French calcium, a unique lost know-how.
For over 40 years, the French metallurgy industry has been in constant decline due to two imperatives; the need to lower production costs and the neglect or deliberate refusal to stop investing in raw materials for the metallurgical industry. Calcium, better known in its carbonate form (limestone) is also a very important metal for the metallurgical industry as an additive for steels , for example.
The natural resource requires little investment, however, as the raw material is abundant. raw material is abundant, simply limestone, only the production costs of calcium metal are responsible for the decline and death of Europe’s only calcium production plant in France.
As a result , the La Roche de Rameplant near Briançon Briançon closed its doors in 2012 (ten years successively dropped by major groups and fallen into the hands of small private operators operators whose very short-term personal financial objectives had nothing to do with a genuine to develop and grow this company in a European market, despite strong demand. And yet, this plant was remarkable both for the exceptional skills and its unique technology.
For a plant with conventional furnaces , the production ofone tonne of calcium requires more than 5 tonnes of coal, this fuel had been replaced by electric heating much less polluting but more expensive in the long run. More expensive! Perhaps not, if we include in the overall calculation, the cost of cleaning up the atmospheric emissions associated with coal combustion. As a result , buyers of calcium metal have turned to Asia. Asia , where the pollution associated with coal combustion is little or non-existent, nor the cost of labor.
Our dependence on strategic metals is perhaps poorly taken into account, as well as the total loss of know-howelectric furnaces capable of producing calcium ingots ingots weighing 200 kg, whereas with coal they weigh no more than 30 kg.
But never mind the loss of know-how, never mind the loss of over 30 jobs in a difficult region. Apparently, this consideration has not occurred to anyone, we are now totally dependent on Asia, Russia and the USA for our calcium supplies. A fine waste of know-how!
La Roche de Rame (France) – January 29, 2012
