Castle Cement buys its way into the waste industry

Castle Cement’s parent company has bought two solvent recovery businesses, Solrec and CMR, and is now planning to invest in the waste paper and plastics sectors. The moves underline the industry’s determination to burn wastes as fuel – pointing to heightened competition with traditional waste management firms.

Castle Cement’s goal is to find combustible wastes to replace up to 450,000 tonnes per annum of coal – the amount it currently uses in its cement kilns. The company accounts for around a quarter of the UK industry.

Castle’s Dick Boarder says the market for “Cemfuel” – made from hazardous waste solvents – is now fairly mature. Under EC legislation, the market is limited to 40% of the heat supplied to any kiln, but there is no such limit for non-hazardous waste.

The cement industry has objected to tough emission limits for dust and nitrogen oxides proposed in the draft EC Directive on incineration. These will make it more expensive to burn waste – but the industry also stands to save money on fuel bills and in some cases earn revenue from waste disposal fees (ENDS Report 290, pp 36-37). Waste combustion in kilns may also enjoy an exemption from the forthcoming climate change levy.

In September, Castle signalled a long-term commitment to Cemfuel by purchasing Solrec, a business engaged in solvent recovery and Cemfuel blending. This follows the acquisition of Chemical Manufacture and Refining (CMR) in June.

Castle’s move may have been a defensive gesture to avoid waste supplies falling into the hands of the traditional incineration industry. Last year, incineration firm Rechem purchased Lothian Chemicals, which supplies a Blue Circle cement kiln (ENDS Report 278, pp 11-12).

CMR has sites in Sussex and Sunderland. Solrec’s base is Heysham, Lancashire. Together they had sales of £18 million in 1998 and processed some 130,000 tonnes of waste chemicals. According to CMR’s Stuart McGown, the sites will supply other cement makers in addition to Castle. Roughly half of the waste stream is recycled for use in industry, with the remainder blended into cement kiln fuel.

Mr McGown denied that fuel blending had reduced the volume of chemicals being recycled. “If we can get the molecule back into industry, we are likely to make more money out of it [than by blending to make fuels],” he said. Revenue from supplying fuels helped make the solvent recycling business viable, he said.

Solrec and CMR are now part of Scancem Energy and Recovery (SEAR), a sister company to Castle Cement. Recent mergers in Europe’s cement industry have created a giant group under Germany’s Heidelberger Zement. The group owns Sweden’s Scancem and Belgium’s CBR as well as Castle.

It brings together a wide experience of burning waste. The Belgian cement industry moved into hazardous waste incineration ahead of the UK’s. In Germany, however, the industry has focused on non-hazardous wastes, including tyres and residues from recycling facilities.

Mr McGown acknowledged that SEAR imported waste chemicals into the UK. Such imports were “relatively small”, he said, but “that might change in the future”. “Because of transport costs, by far the biggest market [for CMR and Solrec] is in the UK.”

The Environment Agency told a recent parliamentary inquiry that it was not aware of any wastes being imported for direct incineration in cement kilns. But residues from the recycling of imported waste solvents were burned in UK kilns, the Agency said.

SEAR will also coordinate the supply of waste tyres in the UK. And it will look after the new waste shredding operation at Castle’s Ketton plant, where the group is experimenting with fuels made from waste plastics and paper (ENDS Report 287, p 16). Dick Boarder sees packaging wastes as a strong target. ENDS