South Australia awards $8 million to Hallett Group's green cement project

The government of South Australia will provide A$12 million ($8 million) to support Hallet Group's A$200 million ($134 million) green cement project, the government said Jan. 14.

The Green Cement Transformation project plans to utilize waste byproducts from a retired power station at Port Augusta and the Nyrstar Port Pirie multi-metals smelter to produce green cement. The project's infrastructure will have two hubs, located at Port Augusta and Port Adelaide.

The initiative will replace imports of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), according to Hallet.

"The loan announced by Premier [Peter] Malinauskas today will ensure that Hallett accelerates the delivery of this large-scale project to meet the rapidly growing demand for low-carbon cement materials for the South Australian Mining and Construction industries," said Kane Salisbury, CEO of Hallett Group, in a statement.

The Australian federal government invested $20 million in the project through the Modern Manufacturing Initiative.

The project will use fly ash from Port Augusta's retired North Power Station ash dam.

It will also use the slag pile waste of the Nyrstar Port Pirie smelter. The smelter is a major multi-metal smelter, processing products such as lead, silver, zinc and copper.

The two sources of waste byproducts will be used to create SCMs for the production of green cement. The SCMs can replace 50% of traditional, high-emissions clinker-based cement.

According to Hallet Group, the project will reduce carbon emissions by 1 million metric tons per year once it is fully operational.

The project is expected to enable Hallett to supply markets with 30 million metric tons of SCMs over the next 20 years.

Hallett Group has not specified an estimated completion date for the project, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Platts, part of S&P Global Energy, last assessed cement FOB Vietnam at $37/mt on Jan. 8.