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Opening address for Cemtech Europe 2015: Sebastian Spaun, Managing Director, Association of the Austrian Cement Industry (Austria).

Filmed at Cemtech Europe 2015, 20-23 September, Intercontinental Hotel, Vienna, Austria.

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Ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for the friendly introduction. As Keith said my name is Sebastian Spaun and I'm working at the association, the local association of the cement industry. It is a great honor for me to welcome you all here in Vienna and to open the Cemtech Europe 2015. First of all, let me introduce the Austrian Cement Industry in short words.

The next chart please, here we go. What you can see here is the map of our small country, you see the members of our association and you will see that we have somewhere around 50% global players in our association and 50% private owned companies in Austria. You see a quite a lot of blue dots where our plants are located.

So we have eight clinker burning plants and two grinding stations in Austria and what you can see also is the plants are located north and south of the Alps. The reason is, in between there's no cement plants. There are high mountains between 2,000 and 3,800 meters, a lot of limestone and this is also the reason why some of these plants are very close together. In between mostly there is a mountain, that you can't pass whether with cement or with something else.

Let's come to the next chart. Here are some key figures from the Austrian cement industry. What you easily can see is that we make around 4.4 million tons of cement per year. Small country, small amounts and you also can see that the amount is, and this is the good thing, is stable, stable in the last years.

After the crisis, Austria had a drop in production by around 25% and since 2009 will influence that drop. It's more or less the same on the lower middle. Another turnover of our member plant is around 370 million, around 1, 100 people are working in the Austria cement, industry in the Austrian plants I also showed you, want to show you that we had quite heavy investments from year to year, so somewhere around 30 to 40 million per year, but in the last two years we see a decrease. Yes the reason is that we have stable conditions, and the cement market is not going up it keeps stable.

Yes, if you look to the cement consumption per capita, Austria has around 580 kilograms per capita. So I see it quite high for a developed economy as Austria is. Austria is more or less built, but we still use 580 kilograms per capita. The next chart has a lot to do with the conference main topic I would say.

Austria is certainly the right place to discuss about alternative fuels and alternative raw materils certainly the right place to discuss distribution rates co2, mitigation topics and of course innovative flue gas cleaning systems. As you can see on this chart, the thermal energy demand went constantly down from the 1950s.

What you also can see is that the thermal energy demand came to a minimum long time ago. End of the 80s, beginning of the 90s, Austrian cement plants reached 3,500, 3,400 kilogram of clinker. At this time we had 100% dry processes in Austria and we reached somehow the end of lowering the thermal energy demand, you have to know that the Austrian cement plants are compared very small.

The capacity of our plants are between 700 tons a day till 2,700 the cement plant of Mannersdorf some of you will visit here in the lakeside, some of you will visit on Wednesday. Yes and at this time, when the energy consumption went to a minimum of stable, the plants sort what to do now to optimize the cost and to optimize the fuels, and so you can see on this chart that in Austria 30 years ago the cement plants started to use alternative fuels.

I think together with Switzerland and some plants in Germany we are really the beginners in using the alternative fuels. It was in the mid of the 80's when the first plants, started with waste tyres followed by waste fuels. And it was in the middle of the 90's when our plants started to use plastics, so quite early, quite front runner in this field.

What you can see in this chart is that by now the Austrian Cement Plant reached altogether a medium substitution rate of 75%. So 75% means that some of our plants are using 100% alternative fuels and others are using at least 50-60% alternative fuels. So, there's not many space to go up, you know that.

We think that for a whole country, 80% probably would be the end of the development and this is the reason why in Austria we can see another development we start to use alternative raw materials. Some of our plants are front runners in that field, yes, to go in this direction. What are the reasons why we started that early or what are the reasons how we could manage to get up to 75%.

First of all I would mention the high level of environmental protection we have here in Austria. So besides Switzerland and Germany, Austria was one of the first countries with a complete landfill dam. In Austria, it was in the year 1996 when the government decided to finish the landfills for organic materials for burnable materials and it took us another seven years to really come to this point so it was in the beginning of 2000, somewhere around 2004 when no municipal solid waste, no plastic went on landfills anymore. If you look to Europe you'll only find five countries who have a comparable situation, a complete landfill ban for burnable waste or for organic waste and this shows you that it's quite the hard way and investment intensive way will to go that direction. We finally did it, I think this landfill ordinance from the year 96 it took us somewhere around 10 years of crawling because there are losers and winners as you can imagine.

The second reason is the geographic location of Austria, we have to import all of our energy. We're not at the seaside as you know. That's a pity, we used to be, and as I said this environmental friendly society we have in Austria means also that we have very high energy taxes on fossil fuels to somehow finance the whole system.

Those are good reasons to try to find alternatives for fossil fuels and for that reason, this that due to this high value of environmental protection, the Austrian society, the Austrian Cement Industry choose from the beginning on the way of cooperation with the authorities when it comes to alternative fuels topics.

Some examples, by the end of the 90s we started to develop a so called Positive List, Positive List where we listed together with the Environmental Ministry, suitable ways, suitable alternative fuels for the cement industry. This list went into force I think in the beginning 2000, somewhere around 2001. These lists were then replaced by the guidelines for waste fuels from the Environmental Ministry in the year 1996, and four years later this guideline became part of the Austrian legislation. This guideline for Austria became part of the Race Itineration[sp?] Ordinance. So we have quite a legal binding surrounding but on the other side this means that use of alternative fuels has a very high exception.

Also as exception in the authorities, exception in the environmental ministry because we went this way together. So the legal surrounding is very safe on this case which is, or which can be imported and comes discussion with your neighbors and with the surrounding and the society. This year the cement industry in Austria has launched a study on the use of alternative raw materials at VDZ the famous German research institute and we are just to start to develop a guideline once again, with our authorities on this new field on the use of alternative raw materials in the cement process. In a highly competitive a environment, the use of alternative raw materials and fuels has become a must for a cement plant in Europe I could say, especially in Austria. This requires on the other hand a very high level of know how and also a quite high level of investment, the sharing of knowledge is therefore of great importance. May today's conference be a perfect opportunity to share the knowledge, thank you very much, and welcome.

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