Cluster dynamics

The following synthesis is based on the interviews and surveys that were conducted with the industry partners in the Humber region. The secondary data were collected from the website of International Synergies Ltd and the work of Mirata (2004) and Bailey & Gadd (2017) (Bailey & Gadd, 2016; International Synergies, n.d.; Mirata, 2004).

3.3.1.1 Social

Efforts to develop industrial symbiosis in Humber region can be divided into two time periods. Before the start of NISP-UK and after NISP-UK. Before the NISP-UK was launched, there were proposals of large infrastructure symbiosis in Humber that related to combined heat and power (Immingham CHP), linking of chemical plants on each side of the Humber River via an underwater pipeline (“Humber-bundle”) and other material focused symbioses between chemical industries in the region. All these initiatives prom-ised substantial environmental, social and economic benefits for the region (Mirata, 2004).

However, these proposals were unable to incite interest from the local businesses. One reason is attributed to the entities that spearheaded the program then. It was a major chemical company who proposed the idea of the CHP based on their experience with the Business Council for Sustainable Development in Gulf of Mexico. The chemical business with BCSD-UK initiated the Humber Industrial Symbiosis Programme (HISP). The fi-nancing of the team that led the initiative was done by the fee paid by the signatories from profits of possible symbioses. However, this created a misunderstanding among the di-verse local businesses who understood that the symbiosis activities were better suited for the large industries (Mirata, 2004).

Towards the end of 2001, due to lack of funding the progress of HISP was almost halted.

In 2003, the program was relaunched as a pilot project of NISP-UK and this time the les-sons from the previous experience were taken into consideration. This time the programme was headed by the Regional Development Agency. The top-down approach was replaced with a bottom-up one and focused on industrial symbiosis of different scales (Bailey & Gadd, 2016; Mirata, 2004). Link2Energy Ltd ran the industrial programmes in Yorkshire and Humber on behalf of International Synergies Ltd. Initially, Link2Energy Ltd relied on public funds but from 2012, Link2Energy Ltd developed its own independ-ent commercial programme Re:Sourcing UK with a focus on high-value opportunities and innovation (Bailey & Gadd, 2016).

From the exploration of the literature on HISP, it is evident that the more successful efforts for developing industrial symbiosis were bottom-up and did not rely on ambitious pro-jects that required major infrastructure development. All the industries in the Humber cluster have been approached by the representatives of different industrial symbiosis pro-grams, however, they did not report any symbiotic activity that was being managed by a third party or that was identified through the help of a third party.

A company belonging to the engineering sector is responsible for waste management at the Chemicals Hull site. Recently Chemicals Hull had decided to shut down a plant and the engineering company was given the contract to clean the site, demolish the unit and also decontaminate the site. The engineering company is responsible for selling waste derived fuel to Cement South Ferriby and managing the waste from kilns after the fuel

has been burnt. The engineering company’s expertise in applying for environmental per-mits and existence on Hull site since a long time, provides a level of trust among the industry partners.

Following is a brief overview of the industrial sites that took part in the Humber cluster.

Minerals Melton – Lead site

Industrial production started at Melton Quarry in 1921 under the ownership of W. Mar-shall (Hessle) Ltd, supplying chalk slurry to the nearby Humber Cement Works. In 1937 production of the first non-cement grade (an agricultural chalk) followed the introduction of a farming subsidy for such applications. Further capital investment expanded the range of products. By 2002 the plant had expanded to include a marble processing plant, a coat-ing plant and a granulatcoat-ing plant on a modernised site. The marble processcoat-ing plant has been decommissioned, In 1958 Blue Circle took over the site and in 1987 the Melton plant was divorced from the Humber Cement Works. The latter closed in 1981 and Melton Plant became fully independent. In 1989 Blue Circle and Croxton + Garry Ltd formed a joint venture, merging their industrial minerals operations. The minerals company who was part of the case study took over in early nineties, site is nowadays 100% owned & oper-ated by the minerals company.

The minerals company has two sites in the Humber cluster with 3 km between them; the two sites are very different from a business point of view. One is in Melton and the other in Humber. Minerals Melton and Humber implemented ESOS (EED reporting under UK system) and carried out the analysis for 5 of their plant which cover more than 90% of the energy consumption of minerals UK. In the past, minerals used to sell electricity to the Cement South Ferriby, as they were a tenant at their Humber side, but this activity has been discontinued. In the year 2015, Minerals Melton plant had a production of approx.

160 k tonnes, about 72% of the product consisted of different chalk powder products.

Minerals Melton (North) is a typical quarry site and sets itself in minerals market. Melton plant operates both a dry and a wet process, producing a total of 16 different products, out of which 12 are dry powders and 4 are chalk slurries. Earlier minerals Melton pro-duced powder for the cement industry, which is now discontinued. Minerals Melton quarry has quarrying permission till 2044 but there is potential for a 100 more years. Mel-ton quarry site has 34 employees and there are 20 employees in MelMel-ton office.

Minerals Humber (South) The main process at minerals Humber site is mixing and pre-paring chemicals for rubber used in tyre industry. There are 43 employees, including temporary workers, at the minerals Humber site.

Chemicals Hull – Satellite site

As gathered during the LESTS survey, the Chemicals company arrived at the Saltend Chemical Park in 2008. The Ethylene Acetate plant already existed under the ownership of British Petroleum. The Chemicals Hull plant employs 26 people. Chemicals Hull is a satellite site of the main site in Antwerp, Belgium. At Hull the core product is Ethylene Acetate (EtAc). EtAc is an intermediate chemical used in the manufacturing of a wide variety of everyday household products such as perfumes and printing inks; paints and varnishes; and flavour and odour enhancers.

Along with the infrastructure of British Petroleum, Chemicals Hull also inherited the ex-isting contracts with other parties, including the waste management contract with an engineering company. Chemicals Hull takes part in the Saltend Chemical park manage-ment, led by BP chemicals who still hosts the park.

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Cement South Ferriby – Satellite site

The Humber estuary has a 70 year long history of cement production. Cement South Fer-riby plant makes its cement using local chalk and clay taken from different areas of the same quarry. Around 3,000 tonnes of chalk and 1,000 tonnes of clay are needed each day.

Two kilns heat the raw materials to 1400 ^oC. The gases and dust from the kiln are subjected to an intense filtering and scrubbing process before being safely emitted to the atmos-phere.

While traditional fossil fuels – coal and petcoke – are still in use in the kiln, South Ferriby is increasingly using more sustainable and cost-effective alternative fuels. Since 2002, Ce-ment South Ferriby has been successfully using secondary liquid fuel made from industrial liquid wastes that cannot be recycled. The plant delivers its vital end-product by road over a wide area of eastern, central and northern England. It also ships cement from Grimsby to Leith on the east coast of Scotland.

In total, the company’s annual contribution to the local economy through wages, rates and the buying of services adds up to some £10 million (CEMEX UK | South Ferriby Com-munity | Helping to Build A Greater Britain, n.d.). The Cement South Ferriby has 70 employees.

3.3.1.2 Legal

None of the member industries are engaged in a symbiotic relationship with other part-ners present in the Humber cluster. The only legal contracts between the members were written with the engineering company to acquire their services for waste management.

However, Minerals and Chemicals do engage in different collaborations with neighbour-ing industries. For minerals, important among them is a waste management company, who is also provided electricity through the electricity connection of Minerals. Together, Minerals and the waste management company received the permits for installation of five wind turbines in Humber region. However, the subsidy scheme changed and the support from the public funds was reduced. During the LESTS interview, Minerals was only in-terested in the installation of two turbines on the land owned by the waste management company. During the course of the case study, no updates were reported on the installa-tion of the wind turbines. By the end of the project, Minerals’ interest in the wind turbines was significantly diminished.

Other important legal aspects of significance include the existing environmental permits of the Minerals and Cement site. For example, during the interview it was identified that a reject stream from Minerals can feed as raw material for cement plant. Currently the reject stream is used for land reclamation (landscaping) in Melton quarry. On the other hand, Cement is interested in finding innovative uses of the cement kiln dust and they wanted to offer this material for landscaping at the quarry site of minerals. The cement kiln dust has very fine particle size and does not meet the criteria for the material that can be used for land reclamation at the site of Minerals. However, upon further investigation it was realised that the environmental permit issued to Minerals binds them to use only the same material originating from Melton quarry. The environmental permit is binding till 2042 and minerals did not show an interest in carrying out the long and winding pro-cedure to reapply for the permit before its expiry.

Another detail about the legal aspect led to identification of a symbiosis opportunity dur-ing the interviews with Cement and Chemicals. It was reported that Chemicals Hull plant produces a liquid waste stream that is currently sent to a boiler owned by a third party on the Saltend Park. It is a light fuel type, which is burned to produce steam. The handling

of this Primary Liquid Fuel (PLF) is carried out by the engineering company. Addition-ally, Cement South Ferriby has a permit to use waste as fuel in the cement kilns.

Currently, only 80% of the fuel burnt in cement kilns is based on waste. The liquid waste stream from Chemicals can provide an opportunity for Cement to replace the remaining 20% of the primary fuels with the PLF stream from Chemicals.

3.3.1.3 Economic

A number of economic incentives exist for the industries to engage in collaboration that can result in carbon emission reductions. For example, Minerals can benefit from a £ 180 000 rebate under a levy for energy use reduction. However, in 2014, Minerals couldn’t reach the reduction targets and had to release offset carbon credits of £ 30000.

For Cement the economic incentive lies in finding innovative ways to divert cement kiln dust away from landfills. For Chemicals the incentive lies in finding an alternative way to utilise their PLF stream, as it is a stream that causes them to pay a high price for the steam that they receive from the boiler. The reason being the quality of the PLF causes the boiler to perform at subpar, hence raising the cost for Chemicals to receive steam in re-turn.

It shows that either due to the burden of stricter public regulations or the general benefit of collaboration to achieve energy and resource use efficiency, the industrial partners have sufficient economic incentive to collaborate and engage in industrial symbiosis in UK Humber cluster.

3.3.1.4 Spatial

To propose symbiosis activities that will require flow exchanges between the industries, the physical distance between their locations is paramount. The road distances between the industrial sites are shown in Figure 3-6. All distances are calculated from the location of Minerals Melton plant. This is solely done because minerals took the lead to represent the industries in the Humber cluster of the case study.

Figure 3-6: Location of the different industries in the Humber cluster (UK) Distance from minerals Melton plant to other industrial sites are as follows:

• Cement South Ferriby = 21 km

• Chemicals Chemicals (EtAc plant) = 23 km

The industry partners in the Humber cluster have two distinct spatial characteristics.

Chemicals Hull is located in a chemical park; the Saltend chemical park, and Minerals

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and Cement plants are located closer to the excavation sites of their respective raw materials. Cement and Minerals own the land and operate independently, while Chemicals shares certain facilities with third parties present on Saltend chemical park, e.g., wastewater treatment, security services, grounds’ care, shared access routes within the chemical parks, etc.

The Minerals company has two plants in the Humber cluster, which lie 3 km apart; a quarry and plant at Melton and a processing plant in Humber. Cement owns land in South Ferriby closer to the availability of raw materials, i.e., sand and chalk. Minerals, Cement and Chemicals have free land on their sites, which can be used for industrial symbiosis project(s).

Minerals sends their raw material and are duty bound to ensure land reclamation in their quarry. minerals uses flint and the aforementioned reject stream for landscaping purposes. Cement owns a landfill on South Ferriby site, however, their interest lies in keeping valuable by-products out of the landfill.

Another important spatial aspect of Humber region for prospective installation of wind turbines is that the area serves as feeding grounds for migratory birds. Also the community in Humber region opposes the insallation of wind turbines because of the negative impact wind turbines have on the real estate prices.

3.3.1.5 Technical

All the issues that were raised during the LESTS interviews as facing the industries have available technological solutions. However, the conventional end-of-pipe technologies available in market are considered extremely expensive. This leaves room for innovation and industrial symbiosis between the industries. Since there are no existing symbiosis cases whose technical details could be explained here, the proposals and their technical details are mentioned in chapter 4.