. Kawasaki Heavy Industries says it has previously supplied WHR units to Japan, Germany, South Korea, Turkey, China, Vietnam, India, Pakistan and elsewhere.

South Korea: Korea Cement Association (KCA) members have agreed to reduce their net CO₂ emissions to zero by 2050. To help them achieve this target, the state-owned Korea Development Bank has pledged US876m in investments in emissions reduction and green production upgrades by 2025, according to the Maeil Business Newspaper. The KCA says that 90% of local cement producers have increased their environmental, social and corporate governance investment and reduced their use of coal.

South Korea: A man has died in hospital after a crane collapsed onto him while working at SsangYong C&E’s Donghae cement plant in Gangwon province on 14 May 2021. The Korea Herald newspaper has reported that the man worked for a construction company contracted by the cement producer. Police are investigating the incident.