Minister for the Economy visits Cimpor to see decarbonisation investments

Cimpor received a visit from Portugal's Minister of Economy, Pedro Reis, at the Alhandra Production Centre to present the company's strategic decarbonisation plan for the country, which represents a total of EUR360m to be invested in the Alhandra, Souselas and Loulé plants.

This investment plan, which is already underway, aims to achieve carbon neutrality for Cimpor by 2050, which will place the historic Portuguese company at the forefront of the environmentally sustainable transition and make it a technological benchmark in the cement sector. The plan's main projects include replacing fossil fuels with fuels derived from waste and renewable gases and increasing the energy efficiency of facilities. It also includes increasing the production and storage of energy from renewable sources, and investing in the production of low-carbon cements using calcined clays.

The Alhandra Production Centre, given its turnover and strategic importance, is the production unit that is currently at the most advanced level of implementation of this plan. Among the projects underway is the investment in replacing fossil fuels with fuels derived from waste and hydrogen (an investment of EUR110m/US$119.4m), the installation of heat recovery mechanisms, electricity production units using renewable energies and energy storage systems. There are also plans to replace one of the mills with a more energy-efficient one and also to replace the clinker cooler, which contributes to better heat recovery and greater thermal efficiency (both with an investment of EUR35m).

In Alhandra alone, Cimpor will be able to reduce its emissions by around 190,000tpa of CO₂ and save 16GWh of energy annually while increasing its self-consumption production from renewable sources to 84GWh of energy per year. 

At the same time, Cimpor centres in the rest of the country have also made their way towards carbon neutrality. For example, at the Souselas plant, the company is investing in the conversion of a kiln to produce calcined clays, a material with a lower carbon footprint that can partially replace clinker in cement production, allowing for a reduction of up to 70,000tpa of CO₂.