The title of this thread was only half tongue in cheek. There has been a lot of talk about how old and run down Penrice's plant is and how Solvay production is on the way out. I suspect that the first is not a fair description and the second seems to be downright wrong. I showed in a couple of links in an earlier post that Solvay (or at least non natural production) still produces some 75 percent of Soda Ash production and that this does not appear to be decreasing. The natural deposits of Trona are restricted almost entirely to the USA and they have their own problems. Production via Trona does not appear to be increasing.
I did an internet search to see if I could get some idea of the relative ages of other Solvay plants and came up with the following link:
If you scan through that document and get to table 2 on page 17, you will see the start up dates for each of the European plants. Many of them started up in the nineteenth century and I gather most are still operating. Of the eighteen plants mentioned in that table only five were started up later than Penrice's Osborne plant which I understand commenced in 1938 or 1939. Relative to the European Solvay plants (and they appear to produce some 25 percent of world production), Penrice is a young puppy.
Another thing that struck me about Solvay plants is that they are complex and you need quite a unique set of resources to keep them going. You need a limestone quarry within proximity with cheap and convenient transport between quarry and plant. You need to be on the coast or at least have access to salt water. Ideally you should combine your plant with a Sodium Bicarbonate plant because the two processes compliment and need each other. Last of all you need access to energy and ideally a neighbouring co-generating plant that produces steam. Hello!! How easy do you think it is to get all of these fitting neatly together and continuing to have access to those resources over the decades for which they have operated.
The cost of erecting a new Solvay plant is prohibitive and there does not appear to be any new plants being introduced throughout the world. So in Penrice, we have the only Solvay plant in Australasia with no competition for thousands of miles. I tried to find the nearest competitor and didnt manage, but you get the point. No-one can build a plant in Australia to complete. All the plants in the world are ancient yet Solvay is still the primary source of Soda Ash. Penrice continues to have access to all the vital ingredients required. I wonder if that can be said for its competing Solvay plants throughout the world.
Finally in my travels I came across these two links:
The Belgium chemical company, Solvay, seems to be one of the largest producers of soda ash via the solvay method in the world. As the links show, it recently made a bid for the Berezniki plant in Russia and according to the second document offered 160 million euros (AUS $232 million) for 97 percent of the plant but was unsuccessful. According to the first link that Russian plant was founded in 1883. Do you reckon it would be in better order than Penrice's plant started 55 years later. The Russian plant has an annual production of 500 thousand tons per year. Penrice's annual production appears to be around 330 thousand tons per year. What value do you reckon this puts on the Osborne plant and the whole Penrice operation given that it sits in Australia on its own with all the complex requirements in place.
I am not an expert on the Solvay process, I think that is obvious. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the links I have provided here. They simply came using Google's search engine. But having read all of this along the way, I am a lot more confident of Penrice's chances than I was when I arrived at Hot Copper.
Lets stop calling it the sick old dog and give it a chance.
GPASAS
PSH Price at posting:
38.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
