Displaying items by tag: railway

Australia: Cement Australia has signed a new three-year rail haulage agreement with Pacific National to transport shipping containers of cement, sand, fly ash, slag and lime. This will also includes the interstate and inter-city transport of cement and supplementary cementitious materials between large cities and throughout North Queensland. Cement Australia and Pacific National have a partnership that dates back over five years.

Pacific National is Australia’s largest private rail freight operator.

Mexico: Holcim Mexico says that its supply of cement to the government’s Tren Maya railway project is 170,000t/month. This corresponds to 50 – 60% of its total production volumes. Local press has reported that construction of the 1500km-long Tren Maya railway will consume 1Mm³ of concrete. Holcim supplied its cement for Sections 1 – 3 of the line between 2020 and 2022. It is currently supplying Section 5, which is 50% complete. The cement comes from the company’s Orizaba, Veracruz, plant; its Macuspana, Tabasco, plant and its Mérida, Yucatán, plant.

Holcim Mexico’s infrastructure development manager Fernando Roldan said "Our participation has been a challenge, but the relationship we have with the suppliers and with the construction companies in charge of the railway has allowed us to meet the requirements."

South Korea: The Korean Railway Workers’ Union called a four-day strike of its 13,000 members across South Korea on 14 September 2023. Reuters has reported that the union is seeking higher pay, improved working conditions and the expansion of bullet train services into South Seoul. The Ministry of Transport predicts that total cargo haulage will drop by 53 - 79%. The Korean Cement Association (KCA) said that a protracted strike would disrupt cement production. The industry is 40% reliant on rail transport.

A representative from a KCA member said “We have secured some inventory in preparation for the strike, but it's not a lot. If the strike lengthens, we will have to convert to land transport, which will drive up costs and hit profitability."

Austria: Rohrdorfer has bought 20 new railcars equipped with ÖBB Rail Cargo’s RockTainer SAND containers. The cars will transport limestone between the producer’s Ebensee quarry and its Gmunden cement plant. Each railcar consists of two RockTainer SAND containers mounted on an InnoWaggon carriage, with a maximum load of 134t. The new cars will increase the volume of despatches from the Ebensee quarry by 28% to 804t of limestone per train from 630t/train, enabling Rohrdorfer to transport 450,000t of limestone per operating season.

UK: Cemex UK has completed upgrades of its Dove Holes, Selby and Bletchley depots in partnership with MLP Railway Maintenance. As a result of the upgrade, the Selby depot in North Yorkshire can now receive an increased number of wagons per train, and complete turnarounds more quickly. Meanwhile, the producer relayed two reception lines at the Dove Holes depot in Derbyshire and installed new walkways, CCTV and a waterproof display screen for offloading at the Bletchley depot in Buckinghamshire.

Cemex UK’s rail and sea manager Mark Grimshaw-Smith said “It’s important that we continue to invest in our railheads across the UK. This not only ensures that the safety and wellbeing of those who work on our sites is enhanced on an ongoing basis, but it also provides further resilience in the operation, transporting more materials by train and thus taking more trucks off the road.”

India: The government has published plans for a new broad-gauge double railway line in Rajasthan. The planned line will connect Jaipur and Sawai Madhopur, and will facilitate the transport of coal to businesses including cement plants. Maritime Gateway News has reported that the new line will increase carrying capacity in the local railway maintenance block by 80%. It is scheduled for commissioning in the 2027 financial year.

It’s been a good week for carbon capture projects in Europe with the announcement of who the European Union (EU) has selected for a grant from its Innovation Fund. 17 large-scale projects have been pre-selected for the Euro1.8bn being doled out in the second round of awards. On the cement and lime sector side there are four projects. These include projects at Holcim’s Lägerdorf cement plant in Germany, HeidelbergCement’s Devnya Cement plant in Bulgaria, Holcim’s Kujawy plant in Poland and Lhoist’s Chaux et Dolomites du Boulonnais lime plant in France. Large-scale in this instance means projects with capital costs over Euro7.5m. To give readers some sense of the scale of the projects that the EU has agreed to pay for, if the funding was shared out equally between the current bunch, it would be a little over Euro100m per project. This is serious money.

Devnya Cement’s ANRAV carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) project in Bulgaria has received little public attention so far so we’ll look a little more closely at this one first. No obvious information is available on what capture technology might be in consideration at the plant. HeidelbergCement’s leading experience in carbon capture technology at cement plants gives it a variety of methods it could use from a solvent scrubbing route to something less common. What the company has said is that, subject to regulatory approval and permitting, the project could start to capture 0.8Mt/yr of CO₂ from 2028.

What has also been revealed is that the project is linking up via pipelines to a depleted part of the Galata gas field site in the Black Sea. Oil and gas company Petroceltic Bulgaria is a partner and the aim of the project is to start a CCUS cluster in Eastern Europe. with the potential for other capture sites in Romania and Egypt to join in. This is noteworthy because much of the focus for the burgeoning cement sector CCUS in Europe so far has been on usage on local industrial clusters or storage in the North Sea.

The other new one is the Go4ECOPlanet project at Holcim’s Kujawy plant in Poland. Lafarge Cement is working with Air Liquide on the project. The latter will be providing its Cryocap FG adsorption and cryogenics technology for direct capture of flue gas at the plant. The transportation of the CO₂ is also interesting here as it will be by train not pipeline. Liquid CO₂ will be despatched to a terminal in Gdańsk, then transferred to ships before being pumped down into a storage field under the North Sea.

Turning to the other two grant recipients, the Carbon2Business project plans to capture over 1Mt/yr of CO₂ using a second generation oxyfuel process at Holcim Deutschland’s Lägerdorf cement plant. This project is part of a larger regional hydrogen usage cluster so the captured CO₂ will be used to manufacture methanol in combination with the hydrogen. Finally, Lhoist’s project at a lime plant in France is another team-up with Air Liquide, again using the latter’s Cryocap technology. The capture CO₂ will be transported by shared pipeline to a hub near Dunkirk and then stored beneath the North Sea as part of the D'Artagnan initiative. Around 0.61Mt/yr of CO₂ is expected to be sequestered.

The key point to consider from all of the above is that all of these projects are clear about what is happening to the CO₂ after capture. The days of ‘carbon capture and something’ have thankfully been left behind. CO₂ transportation infrastructure is either being used or built and these cement plants will be feeding into it. This will inevitably lead to questions about whether all these new CO₂ networks can support themselves with or without EU funding but that is an argument for another day.

Finally, in other news, four residents from the Indonesian island of Pulau Pari started legal proceedings against Holcim last week for alleged damages caused by climate change. Industrial CO₂ emissions are unquestionably a cause of this along with other sources but what a court might think about this remains to be seen. Yet, it is intriguing that the plantiffs have decided to go after the 47th largest corporate emitter rather than, say, one of the top 10. Regardless of how far the islanders get this is likely not to be last such similar attempt. If the case does make it to court though it seems likely that Holcim will mention its work on CCUS such as the two projects above. Only another 200-odd cement plants in Europe to go.

France: Logistics software provider Everysens says that its Transport & Visibility Management System (TVMS) product has helped Ciments Calcia to improve its use of railway transportation. Philippe Labbé, the logistics director for the subsidiary of Germany-based Heidelberg Cement, said that the company had been using the software for three years. During which time it increased its productivity and saved time on the operational management of rail logistics. Labbé added that he thought the product would help the company meet its decarbonisation commitments by switching more trucks to rail.

Ciments Calcia originally chose Everysens to digitise of use of railway transport, to bring all the relevant data on to one platform and to improve its management of it. The building materials manufacturer sells around 5.3Mt/yr of cement and it operates 10 production sites. It uses over 400 railway wagons in France and Belgium.

One big story in India in recent weeks has been the start of action by the central government to tackle rising cement prices. First it reduced tax duties on petrol and diesel in late May 2022. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman also said that they were looking at ways of improving the availability of cement in the country, including better logistics, to help lower its cost. A delay to a change in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rate structure is also being considered to slow inflation generally. Local press then reported a few days later that the government had set up a panel to explore ways of reducing the price of cement by distributing supplies better around the country. Specifically, it was talking to the South India Cement Manufacturers’ Association to work out ways for their members to meet the rising demand in other parts of the country. Reported options included looking at better use of rail and sea connections.

Chart 1: Map of Indian regions showing integrated/clinker production capacity per capita. Note: the chart does not include standalone grinding plant capacity. Source: Global Cement Directory, Indian census data. Map image adapted from Filpro CC BY-SA 4.0.

The map above (Chart 1) summarises the general problem the country faces from a clinker production point of view. More clinker can be produced in the south of the country than elsewhere. This map is partly a reflection where the limestone reserves are. However, it does not show that the East region of India has a higher concentration of cement grinding plants than elsewhere. Additionally, a number of new integrated/clinker plants have been built in the East and more have been proposed. The data in Chart 1 suggests that India has an integrated production capacity of 312kg/capita nationally. This compares to a cement consumption of 200 – 250kg/capita as reported by the ratings agency Crisil.

Data from Crisil indicates that cement prices grew by 9% from the start of 2021 to March 2022. A similar rise of 8.1% month-on-month was reported in April 2022. It is not a direct comparison but retail inflation in India was reported as being 7.8% in April 2022. The cause of this has been blamed on a general tightening in energy supplies in the autumn of 2021 followed by the effects of the war in Ukraine that started in early 2022. Rising international coal and petcoke prices have made manufacturing cement more expensive. Growing petrol and diesel prices have made moving it around costlier still. Looking at the cement market generally, Crisil noted that demand for cement grew sharply in the first half of the 2022 financial year but then slowed in the second half due to poor weather, issues with sand supply and a labour shortage. The ratings agency has forecast stable growth in the 2023 financial year but with the caveat that the mounting costs of construction, including building materials, could dent this.

The fundamentals for the world’s second largest cement market look good as Adani Group’s recent deal to buy Holcim’s Indian assets for US$6.34bn attests. This won’t be much comfort for end-users though who are watching the price of cement rocket upwards. Yet how far the central government will be able to help the southern cement producers move their wares around more easily remain to be seen. If it succeeds, it may slow the rise in prices but it seems unlikely to halt it. The reaction of the more northerly producers is also key, since one option they have is to slacken their own price increases by just enough to fight off the new competition. Already they are facing the dilemma of raising their prices to cover input costs versus the effect this may have on overall demand. All of this looks set to put pressure on the producers’ margins. Indian cement prices look set to go up whatever happens next, making everyone unhappy. Some may be more unhappy than others.

India: Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) says that it will inaugurate the 82km Punjab section of the upcoming Eastern Freight Corridor railway before the end of 2022. The line will form part of the 175km Punjab - Uttar Pradesh section and connect Western Indian cement plants and other industries by high-speed link with Central markets. Workers will divert the existing railway between Mandi Gobindgarh and Sirhind to make way for the line.

DFCCIL previously inaugurated the corridor's central Bhaupur - Khurja section in Uttar Pradesh in January 2021.