Global Cement speaks to Susana Coimbra, Plant Manager at Cimpor’s Souselas plant in Portugal, about the plant’s history, its production process and its many exciting sustainability-focused projects as it enters its 51st year.
GC: Please can you introduce the Souselas plant?
Susana Coimbra (SC): The Portuguese government authorised the establishment of the Souselas plant in 1971, with first production in November 1974 from one of two 0.5Mt/yr production lines, so the plant recently celebrated 50 years of operations. It operated as the private firm Cinorte for six months, before being nationalised in May 1975.
The concept behind the plant was to provide cement to an area of central and north Portugal that was not served well by other facilities. This was so successful that a third line of 1Mt/yr was added in 1982. Line 3 was upgraded in 2001 to reach a clinker capacity of 4200t/day, totalling 3.5Mt/yr of cement. Lines 1 and 2 closed in 2011 and 2019 respectively. This was due to declining demand in the domestic market, as well as new capacity in Algeria, which, until 2016, had been a major export market for the plant. That said, the plant remains one of the largest in Portugal.
GC: Please can you take us through the production process, as it stands in 2025?
SC: We have a 1200t/hr double rotor limestone crusher in the quarry, which feeds a 60,000t pre-homogenisation storage facility. The raw meal is prepared in a 320t/hr Polysius vertical roller mill, which is fed to two 14,000t homogenisation silos.
The main pyroprocessing section comprises a four-stage preheater from Polysius. This was upgraded in 2001 by FLSmidth, which installed a SLC-D precalciner. Another key part of this upgrade was a shortening of the kiln, the removal of the original satellite cooler and its replacement with a Crossbar cooler from FLSmidth. I would say that this hybrid of Polysius and FLSmidth makes our plant fairly unique in the global cement sector.
After the cooler, there are two cement mills from Fives FCB that date from 1974 and two others from Polysius, installed in the 1980s at the time of the installation of the third line. All of these are ball mills. The finished cement is fed to a bank of nine cement silos, which share a capacity of 83,000t. The plant can despatch bulk cement via road and rail and we have three Beumer palletisers and two palletless installations, one from Beumer and one from Metral.
GC: What products are made?
SC: The plant manufactures six types of cement: CEM I 42.5 R, CEM I 52.5 R, CEM II A/L 42.5 R, CEM II B/L 32.5 N, CEM II B/M-V/L 42.5 R and CEM IV 42.5 RSR. The main products are our CEM II A/L 42.5 R and CEM II B/L 32.5 N, which represented 91.7% of sales in 2023. CEM I represented just 3.8% of all sales in the same year. CEM II B/M-V/L represented 2.5% and CEM IV 42.5 RSR represented around 2.0%.
GC: What types of fuels are used by the plant?
SC: The plant uses a mixture of fossil fuels, mainly petcoke, and alternative fuels. The Souselas plant started this transition with hazardous liquid wastes in February 2008. In 2012, we installed a much larger facility, supplied by BMH, to co-process refuse-derived fuels (RDF). Over the years, we have increased our thermal substitution rate (TSR) to reach 42.7% in 2023. Around 3% of the TSR was from hazardous wastes and around 40% was from RDF. Our target TSR for 2025 is 45.5%. We are also running a project to switch from petcoke to natural gas in the coming years, as this is a cleaner form of fossil fuel.
However, the main fuels project at the moment is to increase our TSR to 65% by 2026. I cannot say too much at this point, but it will require a new installation over the next 12 - 15 months. Another major objective for us is to renew all the environmental licenses, so that we can increase our TSR. This process is quite complex in Portugal.
GC: What other projects are planned, or ongoing?
SC: There are several exciting projects. Foremost among them is the ongoing conversion of the currently-mothballed line 2 so that it can produce calcined clay. This is a very important project that will give new life to a 50 year old asset and allow us to reduce the CO2 emissions of our product range.We will rehabilitate the line, which has sat idle for the past five years. In 2025, our main contractor Loesche, and Dynamis, will upgrade and adapt parts of the line so that we can produce calcined clay using its C-Clay process.
By December 2025, we will be able to produce 1500t/day of calcined clay, around 0.5Mt/yr. The TSR of this line will be around 80%. We will use the calcined clay produced in cement products made at the Souselas plant, initially at around 10% clinker replacement. This will mean a large-scale reconfiguration of our product portfolio. We will also use the calcined clay in products made by the other Cimpor plants in Portugal.
Separately, we are also carrying out a waste heat recovery project to recoup 7.4MW of electrical energy from heat that would otherwise be lost to the environment. The final installation by CTP Team using Turboden equipment, is taking place in January 2025 during our winter shutdown. This investment will save us 50GWh/yr of electricity. Electricity is very expensive in Portugal and we expect prices to rise further in 2025, which will reduce our return on investment time.
Connected to this is the ongoing installation of a 10MW solar farm, which will be completed in August 2025. We also have a long-term group-level ambition to build a 10MW green hydrogen facility, but this is still some way off.
GC: Which markets does the plant supply?
SC: As in the government’s original vision, the most important markets for the Souselas plant are those in the centre and north of the country. These include Coimbra, Viseu, Porto, Vila Real and Braga.Our main competition is from Secil, which splits the Portuguese market with Cimpor almost 50/50. However, we have the greater market share in the centre and north.
In 2023, 86.5% of the Souselas plant’s cement was sold in Portugal. Of this around 40% was taken by rail to our large terminal in Maia (Porto). 13.5% of the cement was exported - with most of that volume heading to our facility in Cape Verde via ship. The remainder is shipped to other markets in Europe, including Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK. Some cement is exported to Spain by truck.
We already see that the proportion of exports fell in 2024, and we expect this trend to continue in 2025, when we are only budgeted to send exports to Cape Verde. This is due to the rising strength of the Portuguese market.
Around 76.5% of the plant’s cement was sold in bulk and 23.5% was sold in bags in 2023.
GC: How will the plant change by 2030?
SC: I would say that the plant will change almost beyond recognition in the next five years due to the technical projects we have discussed. However, there will also be more subtle changes. For example, in late 2024 we signed a partnership with Vodafone to establish a private 5G network at the Souselas plant. This replaces the national network for us, enabling rapid, reliable and secure 5G connectivity across the plant. This will greatly enhance opportunties for online monitoring of the plant to maintain its condition and efficiency, carry out preventative maintenance and have a complete remote overview of the plant.
GC: What is the biggest threat in the years to 2030?
SC: This technological revolution leads to the biggest problem for me, which is the lack of preparation of our human resources. There is so much change and complexity coming down the line that we may struggle to deal with it all, at least at first. This is a concern for all cement producers. We need to provide existing staff with specific training, but we also need to develop programs to retain and motivate them, so that we have access to the best and the most skilled people. It is mainly the younger generations that are resistant to the industry. They are not keen on working shifts in a heavy industry, often in locations far from big cities. This represents quite a big challenge.
GC: What is the biggest opportunity for the plant over the same period?
SC: Our biggest opportunity is the proximity of our natural clay deposits, which will give us an advantage in the CO2-constrained cement sector of the future. This natural advantage, when aligned to our many ongoing technical projects, will ensure that the plant remains competitive for another 50 years.
GC: Thank you very much for your time Susana.
SC: You are very welcome indeed!
About Susana Coimbra
Susana Coimbra joined Cimpor in 2000 as a trainee in the engineering and projects team, where she had the opportunity to participate in a large upgrade to the Souselas plant. She had a 13 year stint in the maintenance area, ultimately rising to the position of Maintenance Manager for Cimpor’s three Portuguese cement plants, in Alhandra, Loulé and Souselas. She became Plant Manager at the Loulé plant in 2014, before moving to the same role at Souselas at the end of 2017.
