India: The cement industry imported 3.21Mt of petcoke during the first quarter of 2023, up by 72% year-on-year. This was due to a shortage and rising costs of domestically produced petcoke.

Oman is a major trade partner for petcoke for the Indian cement industry. The Oman Daily Observer newspaper has reported that a new oil refinery is scheduled for commissioning in Duqm before the end of 2023. ‘Several’ Indian cement companies are reportedly seeking to secure new petcoke supply deals in Oman.

Sweden: Heidelberg Materials Sweden has called for swifter action to be taken by the government on a planned upgrade to the mains electricity supply to the island of Gotland. The building materials company is planning to build a full-scale carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) unit at its integrated Slite cement plant on the island by 2030. However, the newly approved plans to build two new electrical transmission cables to Gotland are currently scheduled for completion in 2031. The cement plant is expected to require annual electricity requirements of up to 1.5TWh with a power requirement of up to 250MW when the CCS unit is completed.

The cement producer has welcomed the government’s upgrade plans so far but has impressed the urgency of its timeline to build a CCS unit at the Slite plant. It says it is currently considering investing around Euro850m on the project. If completed the CCS unit is expected to capture up to 1.8Mt/yr of CO₂. The company said that this corresponds to approximately 3% of Sweden's emissions annually.

Finland: Finnsementti is carrying out upgrades to its two integrated cement plants as part of its sustainability targets to 2030. The subsidiary of Ireland-based CRH is installing new main burner equipment at its Lappeenranta plant with completion scheduled for mid-2023. The project is intended to allow the plant to increase its use of alternative fuels. The company’s Parainen plant is replacing its satellite coolers with a grate cooler with completion scheduled for the spring of 2024. This work is expected to decrease the plant’s emissions by 10%. Overall the group is preparing to decrease its CO₂ emissions by 30% by 2030 compared to 2021 levels.

Iceland: Sementsverksmidjan says it has offset its domestic transport CO₂ emissions through an offset scheme with the government environmental agency Landgræðirin. In 2022 the subsidiary of Germany-based Heidelberg Materials offset 484t of CO₂-equivalent by restoring a birch forest and dry-land ecosystems.