Icelandic dream factory

The commitment of the German PCC SE in Iceland is therefore highly significant, not only for the company but also for German customers. "Almost the entire production volume of the Icelandic plant will go to German companies under long-term contracts. This marks a significant contribution to securing supplies of silicon metal in Germany," says Wenzel. The plant is to go into operation at the beginning of 2018, when the first silicon will be shipped out to customers.

There is great demand for the metal, for example as the main input material for PV modules, for various applications in the chemical industry and as an alloying element in the aluminium industry. Most of the demand in Germany can only be covered with imports from other countries - in all, around 300,000 tonnes per year. Against this background, PCC SE is investing in a silicon factory with an annual production capacity of 32,000 tonnes. But why build the factory on an island in the Atlantic Ocean with more sheep than people? In order to answer this question, we have to start in Poland.

Around 200 kilometres south of Warsaw, the raw material quartzite is extracted from a quarry owned by PCC. This quartzite will later be used in the factory in Iceland to produce silicon. The transport route to Iceland has long been determined: the rocks are brought on freight trains to Stettin, from where they are transported by ship, directly to the port of Húsavík. Via the newly built industry access road in Iceland, the melting furnaces of the silicon plant are only a stone's throw away from the docks. With only two transition points, the stones will have travelled more than 3,000 kilometres before reaching the electric arc furnaces - would it not have been far more efficient to build a new melting facility in Poland? "We abandoned this idea, as our partners in Iceland were able to offer us long-term cost-efficient electricity supplies. Almost the entire electricity requirements are covered by renewable energies such as geothermal energy or wind power, which are available in abundance at the production site," Wenzel explains. "The higher cost of logistics is more than offset by the advantageous procurement of electricity." This is especially important since the production of silicon is particularly energy-intensive: two electric arc furnaces are heated to more than 2,000 degrees Celsius to reduce the quartzite to silicon metal. A state-of-the-art plant design means that the dust emissions that are produced in the process are almost entirely filtered out.