Aragon has one of the largest gypsum reserves in Europe. White gold, One of the few building materials that can be recycled forever and its demand will increase in the coming years due to different factors. they know it well Factory owned by Pladur in Gelsa, It is close to the mines it operates in this municipality and in Pina de Ebro. About five years after its operation, the industry leader’s factory in Spain is operating at full capacity after increasing its production. Laminated drywall reached 30%, 25 million square meters last year division product. In this way, it exceeded 83% of the operating capacity (30 million) of the facility, which currently employs a hundred workers, and devotes everything it produces to exportespecially to France and the United Kingdom.
owned by the company Belgian group Etex, The company, which has an even larger factory in Valdemoro (Madrid), is already considering expanding its most modern 10-hectare industrial complex. At its current location in the town of Zaragoza It has 30 hectares of land to undertake future developments.Currently, the company is focusing its efforts on improving the sustainability of the factory and transforming it into a circular economy model.
It is written in the strategy andCentral recycle drywall which started operations nine months ago with an investment of two million euros. The new facility is fed by the first phase of defective product leaving the factory, which accounts for 3 to 5% of total production, and plans to close its first year of operation with 4,000 to 6,000 tons processed. will be later In a waste manager with the target of reaching 30,000 to 40,000 tons by 2030.
“Aragon is the center of plastering in Spain and will be in Europe”, Enrique Ramírez, Pladur’s managing director, reassured the factory during a public visit to the factory this Tuesday. also joined Factory manager Marta BlascoIt is unusual in the industrial sector, where more than half of middle managers are women. Other strengths of the Gelsa factory, geostrategic locationA middle ground between the four major consumption poles of the Spanish market (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao) and specialization in foreign markets.
“We have a very important growth vector” He underlined Ramírez, who predicted that a future expansion would also meet some of the national demand, but said it was “too early” to specify the project the company had in mind. The reaction of the European markets,” he said.
Zero waste facility
The facility, which has an investment of nearly 60 million Euros, was initially to be put into operation at the end of 2008. The outbreak of the construction crisis derailed the project. Finally, it started operations in 2016 with a warehouse that focuses on the production of special products and systems for energy efficiency solutions. In September 2018, the plaster and laminated product factory was put into operation.
Another major investment made recently is the installation of photovoltaic panels on the roofs of the facilities. An 8 megawatt (MW) self-consumption system This is the power expected to meet up to 20% of the electricity need of a very light and gas-consuming power plant. In this sense, it is a pioneering enterprise as it produces zero waste thanks to its recycling center and meets its own needs with renewable energy.
In energy matters, Pladur wants to move forward in decarbonizing production processes by gradually replacing natural gas with other more ecological fuels. At the Madrid factory in Madrid, from next year, green hydrogen and hopes to promote it in Gelsa biogas on the 2025 horizon. In the second case, renewable gas will be produced from the waste of pig farms at a factory in Lleida. The company will select the following to undertake these projects: help from decarbonization Perte.
Four shifts and a hundred trucks a day
There is crazy activity in the working factory. 24 hours and seven days a week with four shifts. so take it 105.000 m2 production per day your plates. Just three weeks in the summer and a few weeks at Christmas to do the technical maintenance of the machines.
The movement of goods between the entrances and exits is also quite high, with about a hundred trucks per day. The UK and France receive 95% of Gelsa’s output, while the remaining 5% goes to Ireland and Italy. LExports to the UK market are made through the port of Bilbao, where the goods arrive by train, and the destination in France is by road.
In terms of business figures, installation represented in 2022 25% of the company’s total invoice, exceeding 215 million €. Pladur is today Spain’s leading brand in the production of sustainable construction solutions based on natural plaster. It has a staff of several 500 workers It is available in Spain, France and Portugal and in more than 30 countries on five continents.
The epicenter of an erupting mineral
Aragón has a long history in plaster production and has a well-established and competitive industrial sector; Therefore, Gelsa has become the epicenter for the two main companies that dominate this market. In addition to the Pladur factory, this town in Ribera Baja del Ebro also has the Saint-Gobain Placo Ibérica company, which Entre also employs and employs another 100 workers.
This last company one second production center in the neighboring municipality of Quinto de Ebro, where another 110 people work. These data are an example of the importance of the gypsum industry in this region, which is a treasure trove of large mineral reserves, whose exploitation and conversion represents a growing wealth and employment niche for the region.
Aragon has large reserves of gypsum, which is considered the best in Spain and Europe due to the high purity of the mineral, reaching 95%. On the other hand, the autonomous community is strategically located in connection with the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, which facilitates the export of the final product to European countries, whose demand is expected to increase strongly in the next decade.
“We are lucky to have a very valuable factory in this region, because the plaster is so pure and homogeneous,” said Enrique Ramírez, Pladur’s general manager, during a visit to the company’s factory in Gelsa yesterday. 30 million square meters of plasterboard operating capacity per year.