Belgium: The World Steel Association (WSA) has published data that shows a 3.4% year-on-year increase in global steel production to 1870Mt in 2019 from 1810Mt in 2018. The figure belies a general decline in production in most regions: excluding China, total production fell by 1.6% year-on-year to 874Mt from 888Mt in 2018. China’s growth was 8.3%, to 996Mt from 920Mt, corresponding to an increase in its share of global production to 53% from 51%. Growth in the Middle East outstripped this at 19% year-on-year, increasing to 45.3Mt in 2019 from 38.0Mt one year previously. The Middle East now controls 2.4% of global steel production, compared to 2.1% in 2018. India and the US also experienced production growths of 1.8% and 1.5% respectively. The WSA expects the steel industry’s performance to have a staying effect on granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) prices for cement producers in these regions.

Russia: Sibirsky Cement Holding (Sibtsem) subsidiary Topkinsky Cement has announced that it has entered commercial production of a new Mita slag Portland cement with granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) at its 2.7Mt/yr integrated plant in Topki, for which it received a certification of conformity with ‘cement for general construction’ standards on 16 January 2020. Nina Poputnikova, Topkinsky Cement laboratory and quality department head, said that it is producing the cement in response to ‘construction companies’ increased interest in cement for use in reinforced, precast concrete in monolithic structures such as buried and hydraulic structures.’

“In the near future we plan to certify two new cements,” said Topkinsky Cement managing director Alexey Ospelnikov. One will be a low-heat general-purpose cement for large-sized concrete structures and the other a sulphate-resistant Portland cement. “Expanding the assortment will help strengthen the company’s position in the Russian cement market.”

India: Gebr. Pfeiffer has announced that it has received an order for one MVR 6000 C-6 roller mill for Chettinand Cement Corp. Pvt. Ltd.’s upcoming 2.0Mt/yr Vishakapatnam granulated blast-furnace slag (GBFS) and slag cement
Grinding plant in Andhra Pradesh. Gebr. Pfeiffer said the mill will grind slag and cement to a fineness of between 3000 and 3800 blaine at a rate of between 235t/hr and 340t/hr. It says the mill improves plant availability by the active redundancy of the grinding rollers, enabling mill operation with reduced rollers in the event of maintenance work or a malfunction.

US: Researchers from the University of Southern Florida (USF) testing the resistance to deterioration of cements containing between 30% and 70% of slags of various aluminium oxide (Al₂O₃) and magnesium oxide (MgO) contents when exposed to sulphates have discovered a general decrease in resistance with increased Al₂O₃ content. Real Estate Weekly News has reported that increased MgO was found to increase resistance, especially at 30% slag replacement.