Displaying items by tag: Greece

Greece: Titan sales remained stable at €1.33bn in the first half of 2025 due to strong sales in Greece and Egypt. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 2% year-on-year to €287m from €281m in the same period in 2024. Sales and earnings fell in the US due to poor weather and a subdued residential market. In Egypt the group noted a ‘construction boom’ connected to foreign investment in tourism-related developments. During the reporting period the company completed the divestment of its stake in Türkiye-based Adocim.

Titan Group announced this week that it will build a processing and beneficiating unit for fly ash at Warrington in the UK. The move marks both a trend in fly ash projects in the UK recently and Titan’s own focus in the country.

Titan has struck a deal to use ponded fly ash at the former Fiddler’s Ferry power station in the North-West of England. It aims to process 300,000t/yr of wet fly ash from 2027 onwards with the option to double this capacity if desired. The processed fly ash will meet the BS EN 450 standard for subsequent use in cement or concrete. Crucially, Titan intends to use the technology of its subsidiary, ST Equipment & Technology (STET). This company has a proprietary dry electrostatic process that it uses for fly ash beneficiation. Titan acquired STET in 2002. It says its process is being used at 12 power stations in the US, Canada, the UK, Poland, and South Korea. The project at Fiddler’s Ferry will be the 20th fly ash project developed with STET technology.

Titan has not commented on the specifics of its arrangement with site-owner PEEL Group other than to describe it as a ‘long-term agreement.’ It currently operates a terminal in Hull, on the other side of the country, 160km from Warrington. As for Fiddler’s Ferry, the coal-fired power plant closed in 2020. Prior to this though RockTron Group built a 800,000t/yr unit at Fiddler’s Ferry to process both ‘fresh’ and stockpiled fly ash in the late 2000s. Unfortunately the company entered administration in 2013. Later, Power Minerals was reportedly selling fly ash from the plant at the time that its closure was announced in 2019. A report commissioned by consultants Arcadis for the local council reported that ash including pulverised fuel ash (PFA) was present in the lagoons at the site.

Other companies have also been looking at the fly ash market in the UK. Invicta, a joint venture between Türkiye-based Medcem and Brett Group opened a terminal at Sheerness in Kent in 2024 to import PFA and cement. In April 2025 a ship unloader supplied by Van Aalst was delivered to the port. Then in May 2025 it was announced that Mecem is planning to build a terminal in Liverpool to import cement and supplementary cementitious materials (SCM), such as fly ash and granulated blast furnace slag. The terminal will have a combined storage capacity of 45,000t in four silos in its initial phase and is scheduled for completion in mid-2026. Meanwhile, the Drax power station said in March 2025 that it had signed a 20-year joint venture agreement with Power Minerals to process legacy PFA. A unit at the now biomass power plant in Yorkshire is scheduled to start by the end of 2026 with an initial production capacity of 400,000t/yr.

The background to this interest in fly ash in the UK appears to be a local cement sector struggling with high energy costs and low capacity-utilisation rates. Reports in local media in late June 2025 cited preliminary estimates that cement output may have reached an ‘all-time low’ in 2024. High electricity prices were blamed for the situation by the Mineral Products Association (MPA) and it warned of mounting imports from the EU and North Africa. All of this was timed to coincide with a release of a new Industrial Strategy by the UK government. For more on the UK cement sector in general see Global Cement Weekly in May 2025 and Edwin Trout’s feature in the June 2025 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

Readers will be aware of the growing attractiveness of SCMs for cement and concrete production for both cutting costs and meeting sustainability goals. A report by McKinsey on SCMs for the cement sector in late 2024 forecast that SCMs and fillers in Europe could represent an emerging value pool that could reach €8 – 10bn in 2035 as the price of cement steadily rises. The SCMs being used are likely to change as sources of industrial SCMs such as slag and ash dwindle and others such as clays, pozzolans or limestone become more available. The UK may have closed its last coal-powered power plant in 2024 but ash from ponds can still be reclaimed or ash can be imported if the economics makes sense. Recent investments by Titan, Medcem and Power Minerals suggest that the price is indeed right. The interest of two major cement exporting companies amongst the three names above also indicates changing market dynamics. Expect more of these kinds of deals and investments in the UK, Europe and elsewhere in coming years.

Greece: Titan has appointed John Ioannou as its Group Chief Financial Officer (CFO). He will first join Titan as a member of its Group Executive and Management Committees in July 2025. He will later succeed Michael Colakides as Group CFO on 1 November 2025. Colakides will continue in his role as managing director of Titan, chair of the management committee and will remain as a member of the Titan and Titan America boards of directors.

Ioannou is a Cypriot national with 30 years of experience in finance, strategy and management roles in various industries in Europe, the Middle East and the US. Notably, he worked for PepsiCo for 16 years, becoming its CFO in Russia. He also held Group CFO roles at Abdul Latif Jameel and AW Rostamani Group in the UAE.

Ioannou holds an undergraduate degree in marketing and a master’s of business administration (MBA) qualification from Florida State University. He is a qualified chartered accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Greece: Titan Cement International, the parent company of Titan Group, has changed its legal name to Titan, following shareholder approval. The ticker symbol TITC remains unchanged on Euronext and the Athens Exchange. The company said that the simplified name reflects a ‘unified, forward-looking identity’ aligned with the group’s global presence, purpose and strategic priorities. The company has also adopted a new domain, www.titanmaterials.com.

Chair of the group executive committee Marcel Cobuz said “Our evolution into a truly diversified building and infrastructure materials company and our ongoing commitment to sustainability and innovation are embodied in this identity update. The new name and web domain presence better communicate our capabilities and ambition, as we shape the future of building materials everywhere we operate.”

Greece: Titan Group has been named by Time Magazine as one of the most sustainable companies in the world, rising 158 positions to 150th in the annual list of 500 companies. Titan Group said that it is the highest-ranked building materials company and one of only a handful on the list. Time Magazine and data firm Statista assessed companies based on external ratings, commitments and various environmental and social Key performance indicators (KPIs) disclosed in externally-assured reports.

Leonidas Canellopoulos, Chief Innovation and Sustainability Officer at Titan Group, said "Being named one of the world’s most sustainable companies by Time for the second year in a row is a powerful endorsement of our growth strategy in action. Sustainability is woven into every decision we make – from bold innovation in new products and decarbonised processes to transparent execution.”

Greece: Titan Greece has obtained Enterprise Greece’s strategic investment status for its upcoming 1.9Mt/yr-capacity IFESTOS carbon capture project at the Kamari cement plant in Boeotia. The status also extends to an upcoming Business Park adjacent to the plant. The IFESTOS project is currently at the stage of basic design and environmental studies, with a final investment decision due in 2026. An anticipated 750 direct and indirect jobs will result from the construction and operation of the carbon capture unit.

Titan Cement Group’s Europe regional executive director Yanni Paniaras said "IFESTOS’ inclusion underlines the importance of the project for Greece. Preparation continues apace.”

Canada/Greece: Titan Group and Carbon Upcycling Technologies have entered into a memorandum of agreement to explore the commercial deployment of Carbon Upcycling’s technology for producing local, low-carbon building materials. Carbon Upcycling will conduct feasibility studies at two Titan cement plants, with the aim of producing supplementary cementitious materials using captured CO₂ and local materials.

Carbon Upcycling’s demonstration plant is currently operating in western Canada, and the company is now developing its flagship commercial-scale project in eastern Canada.

Greece: Holcim has broken ground at the Olympus project at its Milaki plant, which will produce 2Mt/yr of ‘near-zero-CO₂’ cement from 2029. The producer will invest €400m in the development, and it has secured €125m from the EU Innovation Fund. The plant will combine OxyCalciner and Cryocap FG technologies for carbon capture. Holcim said the project would create over 1000 jobs for the local area.

Holcim CEO Miljan Gutovic said “The Olympus project in Greece is one of our seven large-scale, EU-supported carbon capture, utilisation and storage projects that are setting the Clean Industrial Deal in motion. Together, these will enable Holcim to offer over 8Mt/yr of near-zero cement across Europe by 2030.”

Greece: Titan Cement reported a ‘positive start to the year’, having recorded sales of €638m in the first quarter of 2025, up by 2% year-on-year. Aggregates sales rose by 18% and ready-mix concrete saw an increase of 6%, while cement volumes remained flat year-on-year. The company said that the impact of severe weather conditions in both the US and Southeast Europe weighed on sales volumes in these regions, however, the strong performance in Greece, as well as the significant rise in cement exports from Egypt, mitigated those effects.

It reported an earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of €123m, an increase of 12% year-on-year. Profit before tax increased by 3% to €66.6m. Titan is ‘cautiously optimistic’ for the remainder of the year, despite global uncertainties.

Greece: Titan Group has once again been named one of Europe's Climate Leaders in the fifth edition of a prestigious list published by the Financial Times. This marks Titan's second consecutive year of recognition, reaffirming the company's commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainable business practices. It also highlights Titan's accelerated progress toward achieving net zero, in line with its Green Growth Strategy 2026. Titan achieved the highest score in its sector.

The selection criteria focuses on companies that have delivered the largest reductions in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity between 2018 and 2023. Titan reported that its efforts to mitigate climate change were instrumental to its inclusion, with a total CO2 reduction of 9.6% achieved during this period. In addition, Titan's transparency regarding Scope 3 emissions and its active engagement with sustainability assessors, including CDP and the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), contributed to its recognition.