
Displaying items by tag: Ciments Calcia
France: HeidelbergCement subsidiary Ciments Calcia has presented plans of a proposed Euro300m upgrade of its Airvault cement plant in Deux-Sèvres Department to the local community. The La Nouvelle République newspaper has reported that the company will replace the plant’s existing two production lines with a single one. It also plans to upgrade grinding and mixing equipment.
Local mayor Olivier Fouillet said, "In view of its economic, social and environmental character, this project is of public interest. It will help maintain an existing site that provides direct and indirect jobs and will further boost the economy of the territory. This project will also have the interest of meeting societal expectations on decarbonisation . It is thus an asset for the territory while being part of environmental policies to reduce the carbon footprint.” He added that the project will help the plant to meet the decarbonisation and competitiveness challenges of ‘today and tomorrow.’
Update on France: November 2020
25 November 2020There were mixed feelings evoked by HeidelbergCement’s good news last week that its French subsidiary Ciments Calcia is to set to spend Euro400m on a modernisation project. Sadly, this came with the bad news that the integrated plants at Gargenville and Cruas will be downgraded into a grinding plant and a terminal respectively, and there will be a review of the company’s headquarters in Guerville. All of this will cut 160 jobs but create 20 new ones.
Make no mistake, this is serious money to invest. Euro300m alone will go towards an upgrade of the integrated Airvault cement plant in the former Poitou-Charentes administrative region. HeidelbergCement didn’t say it in its press release but French press reported that the pyroprocessing line at Airvault will be rebuilt starting in 2022 with commissioning scheduled for 2025. If correct then this certainly suits an investment on this scale for a single plant. Smaller investments in the region of Euro25 – 50m were also said be earmarked for the integrated plants at Bussac-Forêt, Beaucaire and Couvrot. These are serious commitments to HeidelbergCement’s production base in France.
Generally speaking, the French cement and construction market has done as well as expected for a country forced to implement two coronavirus lockdowns so far in 2020. Half-way through the year the major cement producers were reporting sales declines of around 10% year-on-year with business picking up again over the summer. Vicat, for example, reported a 9% fall in sales volumes in the first half followed by ‘solid business growth’ in June 2020. LafargeHolcim, CRH and HeidelbergCement all reported a similar situation for their local subsidiaries.
Looking at the wider construction industry, in October 2020 analyst company GlobalData stuck by its forecast of a contraction of construction output by 11.6% in France in 2020. It noted a 35.5% quarter-on-quarter rebound in the third quarter, although it reckoned output was still down by around 5% in the quarter year-on-year, using French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) data. With a second national lockdown initiated in late October 2020, it said that INSEE expected a contraction in the fourth quarter of 2020 even with construction sites being allowed to stay open. This follows a peak of cement production above 20Mt in the late 2000s before hitting a low of around 15.5Mt in 2015 and a gradual recovery since then, according to data from the French cement industry union (SFIC).
Ciments Calcia’s upgrade at Airvault is noteworthy for the whole of Europe because it is one of only a few new pyroprocessing line projects in the last decade. The last major one was the new 4000t/day line at HeidelbergCement’s Burglengenfeld plant in Germany that was commissioned in 2018. The trend since then has generally been one of integrated plants slowly closing as markets shrank following the 2008 financial crisis, international clinker levels boomed and environmental measures tightened. Dominik von Achten, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement, addressed this last point directly with the announcement of the Airvault project when he said, “This is why we focus our initiatives on the main CO2-emitting plants in France.” The competitors to the larger established cement producers in France are certainly thinking about CO2. Alongside the general European trend of fewer new clinker production lines has been rise in France of the smaller cement producers with grinding and/or reduced-clinker factor models like Cem’In’Eu, Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies and Ecocem. Anyone spending Euro300m on a clinker kiln spewing out CO2 would do well to consider how much the CO2 price might be in fifty years time.
Ciments Calcia to stop clinker production at two plants as part of Euro400m modernisation plan in France
19 November 2020France: HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary Ciments Calcia plans to stop clinker production at two plants as part of a Euro400m investment and reorganisation programme for several of its sites in France. Around Euro300m of this will be spent at the integrated Airvault cement plant. The company also intends to: convert its integrated Gargenville cement plant into a grinding plant and shut down its kiln systems and quarry operations; convert its integrated Cruas white cement plant into an automated cement terminal for the distribution of white cement; and adapt the organisation at its French headquarters at Guerville. The plan will cut 162 jobs and create 20 new ones.
“As part of our global business excellence initiative, we intend to further optimise effectiveness, processes and structures of our French sites,” said Dominik von Achten, chairman of the managing board of HeidelbergCement. “We want to considerably speed up the modernisation of our plants in order to enhance our performance in France, while ensuring alignment with the goals of the Paris agreement. This is why we focus our initiatives on the main CO2-emitting plants in France.”
Ciments Calcia Gargenville plant hosts car magazine
02 June 2020France: A car magazine chose Ciments Calcia’s 2Mt/yr Gargenville, île-de-France integrated cement plant as the backdrop for a photo shoot. The shoot featured models produced by Germany-based Audi, BMW, Daimler and Porsche. Ciments Calcia said that it was, “an opportunity for employees present to discover these exceptional machines. A good time was had by all.”
Cem’In’Eu appoints director for Rhône Ciments
26 February 2020France: Cem’In’Eu, the France-based operator of modular grinding plants, has appointed Magali Laurenço as director of its Rhône Ciments subsidiary. She has been in post since January 2020.
Magali Laurenço spent the first years of her professional career at Ciments Calcia, where she held the positions of manufacturing engineer (2006 - 2008), manager of the mechanical maintenance sector (2008 - 2014), then manager of the maintenance and new works (2015 - 2020) and production and maintenance service manager (2018-2020).
Ciments Calcia’s Couvrot plant to receive Euro30m investment
28 January 2020France: HeidelbergCement subsidiary Ciments Calcia has announced a planned investment of Euro30m of upgrades in early 2021 to its 1.0Mt/yr integrated Couvrot plant in Marne department. L’Union Ardennes newspaper has reported that the upgrades will be ‘process improvements’ to grinding and energy consumption rather than expansions to the plant’s capacity. HeidelbergCement director Didier Faure said the group wants to turn the Couvrot plant into its ‘leading site in Western Europe.’ Faure also called for improvements to safety procedures after three people were injured on site in 2019 – up by 50% from two in 2018.
France: The government is preparing to approve an extension to the quarry at Ciments Calcia’s Gargenville plant. The extension will cover an area of 74 hectares near the communes of Guitrancourt and Brueil-en-Vexin, according to the Le Parisien newspaper. Local environmental activists are preparing to contest the decision.
Ciments Calcia fined Euro0.67m for late payments
07 May 2019France: The General Directorate for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCRF) has fined Ciments Calcia Euro0.67m for late payments to other businesses. France Manche, the local subsidiary of Eurotunnel, and insurance company MMA were also fined. The ceiling for such fines was increased to Euro2m from below Euro0.4m in late 2016 and is applicable to invoices issues since then. Ciments Calcia is a subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement.
Ciments Calcia launches Hop dissolvable cement bag product
23 November 2018France: Ciments Calcia has launched Hop’ pour les Pros, a dissolvable cement bag product. Cement sold in the bags can be placed directly into a mixer to make ready-mix concrete. Its puported beneifts include reduce spillage, time savings and no packaging. CEM II 32.5 R cement will be used in the product manufactured at he company’s Bussac-Forêt cement plant in Charente-Maritime.
Workers at Ciments Calcia’s Airvault plant go on strike
21 March 2018France: Workers at Ciments Calcia’s Airvault cement plant have gone on strike, according to the Ouest-France newspaper. They have taken industrial action in relation to an on-going pay dispute.