Hallett Group’s $125m green cement project the ‘jewel in the crown’

Hallett Group is weeks away from breaking ground on a landmark facility designed to repurpose industrial waste into “green cement”, creating dozens of ongoing jobs.

Building and construction materials supplier Hallett Group is weeks away from breaking ground on a landmark facility in regional South Australia, designed to produce low-carbon ‘green cement’ using industrial waste.

Touted as the most significant carbon reduction innovation project in Australia’s cement industry, Hallett will draw on millions of tonnes of fly ash left behind by Port Augusta’s demolished power station, as well as other industrial by-products found on the Eyre Peninsula, to produce supplementary cementitious mat­er­ials (SCMs) – an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional clinker-based cement products.

Backed by $100m in fresh funding from Commonwealth Bank, including a $51m green loan, construction of a processing hub in Port Augusta is expected to commence early next month, followed by commissioning of a new cement storage and distribution facility in Port Adelaide next year.

Port Augusta pictured from the watertower. Picture: Ben Clark

The company had previously secured a $20m federal grant as part of the Morrison government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative.

Hallett chief executive Kane Salisbury said the $125m project would replace Hallett’s importing of SCMs into Australia, and would slash up to one million tonnes of carbon emissions each year.

The goal is to replace more than 50 per cent of traditional, emissions-intensive clinker-based cement used in concrete and mining applications, and to develop a secure supply of SCMs to support the decarbonisation of Australia’s cement industry.

“We’ve been working on this, on and off, for the best part of a decade,” he said.

“In Australia, we’re sitting on some of the best SCM sources in the world, and we’ve got a real opportunity to not just supply ourselves 100 per cent, but even become an exporter of SCMs.

“We’ve grown our business for cement and SCMs quite substantially over the previous three or four years and that allowed us to go ahead and make some strategic investments in a couple of key assets being our Port Augusta green cement manufacturing hub and our Port Adelaide green cement distribution hub which, when combined together, are going to be able to service all the cementitious requirements and low-carbon cement requirements for all of South Australia, and hopefully well beyond South Australia in years and decades to come.”

Hallett Group’s green cement transformation project site at Port Augusta. Picture: Ben Clark

Mr Salisbury described the Port Augusta facility as the project’s “jewel in the crown”, where fly-ash and slag products will be milled, processed and blended before being transported to Port Adelaide for final processing and distribution, both to domestic and overseas customers.

Hallett is currently producing SCMs using a pilot plant, with commissioning of the Port Augusta hub expected late next year, creating more than 50 ongoing jobs.

Meanwhile at Port Adelaide, Hallett has erected a 42m-high inflatable dome designed to store up to 52,000 tonnes of cement product while minimising dust at the distribution centre.

Following the collapse of the first dome structure at the site in February, a new dome was erected, and Mr Salisbury said the facility was now on track to be completed by April next year.

“It’s a heck of a landmark on the South Australian skyline,” he said. “It’s a drive-through dome with built-in integrated blending functionality inside the dome itself, which is a world first, and one we think will become a bit of a template for world players when it comes to trying to make really efficient and super flexible distribution hubs that can really maximise and optimise the ability to blend different sorts of SCMs.”

Commonwealth Bank general manager of commercial banking Kylie Allen said there was a strong appetite from lenders looking to support sustainability-focused projects in Australia, but more education was needed to raise awareness of the green finance push across the business community.

“Previously this area has really been in the institutional space, in the corporate banking space, but what we are seeing is the mid-market corporates are now very much coming to this space,” she said.

“And to get to net zero we really need them to be participating because they’re such a large share of our economy.

“There are many products that are available and the market is very open to green loans.

“There is certainly a lot of capital available for these loans and a great deal of interest.”