UK: Gary Brennand has been appointed as the Group Commercial Manager at David Ball Group. He has worked in the construction materials industry for 17 years, starting his career as an aggregates and asphalt technician before moving on to commercial, operational and general management roles in companies such as Aggregate Industries, Hope Cement and the Breedon Group. Brennand holds an MBA in Business Administration.

India: Vedanta-Sterlite Copper has met with the Kerala state government to discuss the use of copper slag in road building. The copper subsidiary of Vedanta wants to use copper slag as a partial replacement for river sand and manufactured sand in the construction of roads in the state, according to the Times of India newspaper. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has approved the usage of copper slag in various grades of concrete as a partial substitute for sand. Vedanta-Sterlite’s Tutucorin plant is currently produces 60,000 - 70,000t/yr of slag, none of which is used.

Czech Republic: A project by ArcelorMittal Ostrava substituting the primary raw materials for steelmaking with specially processed recycled slag has been ranked fourth in a government competition promoting the use of waste by-products as resources. The Ministry of Industry and Trade ran the competition that received 127 entries. Project manger Jitka Halamová attended the award ceremony on behalf of the steel producer.

“Since we've been using a special technology to sort the slag to end up a with higher iron content and a lower level of phosphorus, we have been able to reuse that slag in our operations in much higher amounts than before. Thanks to that, we are able to save iron ore, additives and fuel and, at the same time, we don’t accumulate large amounts of waste on our premises,” said Halamová.

The new technique mechanically processes the 0-8mm steel slag that contains 35 - 40% of iron. This has enabled ArcelorMittal Ostrava to increase the slag’s iron content to 54 - 57%, while keeping the phosphorus content low enough to reuse the enriched slag in the sintering process, replacing iron ore, additives and fuel in production. Using slag in this way increases the sustainability of the business’ operations and offers economic benefits. In 2016 ArcelorMittal Ostrava recycled on average 1900t/month of enriched slag and in the process saved a total of over US$0.87m.

Argentina: Holcim Argentina plans to start a slag import programme due to lack of local supply. Its sister company LG Trading, also owned by LafargeHolcim, will arrange the purchases subject to local regulations and permitting. Three ships with a capacity of 40,000t will be contracted at first to import slag from October to December 2017. Slag from the programme will be used at the cement producer’s Campana grinding plant near Buenos Aires.