Finland: Finnsementti has installed a second mill at its Raahe grinding plant, increasing its total capacity by 100% to 1.0Mt/yr. Esmerk has reported that the mill will grind only slag, which will replace other clinker ingredients in its cement to a net carbon footprint reduction of 40,000Mt/yr. The company has stated that ‘a significant part’ of its Euro12m investment in the upgrade will go towards dosing equipment and increasing storage capacity, with a special emphasis on maintaining a circular economy and reaching its environmental goals by reducing the net CO₂ emissions of its Raahe plant.

US: Shawn M Garvin, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), has issued a Secretary’s Order granting an air quality construction permit for Walan Specialty Construction Products to build a slag grinding plant at Wilmington in Delaware. Walan, also known locally as Penn Mag, is required to use best available control technology (BACT) to control particulate emissions from the drying and grinding operations and to limit truck activity at the site to paved surfaces. The permit has approved a throughput limit of 150,000t/yr of slag, a reduction of 43% compared to the original application.

Sri Lanka: Nandana Ekanayake, the chief executive officer (CEO) of INSEE Cement, has called for the regulations on blended cement to be relaxed. He said that some of the company’s Chinese contractors had asked for cements with 65% slag but that the current regulations do not allow it, according to Economy Next. The Sri Lanka Standards Institute has a limit of 20% slag content in cement. He added that there were no uniform international standard for slag in construction cement. He made the comments at the launch of the company’s first sustainability report.

Luxembourg: ArcelorMittal’s sales fell by 2% year-on-year to US$38.5bn in the first half of 2019 from US$39.2bn in the same period in 2019. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 43% to US$3.21bn from US$5.59bn. Crude steel production volumes rose by 3% to 47.8Mt from 46.5Mt.

"After a strong 2018, market conditions in the first half of 2019 have been very tough, with the profitability of our steel segments suffering due to lower steel prices combined with higher raw material costs,” said Lakshmi N Mittal, ArcelorMittal’s chairman and chief executive officer (CEO). He added that the company had recued its production capacity in Europe in responses to global overcapacity.