Displaying items by tag: blended cement

US: Ash Grove Cement and the Nebraska Department of Transportation have tested a  calcined clay blended cement product on a 4km stretch of road in the state. The product, Duracem N, was manufactured at the company’s Louisville Plant. It uses clay sourced locally in the region. The Louisville Plant was reportedly upgraded recently to convert a clinker kiln into a clay calciner. Improvements were also made to the milling process.

Full-scale production of Duracem N will begin early in 2026, with customer deliveries expected in mid-2026. The product has been approved for use by the Nebraska Department of Transportation, with further approvals forthcoming.

France: Ecocem has welcomed the publication of a new European Assessment Document (EAD) on blended cements, confirming that the company’s ACT low-carbon technology meets recognised technical requirements for the European construction market. The EAD enables Ecocem and other low-carbon cement producers to pursue the European Technical Assessment (ETA) route and obtain CE marking for market access.

Ecocem’s ACT product reduces CO₂ emissions by up to 70% compared to conventional cement, and received ETA 23-0877 in December 2023, issued by Cerema. Ecocem is currently building the first production line for ACT at its new €50m facility in Dunkirk, France, which is planned to begin commercial operation in late 2026. This is part of a wider €226m investment programme to expand the company’s production facilities by 2030.

India: The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) India said that the cement industry has installed 1.8GW of renewable energy capacity and aims to add 5GW more by 2030, according to Platts. Around 3% of electricity used comes from renewables and 11% from waste heat recovery. GCCA India said that the average alternative fuel thermal substitution rate (TSR) in the sector is approximately 6%, although some plants have successfully achieved TSRs of more than 20%. It also said that there are developments in the installations of hybrid energy systems, which provide 24/7 electricity for the sector.

Blended cement accounts for 73% of production, and India has reportedly begun producing limestone calcined clay cement. Research is also underway into other low-clinker alternatives. According to a March 2025 report by GCCA India and The Energy and Resources Institute, the industry aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. CRISIL forecasts that the sector will add 160-170Mt/yr of grinding capacity between the financial years 2026-2028, which run from April to March, driven by a healthy demand outlook and high capacity utilisation.

Philippines: Taiheiyo Cement Philippines (TCPI) has said it is on track to open its US$64.9m cement terminal in Calaca, Batangas by early 2026. The facility will produce 0.7Mt/yr of blended cement, increasing the company’s total capacity to 4Mt/yr.

The new terminal forms part of the company’s multi-phase investment programme. TCPI plans to expand its production capacity to 5Mt/yr by 2030, while securing a 10% market share. The Department of Trade and Industry confirmed in a statement that manufacturing will begin in the second quarter of 2026.

US: Ozinga has broken ground on a 1Mt/yr alternative cement grinding plant in East Chicago, Indiana. The plant is equipped with a Gebr. Pfeiffer MVR5300-C6 vertical roller mill. It will produce ASTM C989-compliant slag cement and other blended cements. When operational in 2026, it will be the largest of its kind in North America, and avoid 700,000t/yr of CO₂ emissions from conventional cement production. Its location offers strategic rail, road and shipping access to large markets in the US and Canada.

East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland welcomed an anticipated 150 new jobs resulting from construction and subsequent operations at the plant.

India: During the fourth quarter of the 2025 financial year (which ended on 31 March 2025), premium products constituted 16% of Shree Cement’s sales mix, up from 12% one year previously. During the period, the company further diversified its offering with the launch of two new premium cements, Bangur Marble Portland slag cement and Extra White Portland slag cement, in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. Both products are designed for maximum brightness and smoothness within their category of CEM-II Portland slag cements. The company says that its growing portfolio helped it to increase its full-year financial realisation per tonne by 5% year-on-year.

Business Today News has reported that managing director Neeraj Akhoury said "In the 2025 financial year, 74% of our cement output was blended, avoiding over 7.2Mt of CO₂ emissions."

Shree Cement crossed 60% consumption of energy from renewable sources in May 2025, Construction World News has reported. It has 582MW of installed renewable power capacity and is currently in the process of building a 1MW battery storage system at one of its cement plants in India.

Japan: Taiheiyo Cement has announced that it will expand the export of blended cement through the establishment of a new facility at its Saiki Ash Centre in Saiki City, Oita Prefecture. Taiheiyo Cement says that the facility, which will meet growing demand for blended cement in South East Asia, is part of its sustainability strategy. The blended cement will use fly ash from domestic coal-fired power plants.

The new facility will expand Taiheiyo Cement’s blended cement export capacity from 0.8Mt/yr to 1.3Mt/yr.

India: Shree Cement recorded sales of US$2.38bn in the 2025 financial year, down by 5.5% year-on-year. Operating expenses increased by 2.9% to US$2.17bn, resulting in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of US$528m, down by 12% year-on-year. Net profit dropped by 50% to US$141m.

Shree Cement said that the fourth quarter of the 2025 financial year brought cement sales of 9.84Mt, up by 3.3% year-on-year from 9.53Mt in the fourth quarter of the 2024 financial year. Premium products contributed 16% of sales.

The Indonesian government emphasised its intention this week to use ‘green’ cement in the construction of its new capital city Nusantara in Borneo. However, this begs the question: what exactly is ‘green’ cement?

In this case, Mohammad Zainal Fatah, the secretary general of the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing, told state media that his department was “seeking to encourage the supply of domestic-industry-based material resources and construction equipment, which can support sustainable infrastructure development principles." The ministry is working with state-owned cement producers such as Semen Indonesia (SIG) to ensure the provision of sustainable cement and related products. SIG was selected as a supplier for the project in late 2022 and, as of February 2024, has reportedly provided 400,000t of cement from its plants at Balikpapan and Samarinda.

This is admirable stuff. However, the timing of the announcement is curious given that both the head and deputy head of the Nusantara Capital City Authority resigned this week forcing the government to reassure investors that the project was still on. Cue some swift discussion about ‘green’ cement! Previously it was hoped that the first phase of the US$34bn project could be inaugurated on the country’s independence day in August 2024 with civil servants scheduled to start relocating to the site in the autumn.

SIG sells a number of ‘green’ blended cement products and some of these have received Green Label Cement certification from the Green Product Council Indonesia. The group says that these products have contributed up to a 38% drop in CO₂ emissions compared to Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). This compares to the group’s clinker factor reduction rate of 69% and its Scope 1 emissions intensity reduction of 17% to 585kg/CO₂/t of cement in 2023 compared to 2010 levels.

Along similar lines, the Alliance for Low-Carbon Cement & Concrete (ALCCC) in Belgium also announced this week that it had released a new policy roadmap aimed at achieving net zero emissions by 2040. Amongst its recommendations were a focus on the standards for cement and concrete to promote low-carbon products and encouragement to create lead markets to develop demand for them.

Crucially, the ALCCC uses low-carbon cement in place of ‘green’ cement and this makes its definition clearer. ‘Green’ cement is a marketing term intended to associate cement with environmentalism. Yet there is no accepted definition describing how these products are more sustainable than, say, OPC. For example, a so-called ‘green’ cement could use 100% clinker manufactured with no CO₂ emissions-abatement, but it might be sustainable in other ways such as saving water. For the purposes of this article we’ll assume that ‘green’ cement means a low-carbon one. To further add to the confusion, ‘green’ concrete can be made using OPC in various ways but that’s beyond the scope of this piece. Clearly the world could do with some universal definitions.

US-based research and consulting company Global Efficiency Intelligence came to the same conclusion when it published its ‘What are Green Cement and Concrete?’ report in December 2023. It decided that - despite there being plenty of standards, protocols, and initiatives - there is no general agreement on the definition of ‘green’ cement or concrete. Its emissions intensity for cement summary table can be viewed below. It demonstrates the massive range of emissions intensity between the various standards. It is worth noting here that the description the Indonesian government may have been using for ‘green’ cement could already meet SIG’s Scope 1 emissions intensity reduction for its cement in 2023 depending on the standard being used.

Table 1: Emissions intensity definition for cement as stated by standards, protocols, initiatives, and policies with stated numerical quantity targets. Source: Global Efficiency Intelligence.

Part of the problem here is that there is a language gap between the simple definition of a cement that is less CO₂ emissions-intensive than OPC and the technical definitions used in the specifications and standards. Simply describing a cement product as ‘green’ can potentially cover anything that is slightly better than OPC down to a bona-fide net-zero product. Added to this is pressure from the manufacturers of new and existing cement products that use less or no OPC for regulators to move to performance-based standards to replace existing prescriptive standards, because it makes it easier for their products to be used. For more on this issue see Global Cement Weekly #606. Cement associations such as Cembureau and the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) have also called in their respective net zero roadmaps for changes to the standards system to promote low-carbon cement and concrete products.

The answer to what is ‘green’ cement is whatever the promoters want it to be. So, it might be helpful if the use of the word ‘green’ were banned in connection to any marketing activity related to cement products. Everyone could then adopt some kind of universal grading system using simpler language. One approach might be to copy the colour-coding scheme used by hydrogen to describe how it is made. One could use yellow for limestone blends, silver for slag, orange for clay, black for OPC made with carbon capture and so on… but not green! Another route might be to mandate the use of the carbon labels that some cement producers have used for at least a decade. Or something like the alphabet energy rating system used in the UK and EU for electrical appliances could be used. It’s too much to hope for a global system but simpler systems in the main markets would make it much easier to determine what exactly is ‘green’ cement.

Peter Edwards, Editor of Global Cement Magazine, discusses ‘sustainable’ cement in The Last Word in the June 2023 issue

US: Holcim has completed a major expansion of its cement holding facility in North Fremont, allowing the plant to meet ‘growing’ market demands in the Omaha region. The US$20m project includes additional rail capacity, a new 50,000t cement dome, an extra silo and a blender for product mixing.

According to the company, the facility now employs seven staff members, up from three, and fulfils the Nebraska Department of Transportation's blended cement requirements using natural pozzolan to create a lower-carbon product.

Holcim's head of US Corporate Communications, Lynn Safranek, said "The availability of extra cement storage and the addition of rail capacity means fewer trips to transport cement from Holcim’s plant in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and more reliance on train transportation, which is more efficient than other land-based alternatives.”