Displaying items by tag: Slovenia

Slovenia: Salonit Anhovo has spent Euro10m towards upgrades at its Anhovo cement plant. Most of the funding went towards automation and environmental works, according to the Slovenian Press Agency. The unit built new cement silos, set up devices to reduce NO_x emissions, purchased new machinery for its quarry, reduced noise levels and upgraded its business information system. The company has also started to replace asbestos roofing on an old building and started demolishing disused buildings. These two last projects are valued at around Euro3m and are expected to be completed by the end of 2020.

Slovenia: LafargeHolcim has lost a legal battle for an environmental permit at its Trbovlje cement plant. The cement producer appealed against a decision by the Environment Agency to decline to issue its consent to the company in May 2016, according to the Slovenian Press Agency. The company has been attempting to increase its cement production capacity to 1250t/day by using petcoke as a fuel.

Switzerland: LafargeHolcim and employee representatives in Europe have established a new European Works Council (EWC). The forum for consultation and dialogue at a transnational level will bring together worker representatives from 19 countries with senior leaders from LafargeHolcim.

“People are essential to the success of LafargeHolcim and our commitment to social dialogue through the new European Works Council is testament to this. During a period of transformation, we recognise that ensuring the full commitment, mobilisation, and engagement of our employees is a key building block for success,” said Eric Olsen, chief executive officer of LafargeHolcim.

The EWC was established based on an agreement signed by Olsen and Executive Committee members Caroline Luscombe, responsible for Organisation and Human Resources and Roland Köhler, responsible for Europe, Australia / New Zealand and Trading as well as Sam Hägglund, General Secretary of the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers EFBWW, among other management and employee representatives. Chaired by Köhler, the EWC replaces the previous European Works Councils. Countries represented in the EWC include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

Slovenia: The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has awarded Salonit Anhovo (Salonit) a Euro15m loan to be used for energy and resource efficiency improvements and to restructure the company’s balance sheet. The building materials producer has a substitution rate of 64% for alternative fuels at its Anhovo cement plant. The EBRD loan will be invested to increase this ratio further to improve the company’s profitability and reduce CO₂ emissions. A precondition for increasing the ratio of alternative fuels is the installation of state-of-the-art equipment. The investment will also have a beneficial effect on operational costs, which are expected to decline thanks to the adjusted fuel ratios.

Slovenia: LafargeHolcim will pay Euro270,000 in compensation to farmers in the Zasavje region, who claimed that pollution damaged their land. LafargeHolcim settled with the farmers before a long running court case ordered three other companies to pay up to Euro1.17m each, according to the Slovenian Press Agency. The farmers presented measurements showing permitted emissions had been exceeded by 10-fold or in some cases even 100-fold between 1991 and 2002, alongside evidence of declining yields and animal reproduction rates, as well as damage to orchards and forests. The other companies involved in the case were the Termoelektrarna Trbovlje (TET) thermal power plant, the Steklarna Hrastnik glassworks and the TKI chemicals factory.

Slovenia: According to the Slovenian Press Agency, on 24 June 2015 the government adopted a proposal for changes to the environment protection act that remedies shortcomings in provisions governing environmental permits. The problems with the existing legislation had led to the European Commission (EC) taking Slovenia to the EU Court of Justice.

The government said that the key purpose of the amendments was meeting the demands of the EC and that all plants without environmental permits at the time when the changes enter into force will need to stop operations. The step is related to the Lafarge cement plant in Trbovlje, which was instructed to stop operations in March 2015 after lax legislative provisions allowed it to continue to operate for a protracted period even though it did not have an environmental permit.

The EC announced in February 2015 that it was taking Slovenia to the EU Court of Justice for its failure to implement environmental licensing in line with the integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) directive of 2007. The EC said that the legal action came because one of the country's major cement producers had continued to operate without the required permit, in reference to Lafarge. The EC was seeking a base fine of Euro1.6m for the country plus Euro9009 for each day that the violation persisted.

Slovenia: Lafarge said that the country's environment inspectorate has ordered the plant to suspend operations as it lacks environmental permits. The inspectorate acted following a recent decision from the European Commission to refer Slovenia to the European Court of Justice for failing to issue an industrial permit to a major cement plant. The Commission is also asking for fines to be imposed.

Lafarge said in a statement on its website that it will respect the decision and shut down the kiln on 5 March 2015, but would lodge a complaint with the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning. Lafarge said that in the process of obtaining the required licences, it had operated in accordance with all relevant environmental standards and that numerous studies have shown that the plant does not have a major impact on local air quality. It also stressed that it had invested more than Euro33m to modernise the plant since it was bought by Lafarge some 13 years ago.

Slovenia: Slovenia faces EU judicial proceedings for its alleged failure to fully-implement a system of environmental permits for its large industrial plants. The case referred to the EU Court of Justice relates to one of the country's two cement producers, which continues to operate without permits.

The Commission said that matter would be referred to the court for failure to implement provisions of the integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) directive of 2007, which requires that industrial plants be licensed to verify that they meet strict environmental controls. It is the second time that Slovenia has faced EU court action over the IPPC directive, after the Court of Justice found in 2010 that Slovenia was running afoul rules requiring that all plants meet the set requirements.

The EU is seeking a base fine of Euro1.6m for the country plus Euro9009 for each day that the violation persists. The Slovenian Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning said that it was, "Striving to implement as quickly as possible the alleged violations of EU law." Licenses under the IPPC directive became a requirement for member states as of 30 October 2007. According to the Commission, Slovenia has made considerable progress since the 2010 ruling, but full compliance with the judgement has still not been reached.

The new case concerns 'a major cement factory,' which continues to operate without a permit. While it avoided naming the plant, Slovenia has two cement plants owned by Salonit Anhovo and Lafarge. Whereas Salonit Anhovo is a licensed IPPC plant, Lafarge is involved in lengthy bureaucratic and legal proceedings in seeking a permit. It has faced ongoing protests from local groups against it being granted a license. Despite not having a license, the plant continues to operate.

The Environment Ministry said that one of the factors influencing the length of procedures was a ruling by an administrative court in Slovenia demanding that Lafarge's plant be treated as a new facility rather than an existing installation. The Environment Agency, which issues permits, is therefore obliged to complete all procedures prescribed for licensing of new plants.

CRH has made good on its intentions. This week it stumped up Euro6.5bn to buy assets from Lafarge and Holcim in four continents. The move follows preparation since at least May 2014 when the Irish building materials group announced a divestment programme. In October 2014 it announced that it would sell its brickwork division.

CRH is finding the cash through a mix of existing cash, debt and equity placing. Interestingly, back in 2012 an Irish stockbroking analyst who was interviewed reckoned that the company could spend up to Euro3.5bn on acquisitions whilst remaining within its banking agreements. Throw in the recent sales and planned divestments and the planned acquisition from LafargeHolcim doesn't seem like too much of a stretch for CRH.

If completed, the purchase will see CRH take on 24 cement plants with a production capacity of 36Mt/yr. As a back of the envelope calculation suggests the sale price of Euro6.5bn isn't far off the occasionally used price of US$200/t for western cement production. The deal also includes aggregates, ready mixed concrete and asphalt assets.

The purchase marks a change in CRH's buying strategy both in terms of scale and distribution. Much of CRH's previous acquisitions have been minority shareholdings that make it difficult to accurately report the company's position in the cement industry. For example, in our Top 100 Report CRH was reported to have a production capacity of 6.49Mt/yr for majority shareholdings with another 19.9Mt/yr for minority shareholdings. The new cement capacity being purchased blows this away because it more than doubles CRH's total capacity and it appears to be all majority owned. CRH thinks that this will propel it to become the world's third biggest building materials manufacturer after LafargeHolcim and Saint-Gobain, leapfrogging Cemex and HeidelbergCement in the process. Strangely there is no mention of the huge Chinese players in the top five manufacturers in CRH's acquisition presentation.

CRH has avoided buying plants in southern Europe but it is relying on the slowly improving growing UK market, where CRH will pick up four plants, to balance the risk. Elsewhere in Europe, the three Holcim plants in France have been suffering from continued low construction rates in that country and the two Lafarge cement plants in Romania are unlikely to have recovered from a production fall in 2013. Outside of Europe growth has been poor in Quebec in 2013 and 2014, where CRH is buying two plants from Holcim. Both Lafarge and Holcim have also seen a slowdown in Brazil. However, the Philippines does seem like a better bet for CRH, with solid cement volumes growth seen by Lafarge in 2013 and the first three quarters of 2014.

With CRH now looking like a company that wants to produce cement rather than one that owns parts of companies that produce cement, all eyes are on the construction markets. 14 of the 24 cement plants CRH are buying are in Europe. Buying at the bottom of a sustained production slump makes sense because the asking price will be low. However, has the bottom been reached yet?

Slovenia: The Lafarge Trbovlje cement plant is among several industrial sites and facilities in Slovenia that have been added to the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice, an interactive online mapping platform detailing environmental conflicts around the world. Its originators seek to highlight incidences of water and land competition as well as air, water and other pollution.

"The Atlas illustrates how ecological conflicts are increasing around the world, driven by material demands fed primarily by the rich and middle class subsections of the global population," said project coordinator Joan Martinez-Alier of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.