Turning up the heat: A TEC and GRECO joining together for new beginnings

 

CW: How have your customers' needs evolved over the years to prompt this change?

TL/AG: What we have over the past two decades noticed a gradual shift towards globalization. At the moment, there are around 15 big groups that hold the major amount of cement plants in the world. China is starting to become a bigger player in the industry, and opening its doors to the other big players as well.

On the demand side, one of the main driving forces is a move towards limiting emissions. We feel that with this partnership, we are in a position to address the needs of the changing market.

 

Tell us about the synergies that the collaboration will bring and how you have allocated business / product and geographic responsibilities.

TL/AG: Basically the synergies are in two different areas: Technical and Commercial. Technically speaking, the synergies are many, but for instance we can talk about the development of better calciner technologies by improving its alternative fuels combustion and staged combustion.

Another point of course is the emissions control that is much related to calciner and kiln geometry, and also the burning system. There is also the oxygen enriched combustion, where we can bank on our unique experience from the 90's.

On the commercial side, our worldwide network provides us with an advantage. From our perspective, our combined resources can do it better.

The regions are divided basically in 3 big blocks: Americas, Europe & Africa and Asia.

The Spanish office will service the Iberian Peninsula and North of Africa. The three Austrian and the Polish offices cover a big area composed of Central & Eastern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa and Arabic Countries, and also hosts the manufacturing facility of the Group.

In America, the Brazilian office services South America, and the Mexican office is focused on North America. In Asia, we have three offices in strategic regions: a Malaysian based office for Southeast Asia, and two Chinese offices to give support not only to the Chinese companies, but also to our Western customers than maintain business with Chinese companies.