Sinoma International Engineering revealed this week that it has signed a €218 million contract to acquire a new clinker production line for Holcim Belgium. The scope of the agreement covers the structure of the new line, from the unloading of limestone by rail to the transport and deposit of clinker. Provisional acceptance and first clinker are expected to occur in about four years, until the end of 2027. Holcim Belgium operates the Obourg plant, its incorporated unit in the country, and the unit is preparing to build a new line as a component of its Go4Zero project.
Two important issues compete for the attention with the commission of the Obourg factory. First, this could possibly be the first time a major European cement manufacturer has publicly contracted with a China-based supplier to build a new production line. Second, the new line is part of a process to first upgrade two on-site rain kilns to one drying kiln. This is part of a large on-site task to add oxyfuel generation to the plant and then start capturing most of the CO2 emitted to be sequestered in the North Sea.
Regarding the first point, the Chinese company Sinoma International Engineering announced in early December 2023 on the Shanghai Stock Exchange that it had signed a contract for the transfer. Holcim Belgium did not say it had called the CNBM subsidiary, but this is not unusual. Holcim has been talking about Go4Zero’s commission for several years, so the appointment of a prime contractor is not surprising.
However, some European cement companies have been cautious in the past about disclosing the use of Chinese-founded suppliers. Lafarge France, for example, did not appear to publicly cite the involvement of Sinoma International Engineering and its subsidiaries in the structure of a new line. at its Martres-Tolosane cement plant between 2019 and 2022, despite Lafarge Poland claiming in 2020 to have contracted China Triumph International Engineering to modernize its Małogoszcz cement plant. There is no doubt that there have been other orders for plants in Europe from China. well-founded suppliers of which Global Cement Weekly is not aware. It can also be considered that the fact that the main contractor for the assignment of a plant is from a specific country does not necessarily mean that the apparatus and other subcontractors are necessarily from a specific country. And of course, to add to the confusion, some equipment suppliers founded in Europe belong to corporations founded in China.
This brings us to the present moment. Holcim Belgium’s long-term goal is to establish a large-scale carbon capture, shipment and sequestration (CCUS) operation in Obourg using oxyfuel generation until the end of the 2020s. They will spend more than €200 million to build a new (albeit conventional) production line is not trivial, but it is presented as a step towards creating a cement plant for the era of net-zero emissions. To this end, Holcim Belgium did not hesitate to convene its partners for the second phase of the project: Air Liquide; Fluxys; and TotalEnergies. This is possibly due to the collaborative nature of this phase and the desire to seek European Union (EU) investment for it. In July 2023, Holcim revealed that the European Innovation Fund had awarded grants to 3 of its projects. , adding that of Obourg.
For reference, a number of other full-scale oxyfuel projects have been announced in Europe including in Germany at Heidelberg Materials’ Geseke cement plant, Holcim Deutschland’s Lägerdorf plant in Germany and Schwenk Zement’s Mergelstetten plant. Another one is planned for Heidelberg Materials’ CBR’s Antoing cement plant in Belgium. Most of these are planned for the late 2020s or with pilots sooner. The key bit of information to consider here is that adding oxyfuel technology to a cement kiln (or building one with it to start with) makes it easier to capture CO2 from the flue gas as it is more concentrated. However, the technology is newer and less-tested than many post-combustion carbon capture methods. Hence, the world’s first full-scale CCUS unit at a cement plant, at Brevik in Norway, will use a post combustion method.
All of this begs the question about where the value will lie in building cement plants for the age of net zero? The planned work at Holcim Belgium’s Obourg Plant pretty much summarises this quandary. Building a cement production line is expensive but the cost of disposing of CO2 may become the single-biggest driver of whether a plant is profitable or not if governments are serious about reaching net zero. To that end today’s announcement from the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) calling on the parties to “transition away from fossil fuels to reach net zero” is another sign of the increasing effects of the so-called ‘carbon agenda’ upon the cement sector. In which case the companies that can supply equipment to take care of the CO2 emissions start becoming more important and discussions over who supplies the rest of the kit less so. Naturally, some cement equipment suppliers are already pivoting towards this approach. Others may find different solutions. Whether this works or not is a question for the future. In the mean-time, building new plants is looking increasingly collaborative.
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