Displaying items by tag: Spain

Spain: Jesus Ortiz, the president of Oficemen, says that the local market has ‘worrying’ levels of uncertainty. His comments follow a reduction in cement consumption growth since 2017 and falling export markets. The Spanish cement associaton is concerned that growth has mainly been driven by residential construction. The Cement Demand Index (IDC) grew by 8.5% year-on-year in September 2018 but this was a slight decline month-on-month. From October 2017 to September 2018 an estimated 13Mt of cement was consumed, a rise of 1Mt from the previous year. However, exports have fallen conscutively over the last year and a half.

Spain: FYM-HeidelbergCement has launched a sustainability commission to support its Malaga cement plant and the surrounding community. The initiative is part of the company’s 2030 sustainability plan. It includes representatives from local neighbourhood associations, local government and environmental bodies. The commission will meet several times a year to foster an open relationship between the cement producer and its neighbours. It also intends to promote behavior based on the circular economy and the reduction of the unit’s carbon footprint. It will build on the company’s work with the Provincial Forum of Socially Responsible Companies of Malaga since its inception in 2013.

Spain: The Ministry of Industry and two unions have asked Cemex to keep the Gádor cement plant in Almería open. However, the Mexican cement company has rejected the pleas although it has said it will make a ‘definitive’ decision shortly, according to the Expansión newspaper. The company is due to start mandatory consultations with the unions in early November 2018. Cemex announced in mid-October 2018 that it was closing two of its seven cement plants in the country.

Well, it turns out that the European cement industry wasn’t kidding when it raised the risks of the climate mitigation on the sector. This week three (!) integrated plants have been earmarked for closure.

Cementa in Sweden said that it was considering closing its Degerhamn plant due to increased environmental regulations. Today, local press in Spain is reporting that Cemex España is planning to shut down two of its plants. These are plants in different parts of Europe with different local market dynamics but both are within the European Union (EU). That’s three plants closing out of 219 in the EU, or a loss of around 1% of production capacity.

Last week’s column on the United Nations’ (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Global Warming raised the way the cement sector is tackling climate change and the existing and impending legislation. President of the German Cement Works Association (VDZ) Christian Knell’s opening words at the VDZ Congress in September 2018 seem prescient. He said, “To be able to realise our efforts in terms of climate protection and at the same time not to lose competitiveness, we need research policy-related support for our investment in breakthrough technologies and the corresponding demonstration projects.” The add-on was that the industry needed to focus on how the development of carbon abatement technologies can meet the 2050 climate goals and, specifically, that suitable boundary conditions would have to be created. The press releases accompanying his speech emphasised that, “on-going trends in European emissions trading and the ‘rapidly increasing’ price of CO₂ were already today leading to considerable costs for cement manufacturers.”

These words are similar to the comments Albert Scheuer, a board member of HeidelbergCement, made at the Innovation in Industrial Carbon Capture Conference early in 2018 about dividing the mounting environmental costs of cement and concrete between producers and society in general. Considering how much cementitious building materials most people use throughout their lives compared to the relative low price of cement, this argument carries some weight. In addition, the sustainability credentials of concrete buildings through longer lifespan and durability through extreme weather events is another argument that industry advocates such as the Portland Cement Association (PCA) in the US have been hawking in recent years.

Cementa, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement, blamed anticipated tightening of environmental regulations for its decision. Although it said that the plant had made improvements over the years, the expected difficulty (read: cost) to make further improvements was becoming too hard. Shifting production to the company’s other two plants in the region, Slite on Gotland and Brevik in Norway, will reduce CO₂ emissions by 260,000t/yr.

In Spain, the news from Cemex follows a half-year report from Oficemen, the local cement association, that predicted growth for the year but not as fast as previously expected. The problem was that continued declines in the export market, the 13th decline month-by-month in a row, offset the domestic growth. Oficement president Jesús Ortiz also took time to blame rising electricity costs, expected to rise by 20% year-on-year by the end of 2018.

Market issues in Spain aren’t in doubt, but the real question for both Sweden and Spain is whether EU CO₂ legislation right now is causing cement producers to shut plants. The CO₂ emissions allowance price hit a high of Euro22/t in September 2018, the highest price in a decade. Allowances have stayed below Euro10/t since 2011 and the price has more than doubled in 2018. Throw in the mood music of the IPCC and the trend seems irresistible. How many more plants in Europe are at risk to shut next? No doubt the European cement producers have charts marking the viability of their plants against the CO₂ price. This would be a very interesting graph to get our hands on.

The 2nd FutureCem Conference on CO₂ reduction strategies for the cement industry will take place in May 2019 in London, UK

Spain: Miguel Ángel López has been appointed as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Siemens Spain following the resignation of Rosa García García. García has decided to leave the company and will handover the role on 1 December 2018 and then continue in an advisory role until the end of the year. López, aged 53 years, has been working most recently as the chief financial officer (CFO) of Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE). The CFO role will be filled by David Mesonero, currently SGRE's Head of Corporate Development, Strategy and Integration.

Spain: Demand for cement in Spain in the first half of 2018 was 8% higher than in the first half of 2017, according to the national cement association Oficemen. The rate of growth was down, however. The country recorded an 11% year-on-year increase in demand between the first half of 2016 and the first half of 2017. Oficemen had expected demand to pick up by 12% for the whole of 2018 but now expects an increase of 7% instead. If realised, this would mean sales of around 13.3Mt for 2018.

“At the beginning of the year, the Department of Studies of Oficemen expected to close 2018 with a 12% increase in domestic demand. Now, with public works almost paralysed, we are talking about lowering our forecasts by 5 percentage points,” explained the president of Oficemen, Jesús Ortiz. “The weak recovery of the construction that began in Spain in 2017 depends on the building sector. Although it is growing at a good pace, it does so from absolute values that are still very low.” It is estimated that 2018 will close with around 100,000 new homes started, a figure that, while ignoring the years of the construction boom, represents less than half of the average of the homes that were built in Spain in the period 1970-1995.

“Public investment in Spain remains at 63% of the average investment of Germany, the UK, France and Italy, which takes us dangerously away from our neighbours. There is a consequent loss of competitiveness for our country, especially in the most exposed sectors: exports, tourism, treatment and prevention of environmental risks, driver safety, and so on,“ added Ortiz.

Cement exports were also down year-on-year, for the 13th month in a row. Ortiz primarily blamed this on the devaluation of the Turkish Lira, which has helped Turkish cement exports advance their competitiveness compared to Spain. He also highlighted rising electricity costs, which are expected to be 20% higher at the end of 2018 than at the start. This will make electricity 28% more expensive than for German cement producers, according to Ortiz. “What has recovered in the domestic market in these two years, is being lost abroad, with production that remains stagnant at 20Mt since 2013, a figure that accounts for half of the installed capacity of our factories. Therefore, the uncertainty and concern for our industry is maintained,” concluded Ortiz.

Spain: Cementos Portland Valderrivas’ (CPV) Alcalá de Guadaíra plant near Seville has updated its environmental standard. It uses an integrated environmental management system, based on the UNE-EN ISO 14001: 2015 standard and the European regulation on eco-management and eco-auditing (EMAS) CE No. 1221/2009, modified according to regulation (EU) 2017 / 1505. The plant has been certified since 2004 but this was updated to the new version of the standard in mid-2018.

The plant also uses a health and safety management system certified since 2009 according to 18.001: 2007 OHSAS. The unit reported that it had no accidents to the end of August 2018.

Spain: FYM-HeidelbergCement has reached a record two years without an accident at its Malaga cement plant. The milestone also includes no accidents for subcontractors working at the site. The company has operated a ‘Zero Accident’ program since 2000 that has focused on improving the safety culture for all staff.

Spain: Votorantim Group has appointed Alan Svaiter as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Votorantim Cimentos España. He succeeds Jorge Wagner, who has been promoted to the role of CEO of Votorantim Cimentos Europe, Asia and Africa. In his new position Svaiter heads a subsidiary running four cement plants, two mills, 29 concrete plants, eight aggregate operations and one mortar plant. He also directs a team of more than 500 people.

Svaiter, a Brazilian national, joined Votorantim Group in 2008. After leading the logistics of its cement division for two years he was appointed the director of Engemix, the company’s concrete business in Brazil. In 2014 he became director of the supply chain of the cement group for the entire Brazilian market.

Svaiter, a production engineer trained at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, holds a master's degree from the INSEAD business school. He started his professional career working for the Ambev brewery before joining the mining company Vale.

Spain: Cemex España has submitted a proposal to the local government to extract a total of 15Mt of limestone from its Can Negret quarry near to its Lloseta cement plant in Majorca. The proposal will run until 2032, according to the Ultima Hora newspaper. The company was previously granted a concession at the quarry in 1982.