Slovenia: The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has awarded Salonit Anhovo (Salonit) a Euro15m loan to be used for energy and resource efficiency improvements and to restructure the company’s balance sheet. The building materials producer has a substitution rate of 64% for alternative fuels at its Anhovo cement plant. The EBRD loan will be invested to increase this ratio further to improve the company’s profitability and reduce CO₂ emissions. A precondition for increasing the ratio of alternative fuels is the installation of state-of-the-art equipment. The investment will also have a beneficial effect on operational costs, which are expected to decline thanks to the adjusted fuel ratios.

Austria: A Tec has commissioned a Rocket Mill RM 2.50 for ASA at its waste treatment plant in Wiener Neustadt. The mill has a capacity of 7 – 40t/hr and is equipped with two grinding chambers, which can be independently loaded. Each one has a main drive with 315kW. Due to the grinding technology, it also has an additional drying effect of approximately 10%. The mill is designed to produce refuse-derived fuels (RDF) with an output size of 5 - 80mm from pre-sorted and shredded household and commercial waste. It was principally built at A Tec’s plant in Eberstein.

Canada: A scheme to use coffee packs at Lafarge Canada’s Kamloops cement plant has ended following the mothballing of the site. Lafarge Canada and Van Houtte Coffee Services had an arrangement to use leftover Keurig coffee packs collected in the Kamloops area as an alternative fuel for the plant, according to the Province newspaper. However, Lafarge Canada announced that it was mothballing the plant in October 2016 due to poor market conditions. Up to 26 workers may lose their jobs. Van Houtte is looking for a new site to place the programme.

Egypt: Khaled Fahmy, the Minister of Environment, has said that government ministers have approved a plan submitted by the Ministry of Environment that seeks to encourage the increase in waste used as energy in cement plants to 15% by 2030. He said that the cabinet adopted the plan, adding that discussions are underway with heads of plants to discuss problems they face in using waste as fuel, according to the Daily News Egypt newspaper. Prime Minister Sherif Ismail has asked operators in the cement industry to start studying their energy consumption and to start suggesting ways they can increase their rate of co-processing of alternative fuels.

The plan hopes to utilise nearly 22Mt of solid waste and 30Mt of agricultural residues to produce the refuse-derived fuel (RDF). The Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy are also preparing legislation to encourage investors to start waste-to-energy businesses.

"The real problems facing investors in the waste recycling business is the lack of commitment by cleaning companies to provide the required quantities of waste to be recycled and used as an alternative fuel," said Fahmy. The ministry is also trying to improve the performance of waste management vehicles with new technology.