Displaying items by tag: UK

UK: The World Cement Association (WCA) has appointed three new directors: Fabien Charbonnel, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Cem’In’Eu; Xu Gang, the chair of the board of Maweni Limestone and Vice President and Head of Overseas Area of its parent company Huaxin Cement; and Kevin Lunney, the chief operations officer of Mannok Holdings. The appointments were agreed at the WCA General Assembly Meeting, which took place in January 2023.

At the same time Mohammed Ali Al-Garni, the CEO of Saudi Cement, and Roland van Wijnen, the CEO of PPC, were re-elected to the board of directors. Vincent Lefebvre, the founder and executive chair of Cem’In’Eu, and Mahendra Singhi, the managing director and CEO of Dalmia Cement, have also resigned as directors. They joined the board of directors of the WCA in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

UK: Heidelberg Materials subsidiary Hanson has awarded a contract to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries subsidiary MHI Engineering for installation of a planned 800,000t/yr carbon capture system at its Padeswood cement plant in Flintshire. The producer plans to store its captured CO₂ in exhausted Irish Sea natural gas fields. MHI Engineering will carry out a pre-front-end engineering design study using its Advanced KM CDR solvent-based process. The supplier developed the process jointly with fellow Japan-based company Kansai Electric Power.

The project will be MHI Engineering's third of its kind at a cement plant, following similar commissions with Lehigh Cement in Canada and Tokuyama Cement in Canada.

UK: Germany-based Heidelberg Materials has signed a deal for the acquisition of Mick George Group, the leading concrete recycling company in the East Midlands and East of England. Mick George Group’s 40 sites span bulk excavation, earthmoving and demolition services and demolition waste removal and management, as well as ready-mix concrete and aggregates distribution.

Heidelberg Materials Western and Southern Europe director Jon Morrish said “With the acquisition of Mick George, we are clearly moving towards establishing a truly circular materials and services offer in our UK business. I warmly welcome all 1000 Mick George employees to Heidelberg Materials and look forward to further developing the business together.”

Heidelberg Materials aims to offer circular alternatives for half of its products by 2050.

UK: Oscrete UK has appointment three new sales managers and two new trainee concrete technicians as part of on-going growth at the company. David Todd has joined as Area Technical Sales Manager (North), David Taylor as Area Sales Manager (Midlands) and Karl Mobley Area Technical Sales Manager (South East). Keiron and Michael Todd have joining the new product development (NPD) and technical team. Todd worked previously as an account manager for Cemex.

Oscrete is a specialist construction chemical suppliers, manufacturing a range of concrete admixtures for the pre-cast and ready-mix market and developing and supplying additives for the manufacture of dry bagged mortars and adhesives.

UK: C-Capture won an IChemE Global Award in the Energy category for its solvent-based carbon capture system. C-Capture's model differs fundamentally from currently commercially available systems, offering a lower energy penalty than technologies including amine-based capture. It is robust in handling impurities in flue gases, including O₂, SO_x and NO_x, while offering competitive cost and safety performance.

CEO Tom White said “Being shortlisted was honour enough, but to win the global Energy award is fantastic recognition for the C-Capture team and our unique carbon capture technology. The IChemE Global Awards represent the pinnacle of excellence in chemical process engineering. This achievement is testament to our exceptional team and their commitment to accelerating the global adoption of carbon capture and storage to achieve net zero by preventing greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.”

UK: The Mineral Products Association (MPA) has appointed Jon Flitney, Michael Conroy, Liam Forde, Steve Callow and Mike Haynes to new roles at the organisation. This follows the appointment of Jon Prichard as the MPA’s chief executive officer in October 2022, succeeding Nigel Jackson.

Jon Flitney has joined MPA Cement as Energy and Climate Change Manager. He will be working with the MPA Cement Climate Change and CO2 Reduction group providing support to sector decarbonisation and associated policies. Flitney joins from the British Ceramic Confederation (BCC) where he has worked across energy, environment, climate change and decarbonisation policy areas for over six years. He also previously worked on air quality and environmental protection for local authorities and the Environment Agency, covering a variety of manufacturing industries.

Michael Conroy joins as Manager - Environment, Safety & Regulatory Affairs for MPA Cement. He has over 20 years’ experience in the mineral products industry and ,since 2016, this has been focussed on environmental management, compliance, permitting and regulation across various sectors within the industry. His role at MPA involves working with members in the cement sector and liaising with the environmental regulators and relevant government departments on behalf of the members to ensure the sector is recognised in a positive and beneficial way. He is secretariat for the Cement Regulatory Interface Group (RIG), which meets regularly to discuss environmental regulatory matters that affect and impact the UK cement sector.

Liam Forde has joined BRMCA/MPA Ready-mixed Concrete as Construction Manager. His main responsibilities will be working with MPA members, the Concrete Centre and UK Concrete to promote safety, best practice, and ready-mixed concrete as the best solution for sustainable and resilient construction. Forde is a chartered civil engineer and joins from BAM Nuttall having had a background in both design and site environments.

Steve Callow has joined as Manager, Masonry and Concrete Products. He joins from Marshalls where he was Specification Manager. He also has sector experience gained from roles in FP McCann, CPM, Milbury Systems and Carillion.
Mike Haynes has joined MPA as British Lime Association Director. He joins MPA after 18 years in the lime industry working in the sales and customer services teams responsible for Construction and Civil Engineering markets and progressing to managing the customer services team. Prior to this, Haynes worked for contractors and consultants in those markets, as an engineer and project manager.

UK: Hanson has announced a 'carbon capture breakthrough' in its use of recycled concrete paste (RCP) in the wet scrubber of its Ribblesdale cement plant in Lancashire. In under 30 minutes, 15t of RCP was able to capture 1.5t of CO₂ from the plant's flue emissions. Carbonated RCP is suitable to replace limestone in cement production.

Hanson's sustainability director Marian Garfield said “The trial was carried out with our parent company Heidelberg Materials’ research and development team, and marks another important milestone in our carbon capture journey."

South Korea: UK-based TCRK has announced a deal with Asia Cement to use its carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) technology at the cement producer’s plant in Jaechon. The project will see the first commercial deployment of TCRK’s CCUS technology from the first quarter of 2023. It will initially target 30,000t/yr of CO₂ equivalent and then ramp up to 120,000t/yr of CO₂ equivalent by mid-2024. The second target is intended to help Asia Cement reduce its emissions by 20% required to meet its 2025 decarbonisation plan.

TCRK’s approach will use two processes to utilise capture CO₂ from cement production. Its Arago Cement Process uses captured CO₂, cement kiln dust and by-pass particles to produce precipitated calcium carbonate, which TCRK uses to produce a product called Arago Cement. The captured CO₂ will also be used to grow microalgae in a process called bio-fixation. This method will offer 10% extra carbon storage capacity. The microalgae has a wide range of potential end-products including bioplastics and animal feed, and can also be used as a source of bio-cement production.

UK: Cookstown Cement has rebranded as Cemcor. The company formed in January 2022 following its acquisition of the 0.45Mt/yr Cookstown cement plant from Holcim in January 2022. It then announced investments of around Euro14m towards making environmental and process upgrades at the unit. The company also purchased a limestone quarry in Cookstown, a shale quarry in Dungannon and a terminal at Belfast Harbour.

UK: RealWear has launched the world’s first voice-controlled head-mounted thermal camera. The new product combines the supplier's RealWear thermal camera and RealWear Navigator 500 headset with Teledyne FLIR's Lepton radiometry technology, enabling effortless capture of visible-spectrum and thermal imagery. Cement plant operators can then quickly identify temperature anomalies in mission-critical equipment like pumps, pipes, wiring and motors.

Chief Product Officer Rama Oruganti said “RealWear Navigator head-mounted devices, with a revolutionary modular design, continue to gain support with global 1000 companies as the new gold standard in assisted reality. The compelling option to add thermal image capture without occupying your hands in hazardous environments gives frontline professionals more real-time information to do their jobs safely and productively.”