SeeNews in Bulgaria recently interviewed Spiros Nomikos of the Bulgarian subsidiary of Belgium’s Solvay Group and Turkey’s Sisecam Holding, explaining the ambitious plans they have for improving the environmental and energy performance of the company.
Interview – Bulgaria’s Solvay Sodi to raise spending on eco, energy efficiency projects to 23 mln euro in 2013
Bulgarian soda ash maker Solvay Sodi plans to raise spending on environmental and energy efficiency projects to 45 million levs ($29 million/23 million euro) next year from the roughly 30 million levs budgeted for 2012, the company’s CEO said.
“Solvay Sodi’s investment programme over the next three years is planned at between 25 million and 60 million levs annually. As of next year, we plan to invest in environmental and energy efficiency projects 45 million levs. For example, in the construction of a new distiller project in the soda ash plant and a new back pressure turbine at the company-owned thermal power station in Deven,” Spiros Nomikos told SeeNews in an emailed interview.
In addition to its core production of synthetic soda ash, Devnya-based Solvay Sodi ( www.solvay.bg ), co-owned by Belgium’s Solvay Group and Turkey’s Sisecam Holding, operates Provadsol, the Deven power station and Devnya Varovik – a joint venture with Devnya Cement, which supply raw materials for the soda production – brine, steam and limestone, respectively.
On top of purely environmental projects, the bulk of the company’s investments are intended to streamline its operations and make it more efficient while cutting energy consumption.
This investment process is an integral part of the innovation culture at the Solvay Group where each employee is encouraged to find new ways of contributing to the sustainability of the company.
“For example, Solvay Sodi receives more than 100 innovative ideas from its employees per year. One of the novelties implemented this year has led to a cut in the consumption of steam that would save up to 1.8 million levs per year. Savings were achieved simply by changing the technological parameters of one of the installations in the plant without any additional investments,” the official said.
Nomikos expects Solvay Sodi to improve its performance this year compared to 2011.
“This is mainly due to three factors. Firstly, we are operating at near full production capacity which has been increased by 25% following a major investment programme implemented during the last four years which delivered significant savings. In addition, Solvay Sodi’s variable costs per unit of production – and especially its energy consumption, have been reduced significantly. Last but not least, performance this year will be buoyed by the increase of our soda ash prices compared to 2011.”
The company executive is less upbeat on the outlook for 2013.
“As far as 2013 is concerned, I’m not so optimistic, particularly concerning prices. We all know that, everywhere in the world and even on emerging markets, the macro economic indicators are not good. We will have to continue to concentrate as much as possible our efforts on further improving our internal costs in order to limit the impact of the current crisis.”
Although the economic slowdown in Bulgaria is bound to have an effect on Solvay Sodi’s soda ash business, the company is not reliant on its domestic market as it exports as much as 90% of its output. The main export markets are the Middle East, Russia and Turkey with shipments also frequently leaving for destinations in South America, Africa and Asia.
According to Nomikos, one of the most innovative investments made at Solvay’s affiliates in Bulgaria over the past few years was the construction of a new circulating fluidized bed boiler at the Deven power plant. “Over the coming years, we plan to invest in the construction of another boiler of the same type.”
In 2011, Solvay acquired a fluorspar mine in the northwestern town of Chiprovtsi in a bid to secure the development of its fluorinated products.
Nomikos said the acquired unit, operating as Bulgaria Fluorite, plans to double its annual production in 2013 and to raise it to about 50,000 tonnes of calcium fluorite concentrate over the coming years.
(1 euro=1.95583 Bulgarian levs)
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 