Cement. Concrete. Dry Mixtures celebrated its XV. anniversary

The International Construction Exhibition: “­Cement. Concrete. Dry Mixtures” was successfully held in the “Expocenter” in Moscow from 02.-04.12.2014. The organizers of the event included the International Analytical Review “ALITinform. Cement. Concrete. Dry Mixtures” and the Russian Union of Builders. They welcomed around 530 delegates from Russia and 24 further countries. The conference is widely noted as the largest special event in Russia in the sector of building materials and technology and currently celebrated its XV. anniversary.

The exhibition was held with the support of the Eurasian Economic Commission, the State Duma, the Ministry of Construction and Housing and ­Utilities of the Russian Federation and the City Government of Moscow, as well as a number of national and international sponsors and media partners. The number of Russian and foreign exhibitors has grown to 170.

Parallel to the International Construction Exhibition, the third Global CemEnergy Conference was held with the focus on “Reducing Energy Consumption and CO₂ Emissions in the Cement Industry of fast developing Economies”. The speakers came from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the WBCSD Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI), and the International Federation for Structural Concrete (fib) and the Bureau International du Béton Manufacturé (BIBM), as well as from private companies, who made their presentations to an engaged audience.

On the first day of the CemEnergy forum, Philippe Fonta from (CSI, Brussels) began with his presentation of the added value of international business cooperation for sustainable development. Its members represent one third of the global cement production and set up a road map in order to verify the correct data and to derive appropriate measures for the reduction of energy consumption, and strengthen resource efficiency as well as to seek all types of alternatives. Prof. Pajakkala (FORECON Oy, Finland) supplied a comprehensive outlook of cement consumption through 2025 in Russia, EU and USA and summarized that the required cement demand will become much higher than the growth in GDP. Dr. Peter Edwards from Global Gypsum Magazin gave an insight of the gypsum market, which is dominated by China with 57 % of the global gypsum market. Fortunately, international, post-merger suppliers will get the upper hand starting in emerging countries and developing markets.

Prof. Dr. J. Plank, the globally well known expert on construction chemistry from TU Munich, showed new trends in global mix mortar technology. He provided geopolymers for grout or corrosion resistance as an example. In the context of investigations on crystal growth of ettringite, he took the audience along to the impressive zero-G-parabolic flight experiments to show how ettringite creates a perfect morphology in the presence of superplastiziser.

Elena Shigoleva from Erisim Makina, headquartered in Turkey, introduced the company as an OEM for all the required equipment for manufacturing gypsum and cement derived mortars. Michael Weingärtler (WIFO - Austrian Institute of Economic Research) provided a look into the network and a perspective into the past and current trends in the European construction market toward 2016. Due to the recent unsolved conflicts and weak EU-economies, he felt it difficult to see a clear trend. Finally, Igor Kozhukhovsky (Russian Energy Agency) showed problems, solutions and opportunities for the application in the construction industry with ashes from coal-fired power plants, which is reminiscent of the long process of specification, recovery and standardization in the EU.

After lunch, Eduard L. Bolshakov, President of ASTC “ALIT”, Chairman of the Committee of Cement, Concrete and Dry Mixtures of the Russian Union of Builders, opened the exhibition and emphasized: “Traditionally, the exhibition ‘­Cement. Concrete. Dry Mixtures’ is visited by guests from almost all regions of Russia and abroad. During the 3 day conference, there were more than 7,500 visitors registered to join the trade show. Compared to last year, the exhibition area increased by 15 %, and the number of participating companies increased by 10 %. Dr. Bolshakov remarked: “Now, at the opening of the XV anniversary exhibition of ‘Cement. Concrete. Dry Mixtures’, we want to thank all exhibitors, partners of the event and the public authorities for your participation and contribution to the development of the project and for the consistent support”.

After the ceremony, Alexey Mikhin (JSC “­Sebryakovcement”), Prof. Dr. Viktor Klassen (­Belgorod State University of Technologies), Prof. Dr. Vladimir Gagarin (Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences), Prof. Genrich Royak (Institute of Transport Construction) and Prof. Dr. V. Pukharenko (Saint-Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering) were recognized by the Russian Union of Builders. At the end, Elena D. Shabardina (“Expocenter” Moscow) took the floor and acknowledged “­ALITinform” for its 15 years of effective cooperation.

In the afternoon, many experts presented their papers, for example: “On energy efficiency and technical options to support CO₂ emission reduction in the cement manufacturing sector” by ­Araceli Fernandes Pales from IEA/Paris. Dr. Ivan N. Borisov presented “Applications of Industrial Flammable Waste in Russian Cement Industry” and Dr. Hubert Baier from WhiteLabel/Germany examined “The economy of AFR – Cash or Crash”. Andrey I. Kalachev, from Profcement-Vector/CIS, gave a comparison of the “Application of by-products of coal combustion in Russian Federation and the European Union Standardization Systems”.

Four parallel conferences took place within the Forum “Cement. Concrete. Dry Mixtures”:

Blockread: III. International Scientific and Technical Conference “Industrial house building — construction development potential in EurAsEC countries”

CemEnergy: III. Global Conference “Reducing Energy Consumption and CO₂ Emissions in the Cement Industry of Fast Developing Economies”

MixBuild: XVI. International Scientific Conference “Modern Technologies of Dry Mixtures in Construction”, and

ConAer: III. International Scientific and Practical Conference “Operation and Life Service of Structures of Autoclaved Aerated Concrete”

Three days of exhibition and two days of conferences were filled with a large number of insights and interesting information in the field of the construction industry. On the fourth day, experts received the opportunity to join the excursion to the integrated home building factory “Grad”, built by the “Morton” Company Group in partnership with the state company ROSNANO, which is currently one of the latest and largest home building factories in Russia.

“ALITinform” will summarize the results of this event in a publication with a special compilation of all the relevant contributions. Gratitude was expressed to all of the speakers and participants of the exhibition underlining their status of importance on the Russian market.

“ALITinform” invites all experts to take part in the XVI International Construction Exhibition: “Cement. Concrete. Dry Mixtures” on December 1-3, 2015 in Moscow.

До свидания!