Displaying items by tag: Poland

France: Cem'In'Eu plans to raise Euro55m by the end of 2019 to support building new cement grinding plants in Europe. It opened its first 0.25Mt/yr grinding plant at Tonneins, Lot et Garonne in 2018, according to Les Echos newspaper. Construction of a new plant at Portes-lès-Valence, Drôme is scheduled to start in mid-2019. Construction of a larger 0.5Mt/yr plant at Montreuil-Bellay, Maine-et-Loire is anticipated to start in September 2019 for a commissioning date of February 2021. This project will cost Euro35m. Other projects are planned for Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône et Loire and Ottmarsheim.

International projects include a plant at Ottmarsheim, Haut-Rhin in Switzerland and Thamesport in the UK. The former is expected to gather all the necessary permits by September 2019 with construction to follow by the end of the year. An additional project is being planned at the port of Gdynia in Poland.

Poland: Krzysztof Kieres, the general director of Dyckerhoff Polska, has been elected as the new chairman of the Polish Cement Association. The term of office lasts four years and he succeeds Ernest Jelito, the president of Górażdże Cement, in the role.

Kieres, aged 64 years, is a graduate of the Faculty of Economics and Sociology at the University of Lodz. He holds experience with various construction companies, including Germany’s Bilfinger. He has worked for Dyckerhoff, part of Italy’s Buzzi Unicem, for 20 years as a financial director and the general director.

The association has also elected Dariusz Gawlak, the president of the board of the Warta Cement, as its vice chairman. Other new members of the board include: Włodzimierz Chołu, Cemex Polska; Xavier Guesnu, Lafarge Cement; Janusz Miłucha, Grupa Ożarów; and Andrzej Reclik, Górażdże Cement. The association has also accepted Andrzej Ptak as an honoury member.

Poland: Data from the Cement Producers Association (SPC) shows that cement production grew by 12% year-on-year to 18.9Mt in 2019. Concrete production rose by 6.8% to 25.3Mm³. This was attributed to a growing construction sector, according to the Polish News Bulletin. Both cement and concrete production is expected to continue growing in 2019 to 19Mt and 26.2Mm³ respectively.

The European Union’s (EU) verified CO₂ emissions figures were released earlier this week on 1 April 2019. The good news is that no cement plant is within the top 100 largest emitters. All the top spots are held by power plants, iron and steel producers and the odd airline. Indeed, out of all of the verified emissions, cement clinker or lime production only represents 7% of the total emissions. Of course this is too much if the region wants to meet its climate change commitments but it is worth remembering that other industries have a long way to go as well and they don’t necessarily face the intrinsic process challenges that clinker production has. If the general public or governments are serious about cutting CO₂ emissions then they might consider, for example, taking fewer flights with airlines before picking on the cement industry.

The EU emitted 117Mt of CO₂ from its clinker and lime producers in 2018, a 2.7% year-on-year decrease compared to 120Mt in 2017. This compares to 158Mt in 2008, giving a 26% drop in emissions over the decade to 2018. However, there are two warnings attached to this data. First, there are plants on this list that have closed between 2008 and 2018. Second, there are plants that provided no data in 2018, for example, all the plants in Bulgaria. Climate change think tank Sandbag helpfully pointed out in its analysis of the EU emissions data that industrial emissions have barely decreased since 2012. The implication here being that the drop from 2008 to 2012 was mainly due to the economic recession. Sandbag also made the assertion that 96% of the cement industry’s emissions were covered by free allocations in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) thereby de-incentivising sector willingness to decarbonise.

By country the emissions in 2018 from cement and lime roughly correspond with production capacity, although this comes with the caveat that emissions link to actual production not potential capacity. So, Germany leads followed by Spain, Italy, Poland and France. Of these Poland is a slight outlier, as will be seen below.

Table 1: Top 10 CO₂ emitting plants in the European Union in 2018. Source: European Commission.

Poland leads the count in the top 10 EU CO₂ emitting cement plants in 2018 with five plants. Greece follows with two plants. This list is deceptive as all of these plants are large ones with production capacities of 2Mt/yr and above. As it contains many of the largest plants in the EU no wonder the emissions are the highest. It is also worth considering that there are far larger plants outside of the EU.

In summary, as most readers will already know, the cement industry is a significant minority CO₂ emitter in the EU. Countries with larger cement sectors emit more CO₂ as do larger plants. So far, so obvious. Emissions are down since 2008 but this mostly seems to have stalled since 2012, bar a blip in 2017. The change though has been the rising carbon price in the EU ETS in 2018. Coincidentally the carbon price has been fairly low and stable since 2012. If the mechanism is working properly then changes should start to appear in 2019. Already in 2018 a few European cement producers announced plant closures and blamed the carbon price. Watch this space.

The Global Future Cement Conference & Exhibition on low and zero CO2 cement production will take place in Brussels, Belgium on 22 - 23 May 2019

Poland: Germany’s Bilfinger is installing refractory linings at Cemex Polska’s Rudniki cement plant. It is also carrying out assembly work at various parts of the unit. The industrial services company is installing the refractory linings for parts of the plant, which entails using around 2000t of refractory material within a five-month period. It is part of the installation of a new cement clinker production line at the site.

The contract comes under Bilfinger’s Engineering & Maintenance Continental Europe division. Companies for which Bilfinger has worked on past contracts in Poland include cement producers CRH and Dyckerhoff.

Poland: Lafarge Poland delivered over 0.2Mm³ of ready-mix concrete (RMX) in 2018 for use in various infrastructure initiatives including road expansion projects. In 2019 the company plans to produce 0.32Mm² of concrete surfacing for a motorway extension. The subsidiary of LafargeHolcim set up its LH Engineering business in 2017 to help implement infrastructure projects. It offers engineering services and the delivery of building materials, including RMX, aggregates and other products.

Poland: Andrzej Reclik has been appointed as the president of Górażdże Cement. The former member of the management board and chief financial officer (CFO) will take up the new role on 1 July 2019. He will succeed Ernest Jelito, who will become a member of the HeidelbergCement’s management board.

Reclik, a graduate of the Wrocław University of Economics, has worked for Górażdże Group since 1994. From 2007 to 2010 he was the managing director for aggregates and ready-mix concrete. He then became a member of the management board and CFO in 2010.

The Górażdże Group operates the Górażdże integrated cement plant, the Ekocem cement grinding plant at Dąbrowa Górnicza, 17 aggregate quarries and 60 ready-mix concrete plants. It employs over 1200 people. It is a subsidiary of Germany’s HeidelbergCement.

Poland: Cement Ożarów has appointed Janusz Miluch as its chief executive officer (CEO). He succeeds Andrzej Ptak, who retired at the end of December 2018, according to Wirtualny Nowy Przemysl.

Italy: Buzzi Unicem’s net sales rose by 2.4% year-on-year to Euro2.87bn in 2018 from Euro2.81bn in 2017. Its cement and clinker sales volumes increased by 4.3% to 27.9Mt from 26.8Mt. Ready-mix concrete sales fell by 3.6% to 11.8Mm³ from 12.3Mm³.

It attributed cement and clinker sales increase to acquisitions in Italy and Germany and good market conditions in the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia. However, poor weather hampered business in the US and a ‘strong’ decrease in business levels was reported in Ukraine. In Italy the cement producer benefited from its acquisition of Cementizillo in the second half of 2017. In Germany it purchased Seibel & Söhne and noted demand for oil well cements.

Poland: Ernest Jelito, the president of Górażdże Cement, has been elected as the chairman of the Polish Cement Association. He succeeds Andrzej Ptak, president of the Ożarów SA Group, who will leave the post following his retirement at the start of 2019.

Jelito was born in 1958. He is a graduate of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków. He originally started to work for Górażdże Group in 1982. From 2001 to 2005 he was the general director of the Górażdże Group. Then for the next 11 years he was the technical director of HeidelbergCement. Since 2015 has been the president of the board of Górażdże Group and its general director.