Displaying items by tag: US

North America: US-based CalPortland has become a corporate member of the Wildlife Habitat Council. The council manages habitats to support sustainable ecosystems and the communities surrounding them. The Japan-based Taiheiyo Cement subsidiary says that the move formalises its commitment to integrating biodiversity and conservation action into its sustainability efforts.

President and chief executive officer Allen Hamblen said "Our membership with the Wildlife Habitat Council provides a unique opportunity to take corporate sustainability goals and objectives and translate them into tangible, on-the-ground actions which ensure a sustainable environment for the next generation."

US: Testing technology supplier Forney has named Jennifer Galligane as its new Product Development Manager, with the task of ‘driving the company's technological and commercial advances.’ Galligane will be responsible for overseeing the Forney Software as a Service (SaaS) team, driving Forney SaaS technology advancements and ensuring strategic alignment of customer needs with the SaaS roadmap, leading the overall delivery process and collaborating with customers, sales and marketing, and engineering.

Galligane has 25 years of software industry experience and extensive knowledge of SaaS and eCommerce product development. Prior to joining Forney, she was Law firm Fragomen’s technical delivery senior manager, having previously held product management, eCommerce and engineering positions with a variety of companies, including Westinghouse Electric Co., Smith Micro Software, Coventry Health Care and Highmark Health. Galligane has a computer science degree and an information science master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

Forney’s CEO Jeff Dziki said "With ForneyVault technology now in five countries and more than 100 labs, Jennifer will help us meet market demands and seize opportunities to continue to grow." He added "Jennifer's experience as a product management leader at a number of companies, large and small, will be extremely important for advancing ForneyVault products."

US: Summit Materials’ net revenue grew by 11% year-on-year to US$882m in the first half of 2021 from US$794m in the same period in 2020. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 27% to US$209m from US$164m. Cement business revenue increased by 10% to US$126m from US$114m. Cement and concrete sales volumes increased by 10% to 1.05Mt and by 7% to 2.16Mm³ respectively.

"These results reflect our team's commitment to operational and commercial excellence, which delivered volume growth in most lines of business and pricing growth in all lines of business. Demand fundamentals remain strong in our rural and exurban markets, while most of the state Departments of Transportation that we serve have returned to typical letting and operating conditions,” said Anne Noonan, the chief executive officer of Summit Materials.

Italy: Buzzi Unicem’s net sales grew by 5.8% year-on-year to Euro1.61bn in the first half of 2021 from Euro1.52bn in the same period of 2020. Its sales volumes of cement and clinker rose by 10.9% to 14.8Mt from 13.4Mt. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 12.3% to Euro352m from Euro314m. The group reported cement sales volumes growth in all territories with the exception of Poland, and Germany to a lesser extent. It also noted growth in ready-mixed concrete sales volumes of 7% to 5.8Mm3 with development in Italy, Poland and Ukraine more than compensating for ‘unfavourable’ changes in the US, Germany and the Czech Republic.

US: Flexicon has expanded the production facilities at its headquarters at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The increased 4645m² space at the site will be used to store sub-assemblies, crating and the staging of assembled equipment. This will allow the main plant to increase its production capacity for fabrication and assembly.

Flexicon specialises in bulk handling equipment. It owns and operates manufacturing facilities in Brisbane, Australia and Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and maintains factory-direct sales offices in Barcelona in Spain, Santiago in Chile and Singapore.

China: Vortex Asia-Pacific has opened a new office in Shanghai. It is intended to serve the solids and bulk handling components company’s customers in China and a variety of other countries in Asia. The subsidiary of US-based Vortex Global was established in 2009.

“Vortex has been established in China for over a decade and is excited about our continued partnership with dry bulk processors across the country. It is also great to see our team transition back into a new office environment after a difficult year with the pandemic,” said Travis Young, the president and chief executive officer of parent company Vortex Global.

Mexico/US: GCC plans to spend US$450 - 500m on upgrade projects to its cement business over the next three years to 2024. It is considering building a new 1.1Mt/yr clinker production line at an unnamed existing plant but the board of directors has yet to make a final decision. Other projects include strengthening the group’s cement distribution network in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Utah in the US. This would also include building two new cement terminals. A debottlenecking project is being planned at the Samalayuca plant in Chihuahua state. This would increase the plant’s production capacity by 0.2Mt/yr and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2022. A final project is also scheduled for the Chihuahua plant to improve operational efficiency, and enhance social and environmental responsibility.

In earnings conference call notes for the second quarter of 2021 the cement producer reported for the US: “Every kiln at GCC is up and running; for practical purposes, our system is sold out.” It also noted bottlenecks in its grinding, storage and shipping installed capacity.

US: The death of a maintenance worker has been reported at Buzzi Unicem USA’s Hercules Cement at Stockertown in Pennsylvania. The cause of the fatality has not been released pending an investigation by state authorities and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, according to the Express Times newspaper. The incident occurred on 26 July 2021.

Holcim has started to unify its low carbon cement product range this week with the launch of its ECOPlanet label globally. The products are already available in Germany, Romania, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, France and Italy. The plan is to extend this to 15 countries by the end of 2021 and then to double its ‘market presence’ by the end of 2022.

The headline news is that the range will include what Holcim says is the world’s first cement product with 20% recycled construction and demolition waste. This appears to be an improvement on the group’s Susteno cement products that use fine fractions from concrete and demolition waste. This product is currently sold in Switzerland where it is advertised as saving 10% of CO₂ emissions compared to a standard cement product. Both Holcim and HeidelbergCement already sell concrete products that use the coarse waste from building demolition. Other than this, Holcim says that the range will also include cements that contain calcined clay. In June 2021 subsidiary Lafarge France announced that it would produce a cement product under the ECOPlanet banner using kaolin clay with its proprietary ProximA Tech process at its integrated La Malle cement plant in Bouc-Bel-Air.

We will have to wait and see how far Holcim goes in standardisng the range between different countries. Yet, judging from what the countries that are already selling ECOPlanet are doing, it looks like it will be a variety of blended cements. At present, for example, Holcim Germany offers four products in the ECOPlanet range. These are all slag cements, with three having effective CO₂ reductions of up to 70% and the fourth, ECOPlanet Zero, reaching 100% through a carbon offsetting scheme in conjunction with MoorFutures. Holcim Italy also launched a product in the range called ECOPlanet Prime using calcined clay in June 2021.

Incidentally, LafargeHolcim US announced a research project this week with the US Army about using demolition waste. It’s going to start working with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center and Geocycle to look at how construction and demolition materials from military installations can be used for energy recovery and mineral recycling. Group resources at Geocycle’s Holly Hill Research Center in South Carolina, US and Holcim’s Global Innovation Center in Lyon, France will be used in the scheme.

Other low carbon cement products are available of course. Holcim is far from alone in launching low CO₂ cement and concrete products. Yet the use of worldwide brand names is different. Cemex is doing something similar with the global rollout of its Vertua concrete products. It first launched Vertua in France in 2018 before going global in 2020. Holcim started to launch ECOPact Concrete in 2019. Now, Holcim has gone further by doing the same thing with cement. Given how localised cement and concrete products are, it will be instructive to see how global branding for low carbon cementitious products helps these companies. For instance, who is the target audience? It could be eco-minded self-build customers or project specifiers or government departments or industry lobbyists. Or perhaps it is simply another marketing channel to reinforce the sector’s sustainable offerings.

The other point worth considering is when will the multinational cement producers start selling sustainable cements and concretes in less rich parts of the world? While Holcim was playing with blended cements and marketing this week, Dangote Cement said that it was ready to start commissioning its new 6Mt/yr integrated plant at Okpella, Edo State in Nigeria. Another 5Mt/yr plant is also on the way in the country from Madugu Cement. It has just signed a contract for China-based Sinoma International Engineering Company to build it. When Holcim and the other cement companies start selling low carbon cements in places like Nigeria then the rise of these products will be complete.

For more information on low CO₂ cement production read our feature in the February 2021 issue of Global Cement Magazine

US: Fortera has appointed Eric Olsen to its board of directors. Olsen is the former chief executive officer (CEO) of LafargeHolcim.

He started his career in the field of mergers and acquisitions at Deloitte & Touche, Banque Paribas and was one of the managing partners of Trinity Associates for six years. He studied business at the University of Colorado and holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from HEC international business school in Paris. He joined Lafarge Group in 1999 and was a member of its executive committee from 2007 until its merger with Holcim in 2015 to form LafargeHolcim. He then worked as the CEO of LafargeHolcim until April 2017 when he resigned following a review into a conduct of a cement plant in Syria. Legal charges of financing a terrorist organisation were dropped by French authorities in 2019.

Fortera is a materials technology company that has developed a recarbonation process that uses captured CO2 and mineralises it into a secondary cementitious material. In March 2021 it signed a collaboration agreement with Lehigh Hanson to build a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system at the producer’s 0.8Mt/yr integrated Redding Cement plant in California.