French calcium, a unique lost know-how.
For more than 40 years, the metallurgy industry in France has been in constant decline in the face of two challenges ; the need to reduce production costs a14> costs of production and negligence or deliberate intention to no longer invest in the raw materials for the metallurgical industry. Calcium, better known in its carbonate form (limestone), is also a metal very important 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 factory with some conventional furnaces, the production of one tonne of calcium requires more than 5 tonnes of coal, this fuel had been replaced by an heating system that was much less polluting but had become more expensive in the long run. More expensive! Perhaps not, if we include in the overall calculation, the cost of the clean-up of emissions into the atmosphere resulting from the combustion of coal. It is thus that the buyers of calcium metal have turned their attention towards Asia or the pollution caused by the burning of coal is not taken into account or if so only to a limited extent, nor even the cost of labour.
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 whatever the loss of expertise, never mind the loss of more than 30 jobs in a region facing difficulties. Apparently this consideration having not crossed anyone’s mind, here we are entirely dependent on Asia, on Russia and the USA for our calcium supply. What a terrible waste of expertise !
La Roche de Rame (France) – January 29, 2012
