After 35 years of resilience and progress…

In 2019, Euro Chlor celebrated 30 years of work on a safe, sustainable and successful chlor-alkali industry for Europe. At that time (and as a proud, newly appointed Euro Chlor manager!), I noted a brave and proactive membership who were working hard to keep our industry on track. Since then, we have had a global pandemic, geopolitical instability and an energy crisis, all of which have challenged our sector.

Five years later, we see the ripple effect of these challenges reflected in our activities (presented in this report), and our engaged membership remain our key strength. We have worked together to find solutions to the ongoing energy crisis and have been sharing these with all stakeholders for their input. We have continued raising awareness of our hydrogen, particularly important given recent regulatory developments. We have also collaborated to address safety issues related to safe loading and unloading of our products and are working to better understand where we use fluorinated materials so that we are ready for any action on PFAS. We are also rebuilding our Euro Chlor team with the excellent additions of Eili and Thomas after we said a sad farewell to Kristof and Ton in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

Despite this, there still remains more to do. Whilst we have made progress in some KPIs such as reducing our carbon footprint and Lost Time Injuries (LTIs) and seeing zero transport incidents, our process incidents and losses and capacity utilisation rate remain adversely affected meaning further action is needed. This underpins our continued vigilance and dedicated follow-up on all topics.

We can, and should, celebrate 35 years of Euro Chlor, grateful for the continued collaborative efforts of our members. I would also like to express my warmest and most sincere gratitude to the whole Halogens team for their continuous hard work and unequalled team spirit.

With all the above I truly believe that, for European chlor-alkali, the best is yet to come.

Marleen Pauwels

Euro Chlor Manager
Executive Director Halogens Industry Sector

… we stay ready to face the future

My past two years as Chair have coincided with turbulent times for Euro Chlor with reduced capacity utilisation, a difficult EU energy situation and a challenging regulatory framework.

Despite these hurdles, since our 30th anniversary, we have passed several milestones with the launch of our third Sustainability Programme that provides data to assist decision makers, and our Cost Competitiveness Study with Argus Media on the differences between regions. We have initiated several successful communications campaigns that highlight the benefits of our chemistry. We have also built on the Mid-Century Strategy (MCS), launched by one of my predecessors in 2020, and held a successful hydrogen event in early 2023 to prepare our industry for the future.

For this future though, we will need to build further on these key achievements. This includes further work on decreasing our environmental impact and to revert the trends seen in our safety performance as we journey towards an even safer, more sustainable and, ultimately, increasingly successful chlor-alkali industry for Europe. Our competitiveness also remains at stake, and we will continue to provide objective data to feed into the European decision-making processes to help here. We must trust the new European Commission to bring the highly needed European Industrial Deal to life, whilst remaining open to contributing where we can, using the strengths of our industry, to ensure EU objectives are met.

Whilst the economic and political situation remains as uncertain as ever, with our dedicated membership and diligent Euro Chlor team, I know we can succeed. I believe we are in a good position as I hand over the leadership to our new Chair, Daniel Koch, to initiate the next steps in our journey towards 2050 and beyond.

Johan Van Den Broeck (Vynova)

Chair of the Management Committee

I would like to thank Johan for his leadership for the past two years. His contributions have been instrumental in guiding us during uncertain times.

As I now take over as Chair, I hope to build on his legacy with continued efforts on competitiveness and a renewed focus on our key safety priority. We will soon be revealing new tools to help us achieve the goals of our MCS and will hold a Technology Conference in Barcelona in 2025 that will showcase recent developments in our sector to make us even safer and more sustainable.

Just considering these first few examples from the start of my term makes me hopeful for the next two years and, indeed, for the long-term future of our association.

Daniel Koch (Covestro)

Vice-Chair of the Management Committee

The content in this Industry Review (covering September 2023-August 2024) mostly reflects the four elements of our Mid-Century Strategy (MCS) – Safety Leader, Competitive Supplier, Climate Neutral Player and Circularity Champion. Out of all key performance indicators (KPIs) reported for 2023, seven have featured in our Sustainability Programme since 2001 and are marked with an icon so they can be compared with previous editions. We are delighted to announce that this year’s contribution from our members to the 2023 Euro Chlor Sustainability Questionnaire was almost complete, covering 99.2% of members’ capacity. The Euro Chlor team will continue its efforts to keep this high participation rate.

Read more details from these links

Competitive Suplier

Chlorine production and utilisation rates have plummeted. Our competitiveness is at stake as caustic imports increased and downstream product exports decreased, while utilisation rates in competing regions remained normal.

Johan Van Den Broeck

CHAIRMAN  OF THE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

Climate Neutral Player

This year we are proud of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions but we still need to focus on increasing our hydrogen use.

Kristof May

ENERGY AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS MANAGER

Circularity Champion

Together with its members, the Euro Chlor team is investigating the use of fluorinated materials, along with their potential alternatives and waste management, to contribute to Europe’s action on PFAS.

Richy Mariner

SCIENCE AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS DIRECTOR

Communication & Collaboration

We continued to collaborate with, and communicate to, members, partners and key downstream user associations.

Catherine Potter

COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

Halogens Industry Sector News

Synergy between the 10 Halogens Industry Sector groups and within the Cefic policy departments significantly increased this past year.

Marleen Pauwels

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HALOGENS INDUSTRY SECTOR