Displaying items by tag: Spain
Cementos Molins targets 20% CO2 emissions reduction by 2030
16 February 2022Spain: Cementos Molins has committed to a 20% reduction in its CO2 emissions between 2020 and 2030. The company has set out its strategy in its 2030 Sustainability Roadmap. The roadmap covers five areas: health and safety, energy and climate change, the circular economy, nature and the environment, and corporate social responsibility. Thus, Cementos Molins aims to achieve an accident-free workplace, to source 55% of its electricity consumption renewably, to increase its alternative fuel (AF) substitution rate to 40% and reduce its cement’s clinker factor to 68%, to halve particulate matter emissions and cut nitrous oxides (NOx) and sulphur oxides (SOx) emissions by 40% and 10% respectively and to have signed official agreements with all host communities and employ women in over 23% of management positions.
Chief executive officer Julio Rodríguez said “Sustainability is the cornerstone of our strategy here at Cementos Molins, and today we are delighted to announce the specific targets that we have set out in our 2030 Sustainability Roadmap. The targets and their corresponding action plans - the result of the hard work and dedication of the Cementos Molins team, together with our stakeholders – will help drive our company forward in actively tackling climate change.” He added “We are deeply committed to achieving zero emissions and building a better world for everyone.”
Catalan court orders closure of LafargeHolcim España’s Montcada i Reixac cement plant
10 February 2022Spain: The Catalonia government has received a court order to close down LafargeHolcim España’s Montcada i Reixac cement plant in Barcelona. The Spanish Collection newspaper has reported that the plant failed to conform to new environmental regulations. LafargeHolcim España has appealed the decision.
The Montcada i Reixac plant currently employs 300 people. A union involved in the issue said that the alleged breach is formal rather than substantive and that an administrative error by the regional government caused the plant to breach the regulations.
Update on Spain, February 2022
09 February 2022The data on cement consumption for 2021 in Spain is out this week and it looks promising. As the national cement association Oficemen explained, last year was the sector’s best for over a decade, nearly reaching 15Mt consumption and exceeding the figure in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic started. Oficemen also singled out particular strong performance in December 2021. It now expects this growth trend to continue into 2022 with a forecast of 5% to 15.6Mt predicted based on both domestic and infrastructure segments.
Graph 1: Cement consumption in Spain, 2012 – 2021. Source: Oficemen.
The Spanish cement industry reached a peak consumption of over 50Mt in the late 2000s before hitting a near-50 year low in the 2010s in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The market then started to recover in the second half of the 2010s until Covid-19 came along. A report on the Spanish cement market to the start of 2021 that lays out the situation can be found in the February 2021 issue of Global Cement Magazine. The larger news stories since then have been Votorantim Cimentos’ growth in the market through its acquisitions of FYM and Cementos Balboa, and Çimsa Çimento’s final completion of its deal to buy the Buñol white cement plant from Cemex. Each of these stories involve an integrated cement plant changing ownership.
Looking back at Oficemen’s summary describing 2012 depicts a much different dwindling market. However, one commonality it shares with the association’s roundup for 2021 is that it complains about the country’s disadvantage in electricity costs compared to its neighbours. Back in 2012 this was framed as holding back exports. As Oficemen noted at the time it exported 5.9Mt of cement in 2012, less than half the 13Mt it exported in 1983. Jump forward to 2021 and exports are now 6.8Mt. Energy is still a key issue though. Now Oficemen’s president, José Manuel Cascajero Rodríguez, says that the sector’s production costs have increased by 25% since the latest round of electricity price rises began. He then compares the cost of energy intensive industry in Spain unfavourably against France and Germany and calls for a structural change in the Spanish electricity market to make prices more predictable. Cement producers elsewhere in Europe and beyond may share Oficemen’s concerns regard unpredictable energy prices over the last six months but electricity has been a particular issue for Spain for a long time. To take one recent local example, in November 2021 Cementos Cosmos said it was planning to scale down the production of clinker at its Córdoba cement plant as a result of the high cost of electricity.
The other issue that gets raised in Oficemen’s 2021 summary is competition from cement importers outside the European Union (EU) and the necessity of a border carbon adjustment mechanism (CBAM) to take in account carbon taxation for producers within Europe. To jump back a bit, back in May 2021 the EU Emissions trading Scheme (ETS) reached Euro50/t. Then in December 2021 Cembureau, the European cement association, published a calculation predicting that if the EU ETS CO2 cost made it to Euro90/t then this could represent 12 - 15% of the production costs of cement producers. Well, as readers will have guessed, the EU ETS beat Euro90/t on 2 February 2022 and then rose to Euro96.7/t on 7 February 2022. Answers in an email for when readers think the EU ETS price will top Euro100/t.
All of the above feeds neatly into the week’s other big Spanish news story: Cemex and Synhelion have successfully produced clinker from concentrated solar radiation at a pilot unit at the Very High Concentration Solar Tower of IMDEA Energy near Madrid. It’s early days yet as the process needs to be scaled up but, make no mistake, this is a big story. An interview with the team behind Cemex and Synhelion’s solar concentration project can be found in the December 2020 issue of Global Cement Magazine for more information. The SOLPART (Solar-Heated Reactors for Industrials Production of Reactive Particulates) project in France did similar research a few years ago but it didn’t reach the 1500°C target required to reach the sintering phase where clumps of clinker form. US-based Heliogen has been trying to industrialise concentrated solar energy but not much has been heard about its cement-industry ambitions since it said it reached temperatures of about 1000°C in 2019.
The relevance of an eventual full-scale concentrated solar unit for the entire production line or just the preheater and/or calciner at a cement plant in Spain makes considerable sense. At a stroke energy costs are reduced, diverted to a renewable source and any desired CO2 capture becomes, in theory, easier and cheaper. Cemex said in the interview with Global Cement Magazine that the tentative next step would be a pilot unit at a cement plant, although, candidate plants could be in the US or Mexico, as well as Spain. Another side of the drive to cut energy and carbon costs can also be seen in a couple of photovoltaic solar projects supplying cement plants that were announced in 2021 for Spanish plants run by Cemex and Cementos Cosmos.
We leave the Spanish cement sector in a growth phase but with plenty of challenges ahead, not least from electricity costs and the mounting cost of carbon. Yet in common with other countries in Europe the industry faces a high-wire balancing act between staying economically viable and inching towards net zero. It’s conceivable that an industrial scale concentrated solar unit at a cement plant in Spain by 2030 might steady the wobbles along the way.
Spanish cement consumption rises to 14.9Mt in 2021
04 February 2022Spain: Spain’s cement demand grew by 11% year-on-year to 14.9Mt in 2021, up by 1.4% from pre-pandemic levels of 14.7Mt in 2019. The Spanish cement association Oficemen has forecast a 4.7% rise to 15.6Mt in 2022 due to an increase in approved housing units and infrastructure projects.
The El Economista newspaper has reported that Spanish cement production capacity utilisation was 50% in 2021. Production costs were approximately 25% higher the before the Covid-19 outbreak.
Cement exports resume from the Port of Malaga
25 January 2022Spain: Bulk cement exports have resumed from the Port of Malaga for the first time since September 2021. The Panamanian-flagged Grit Cement II docked at the port in mid-January 2022 to collect a consignment of 8000t, according to Málaga Hoy. Trade in cement from the port stopped in the autumn of 2021 when HeildebergCement sold the Southern Spain business of its FYM subsidiary to Brazil-based Votorantim Cimentos. Prior to the reopening, ships from the port exported cement to the Port of Banjul in Gambia.
Spain: Cement Science Group (CemSciG) and the University of Málaga (UMA) have received a US$50,000 donation from US-based CSA Research for their research into reduced-CO2 cement production. The funding will continue the partners’ work at UMA’s department of inorganic chemistry, crystallography and minerology into alternative methods of cement production. Titles of their on-going projects include ‘Optimisation and Processing of LC3 Eco-Cements with Spanish Clays,’ ‘Microstructure Analyses of Limestone Calcined Clay Cements by Advanced Synchrotron Techniques’ and ‘Reduction of Cement Industry CO2 Emissions without Loss of Mechanical Properties.’
LafargeHolcim España launches CCSU joint venture with Carbon Clean and Sistemas de Calor
06 January 2022Spain: LafargeHolcim España has announced the launch of a joint venture called ECCO2 with Carbon Clean and Sistemas de Calor. The joint venture will develop carbon capture technology for use at the producer’s Carboneras cement plant in Almería. It will then seek to market captured CO2 from the plant for use as a gas in local agricultural greenhouses. When commissioned in early 2023, the carbon capture system will have the capacity to capture 10% of the Carboneras plant’s CO2 emissions.
Cementos Molins buys precast concrete supplier Pretersa Prenavisa
24 December 2021Spain: Cementos Molins has acquired a 100% stake in precast concrete supplier Pretersa Prenavisa for an undisclosed sum. Molins, through its subsidiary Precon, made the purchase from the European investment group Kartesia. It says the transaction will boost its presence and product mix in the precast concrete market in Spain, Portugal, and France.
Pretersa Prenavisa supplies the engineering, design, manufacture, and assembly of precast concrete structures. Its headquarters is based at Teruel and it operates three production plants at Teruel, Jaen and Segovia. It has around 770 employees and reported a turnover of Euro56m in 2020.
Cementos Molins operates in the precast business in Spain through its subsidiary Precon. It operates ten production plants located throughout Spain. The acquisition of Pretersa Prenavisa is Molins’ fifth in 2021. It follows the takeover of Escofet, a concrete design specialist, the acquisition of a white cement plant in Spain from Çimsa group, the acquisition of Calucem, a calcium aluminate cement producer, and the acquisition of the aggregates and ready-mix concrete businesses of HeildelbergCement in Catalonia.
Spain: Cementos Cosmos plans to scale down the production of clinker at its Córdoba cement plant as a result as the high cost of electricity. The Cordoba Day newspaper has reported that parent company Votorantim Cimentos said that clinker grinding operations at the site will continue to ensure a sufficient cement supply in the region.
The Córdoba cement plant employs 48 people. The company is currently negotiating the situation and the scope of its impacts with the workforce.
Spain: Spain’s 10-month cement consumption was 12.5Mt in 2021, up by 12% year-on-year from 10-month 2020 levels. Interempresas News has reported that consumption grew by 10% year-on-year in October 2021 to 1.3Mt from 1.18Mt. During the month, exports fell by 14% year-on-year to 581,000t from 485,000t.