Displaying items by tag: exhibition

The Hillhead Quarrying, Construction and Recycling Show is in full flow this week, taking place near Buxton in Derbyshire. As one delegate marvelled on the panoramic minibus journey down to the quarry, “It’s like a music festival without the music and… other stuff.” Indeed. Of course what one doesn’t find at Glastonbury and the like is a near comprehensive range of suppliers, over 600 of them, to the industry all in one place… in a quarry! Where else can one get up close and see the new hydrogen-powered generators and excavating vehicles that are being piloted? The official attendance figures don’t get released until after the event but on the ground it looks as busy as ever. It’s truly the place to be this week.

The show gives us a reason to take a look at the UK cement sector. Like many other countries around the world it is an election year in the UK, with a General Election scheduled for 4 July 2024. The result of this should determine the next Prime Minister and the ruling party. So, naturally, the MPA, the trade association for the aggregates, asphalt, cement, concrete, dimension stone, lime, mortar and industrial sand industries, is taking the opportunity to remind the political parties what its priorities are. The quick version is: support for decarbonisation; a streamlined planning system; and better delivery of projects. This sounds familiar to priorities in other countries but one British spin on this includes the UK’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).

Graph 1: Domestic cement sales and imports in the UK, 2017 – 2022. Source: MPA.

Edwin Trout’s feature on the UK cement sector in the June 2024 issue of Global Cement Magazine presents a good overview of the last 12 months. The general UK economy has faced shocks in recent years such as Brexit, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. However, this has been further compounded by a downturn and high interest rates since late 2022 when the then Prime Minister Liz Truss caused market turbulence in the wake of a badly received government financial statement. As Trout relates, sales of heavy building materials have been in relative decline since mid-2022 with more of the same expected in 2024. Production of cement in 2023 is currently uncertain given the reporting time lag from the MPA but up until 2022 domestic cement sales fell somewhat but imports grew. This has created a situation where overall cement sales in 2022 were 12Mt, not far behind the annual level in the early 2000s. However, the share of imports has nearly doubled since then. More recent MPA data on mortar and ready-mixed concrete sales throughout the first nine months of 2023 suggest that market activity has decreased and poor weather at the start of 2024 looks set to have made this worse.

Despite the apparent slowdown in building materials sales the cement companies have been conducting smaller-scale maintenance and upgrade projects at their facilities and supply chain schemes such as the cement storage unit for deep sea shipping lines that Aggregate Industries said in February 2024 it was going to build at the Port of Southampton. The news the cement companies want to show off has been a steady stream of information about ongoing decarbonisation projects in the cement sector. C-Capture started a carbon capture trial at Heidelberg Materials’ Ketton cement works in Rutland in May 2024, Capsol Technologies said in March 2024 that it had been selected to conduct a study on its carbon capture technology at Aggregate Industries Cauldon cement plant in Staffordshire, Heidelberg Materials' Ribblesdale cement plant in Lancashire announced in March 2024 that it was taking part in a study to assess the use of ammonia as a hydrogen source for fuelling cement kilns and Heidelberg Materials awarded Japan-based Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) a front end engineering design contract for a carbon capture installation at its Padeswood cement plant in Flintshire in February 2024. Finally, on the divestment front, CRH completed the sale of its UK-based lime business to SigmaRoc for €155m in March 2024. The business operates from sites in Tunstead and Hindlow with five permitted lime kilns.

That’s it for this short recap on the UK for now. For a longer look at the UK cement sector read Edwin Trout’s feature in June 2024 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

Hillhead 2024 runs until 27 June 2024

Egypt: The Arab Union of Cement and Building Materials (AUCBM) has moved the location of its 26th Arab International Cement & Building Materials Conference and Exhibition (AICCE26) to Cairo in Egypt. The event will now take place on 15 - 17 January 2023. The event had previously been due to take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It has been moved due to a ‘situation’ outside of the AUCBM’s control.

Germany: Global Cement is attending Powtech 2023 in Nuremberg, Bavaria, on 26 – 28 September 2023. Powtech is the International Processing Trade Fair for powder, bulk solids, fluids and liquids. Find us at Stand 2-524 in Hall 2.

Germany: Global Cement is attending Interpack 2023 in Düsseldorf. The trade fair for the packaging sector is taking place at the Messe Düsseldorf from 4 – 10 May 2023. It covers packaging materials, packaging machines and related process technology for the food, beverage, confectionery, bakery, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, non-food and industrial goods sectors. Over 2700 exhibitors are present at the event with representation from more than 60 countries.

UK: Riku Kytömäki, the chief executive officer of Betolar, has called for a global performance-based standard to replace the current building requirements that restrict the use of new low-carbon materials to replace cement in concrete production. He made the comments at the London Concrete Expo. Kytömäki argued that current standards state that concrete manufacturers must use a certain percentage of cement to strengthen the finished product. Betolar’s product Geoprime is an additive designed for use in cement-free concrete production with ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS). However, “ageing” standards rule out the use of these kinds of products such as this despite their sustainability advantages.

Kytömäki said “It is time for global concrete industry to step up their sustainability efforts. New material innovation is available. It is cost-effective and helps to meet stricter durability requirements. However, the current regulations across the markets are restricting the use of circular materials allowed in concrete buildings.” He added that his company’s product Geoprime, “does not require large investments, but there is regulation to be developed quickly so that new solutions and materials can be used."

Betolar says it has analysed over 200 side-streams other than slag and fly ash, providing flexibility to process locally available side-streams. It added that there are also significant CO₂ savings to be found in logistics when manufacturing processes take place near the source of the industrial side-streams.

Germany: Robert Habeck, the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, has visited specialist Flender at the Hannover Messe trade fair. He spoke with the company’s head Andreas Evertz about the energy transition goals for Germany and Europe, Flender's role as a supplier for the wind sector, and the importance of an energy-efficient industry on the way to reach global climate goals. The mechanical drive manufacturer was part of the government minister’s official tour of the exhibition.

Habeck said, "Discussing about the expansion of renewable energies, we usually talk about the electrical output, the production. But here at Hannover Messe, we see also the other side of the coin. A lot of the industrial production is here in Germany, or at least with German companies. And when you say the market is now swinging in and growing, that's good news." He added that “It is challenging to bring electricity production out of renewables to 80% of the demand by 2030, but it is possible."

Evertz said "Flender is a major driver of the energy transition. And this starts with any kind of materials. In drive technology, Flender not only manufactures wind gearboxes, but industrial gearboxes that are involved in the production of raw materials for wind turbines. Flender is part of nearly every supply chain."

Other recent interest shown by the German government include a tour by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of Flender’s plant in Tianjin as part of a tour of China.

Germany: ScrapeTec will present its latest generation DustScrape dust management system at the SOLIDS Dortmund bulk handling technologies exhibition in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia. ScrapeTec says that the new model boasts increased box robustness and is specifically designed for use in closed transfers with high material pressure. It works without the use of energy and also saves energy by enabling users to switch off existing dust extraction systems.

Germany: Beumer Group is preparing to exhibit at the Solids Dortmund trade fair on 29 – 30 March 2023. The supplier will be showcasing its equipment for conveying, loading, palletising and packaging various bulk materials for the cement, building materials and chemical industries. Solids Dortmund covers equipment for granules, powder and bulk solids technologies.

UK: Bunting plans to promote its magnetic separator and metal detector products at the Powtech trade fair taking place in Germany in late September 2022. The company will be displaying a number of high-strength rare earth magnetic separators including its Plate Magnet Housing (PHMS), Drawer Magnet (HFS), Grate Magnet, Plate Magnet and Bullet Magnet products. Each magnetic separator effectively removes fine tramp iron from a wide range of granules and powders at different locations within a plant. The company promotes its products to the aggregate, quarrying, recycling and slag processing sectors amongst others.

UK: Global Cement Magazine is ready for the Hillhead 2022 quarrying, construction and recycling show that takes place on 21 – 23 June 2022 taking place in Derbyshire. You can find Global Cement Magazine at stand PB14 in the Main Pavilion. The event was originally planned to take place in June 2021 but was postponed for one year following the UK coronavirus-related lockdowns. Held in a limestone quarry, the organisers say that it is the largest exhibition of its kind anywhere in the world.