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Taiwan Cement said this week that it is aiming for cement to account for less than half of its sales by 2025. At the annual shareholders’ meeting chair Nelson Chang defended the cement sector as a core business but said that the company was expanding more into the green energy sector through its energy storage and vehicle charging lines. Chang directly linked the strategy to growing carbon taxes around the world, such as the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, where the carbon price has been occasionally close to pushing past Euro100/t since early 2022. Taiwan Cement formed a joint venture with Türkiye-based Oyak Group in 2018 that runs Cimpor in Portugal.

Table 1: Cement business share by revenue of selected cement producers. Source: Corporate annual reports.

Taiwan Cement’s plan to decrease its reliance on cement is becoming a familiar one. Holcim notably revealed in 2021 that it was growing its light building materials division. Its cement division represented 60% of sales in 2020 with concrete and aggregates making up most of the rest to 92% and the remaining 8% on other products including light building materials. This started to change with the acquisition of roofing and building envelope producer Firestone Building Products in 2021. Other similar acquisitions have followed. Holcim’s current target is to grow the Solutions & Products division to around 30% by 2025, with cement reduced to somewhere between a third and half of sales. Earlier this year Japan-based Taiheiyo Cement said it was doing a similar thing as part of its medium-term strategy to 2035. In its case cement represented 70% of its sales in 2022 but it is now aiming to reduce this to 65% by 2025 and 50% by 2035.

A common pattern for the business composition of European cement companies is a mixture of heavy building materials made up of cement, concrete and aggregate. However, not every cement company follows the same route. Some cement companies are simply parts of larger conglomerates. UltraTech Cement, for example, is mostly just a cement company. However, it is also part of Aditya Birla Group, which runs a wide range of industries including chemicals, textiles, financial services, telecoms, mining and more. Depending on how one looks at it, UltraTech Cement’s cement business ratio is large or Aditya Birla Group’s ratio is small. Siam Cement Group (SCG) in Thailand is another example of a cement producer operated by a conglomerate with other major businesses.

A different approach that some cement producers take is to mix cement production with complimentary businesses outside of heavy building materials. A good example of this is Votorantim Cement in Brazil, which manufactures cement and steel. Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) is another Brazil-based cement producer that is also well known for steel production. Adani Group in India, meanwhile, was well known for logistics, power generation and airports before it purchased Ambuja Cements and ACC from Holcim in 2022.

The driver for cement companies looking to reduce cement as a proportion of their businesses has varied between the three examples presented above. Holcim’s approach has been in response to growing European carbon costs but it also fits with a general desire to broaden its business as the company has sought to reshape itself following the merger between Lafarge and Holcim. Taiheiyo Cement’s plans also have a sustainability angle but the Japanese market has been in slow decline since the 1990s and this has been made worse by the spike in energy prices since 2022. Investing in new businesses makes sense for either of these reasons. Lastly, Taiwan Cement says it is taking action in response to carbon prices around the world. However, its proximity to many other large-scale producers in the Far East may also be a factor. Whether more companies follow suit and also start to reduce the ratio of their cement businesses remains to be seen. Yet, mounting carbon taxes and global production overcapacity look set to make more of the larger cement producers consider their options in certain places.

Taiwan: Taiwan Cement Corporation aims to diversify its business away from cement by increasing its sales from energy storage and vehicle charging. It aims to derive over 50% of its revenues from other activities besides cement by 2025. The Taipei Times newspaper has reported that the producer will continue to produce 80Mt/yr of cement. The company said that the reason behind its planned diversification is its responsibility to help reduce global net CO₂ emissions.

Chair Nelson Chang said “Carbon reductions must be fast and efficient, and the use of solar and other green energy resources in producing cement is not enough to offset carbon emissions. That means Taiwan Cement has to press ahead and develop carbon capture techniques that would help mitigate the negative impact of cement production on the environment.”

India: JSW Cement was among 20 companies from various industries in attendance at a roundtable discussion on the subject of leveraging clean energy to journey towards net zero on 13 April 2023. The discussion covered a broad range of ways to end the use of fossil fuels, including energy storage and the use of electric vehicles. Press Trust of India News has reported that advanced batteries developer Log9 Materials hosted the event in partnership with networking platform Blue Circle – not to be confused with the former cement producer of the same name. Executive director and chief risk officer Arvind Bodhankar represented Dalmia Bharat, while chief sustainability and innovation officer Manoj Rustagi represented JSW Cement.

Europe: Ireland-based Ecocem and seven other European sustainable technology companies have launched the Cleantech Scale-Up Coalition, with the backing of green investment funding network Breakthrough Energy. The coalition will work to contribute to European climate neutrality, energy autonomy and industrially competitiveness. Other participants' fields include carbon capture, green hydrogen technologies, transport electrification, batteries and recycling.

Ecocem's managing director Donal O’Riain said “Scalable, low carbon cements, which can decarbonise the European cement industry by 50% by 2030, are ready to deploy today. To do so, they need to be rapidly industrialised. This coalition, which allows Ecocem to combine forces with other world-class companies, will enable our ambition by working to remove the barriers to an accelerated decarbonisation of European, and global, industry.”

Switzerland/France: Holcim is collaborating with Engie and and the French National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) Lyon to develop a cement-based energy storage technology to serve as an alternative to batteries. The solution will use cement hydration to store heat as energy and release it when needed in an infinitely repeatable cycle. The partners say that it will make energy storage local, safe, affordable and recyclable.

Holcim’s head of global innovation Edelio Bermejo said "The world needs innovative solutions to accelerate our shift towards renewable energy generation, distribution and storage – all areas in which Holcim can play a big part. With this collaboration, we are moving energy storage forward, opening up a new range of solutions based on materials that are local and recyclable."

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement has developed Nanoritia, a lithium manganese iron phosphate salt for use as a positive electrode material for lithium-ion batteries. The company says that the product has ‘excellent’ thermal stability and does not contain cobalt or nickel, which can sometimes be harder to source. As a result of the success, it will establish a 100t/yr nanoritia plant at its Central Research Laboratory in Sakura city, Chiba prefecture.

The group said, “We will proactively and swiftly develop and commercialise the production technology of this product, and contribute to the reduction of CO₂ emissions through the provision of materials for lithium-ion batteries. We will continue to strongly promote the group's management philosophy of business activities that are in harmony with not only economic development but also consideration for the environment and contribution to society, aiming to play a leading role in opening up a sustainable future for the earth.”

The cement and minerals producer has also been working on recycling large lithium-ion batteries at its integrated Tsuruga plant.

In case you missed it, last week we covered a news story about Taiheiyo Cement’s plans to step up its lithium-ion battery recycling business at its integrated Tsuruga plant. It’s the latest step in the Japan-based cement producer’s collaboration with recycling company Matsuda Sangyo. The work is timely given that electric cars accounted for 2.6% of global car sales in 2019 and this share is growing. Many of these electric vehicles use lithium-ion batteries and moving away from fossil fuel powered transport creates new problems such as how to manage old batteries that can no longer be used.

Figure 1: Lithium-ion battery recycling process by Taiheiyo Cement and Matsuda Sangyo. Source: Translated from Taiheiyo Cement CEMS technical magazine.

Taiheiyo Cement and Matsuda Sangyo have been working on their process since 2011. First, they dismantle the batteries to extract base metals and plastics. They then heat the batteries in a dedicated ‘roaster’ using waste heat from the cement production process, before crushing and sorting them to remove cobalt, lithium, aluminium and scrap iron. Hydrogen fluoride produced in this stage is sent to the kiln where it is detoxified by calcium. Remaining elements from the battery that are not reclaimed are then used as an alternative fuel by the cement plant.

Taiheiyo Cement says that its roasting equipment can process up to 10t/day but it’s difficult at this stage to assess what demand for this service they might encounter. If, one estimate of 2m/yr used lithium-ion batteries by 2030 is correct and Taiheiyo Cement’s processing rate doesn’t get much higher, then 500 cement plants could possibly solve this problem. Yet, Taiheiyo Cement and Matsuda Sangyo have made no mention of the economics of their process. Other recycling methods also exist and research into new ones is ongoing. Cement plants recycling batteries might be economic compared to these alternatives or it might not, only time will tell.

The wider point here is that here is yet another industrial and logistical process that can potentially be linked to cement production. It follows well known ones, such as using alternatives fuels or captive power plants, or more novel ones, such as CO₂ or hydrogen networks. In each case the business of making cement changes as new methods are learned, new commodities are sought and new markets are connected. The cement company then has a choice about how involved it wants to become with each new process. The classic example here is the waste processing companies that surround co-processing, with some cement companies having their own dedicated subsidiaries, for example LafargeHolcim and Geocycle.

As it all becomes more complicated the role of a cement plant slowly becomes redefined. If a cement plant disposes of municipal waste and car batteries for its local community, generates electricity from its solar or wind plant for a nearby city and uses its CO₂ to either produce biofuels, plastics or baking soda is it still just a cement plant? The pivot by building materials manufacturers in recent years from a focus on cement to concrete suggests that once the societal or economic conditions are right it could change. For the time being cement plants remain cement plants but give it a thought next time you buy a new car.

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement is starting large-scale recycling of large lithium-ion batteries at its integrated Tsuruga plant. It has been developing the process with Matsuda Sangyo since 2011 using exhaust gases from clinker production as part of dismantling, crushing and sorting processes to extract precious metals from the batteries. Taiheiyo Cement, its subsidiary Tsuruga Cement and Matsuda Sangyo started a recycling business in April 2020 following certification by the Japan Auto Recycling Partnership (JARP).