Podcast: A Conversation on Sustainability with Valentin Tijeras

Stone Update Editor Emerson Schwartzkopf discusses sustainability action with Valentin Tijeras, global director of product and R&D for the Cosentino Group in Cantoria, Spain.

Transcript

00:00 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
This is Emerson Schwartzkopf, welcoming you to a special podcast from Stone Update. In this broadcast, I’ll be speaking to Valentin Tijeras, global director of product and R&D for the Cosentino Group at its headquarters in Cantoria, Spain.

While that job title represents a broad spectrum of duties – he’s been in product development at Cosentino for 16 years – he’s also help guide the surfacing company’s sustainability efforts. It’s something the company takes seriously, as documented in the latest 240-page report on its progress in 2021.

There’s been plenty of publicity on Cosentino’s HibriQ technology to use recycled materials in producing its Silestone® quartz surfaces. That’s part of the conversation I had with Tijeras recently, along with some other surprising projects at its Spanish production campus.
We started by defining how Cosentino develops its strategies in sustainability.

01:02 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
Sustainability really seems intrinsic with corporate management at Cosentino and I noticed that in the chairman’s report, especially when it talked about the executive commission with sustainability at the company. How does that commission plug into Cosentino’s business decisions?

01:20 Valentin Tijeras 
This is not about taking decisions in on the on the fly; it’s about a plan that we have for the long term. It’s embedded in all the decisions we take. In fact, we have a sustainability committee in which we deal with everything that has to do with sustainability projects. But in every decision that we take in our executive committee, in every investment, that we have to make we have the perspective of sustainability. So it’s not just that we have one part of the company taking care of that. It’s something that permeates all the decisions taken in the company and throughout the different countries.

So this commission that we have for sustainability reports directly to the Board of Directors. That’s where we kept the alignment. And where we said what we have to make in order to make not only something that is attainable, but also that it’s aligned with the targets of the company, and also financially makes sense. And we have to report every quarter to the Board of Directors on how we are evolving, according to the commitments that we have taken in this long-term plan.

02:29 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
The company’s risk map has probably, let’s say, it’s probably turned upside down and inside out in the past few years. How have sustainability efforts fared in future risk-management plans?

02:40 Valentin Tijeras 
Definitely, this is key for us. And for us, climate change is a big, big risk, especially because we are (at Cosentino’s production campus in central Spain) in a very dry area; rain here is very scarce, and we depend a lot on water to produce, both our main product – Dekton and Silestone — are dependent on water. So in this sense, we are making very deep risk management in terms of water, because it’s something that we are concerned about and try to tackle any problem that can arise as a consequence of the climate change.

03:13 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
Can you clarify the goal of the wastewater regeneration plant that began construction at the end of last year that was mentioned in the report? This kind of seems like it rolls right into what you’re talking about.

03:24 Valentin Tijeras 
Definitely, we have for a long-term policy, we are not disposing any water. we are using it in one way or the other. We have a reuse of 99% of the water that we consume, or the fresh water that we use is coming from wells. And this project that is about to start by the end of this year, is about instead of taking the water from wells, that we take this water from the (local) villages’ gray waters, so 100% of the water that we use come from these sources, so no use of fresh water. And we at the same time take care of the problem of management of these gray waters that now are going to the rivers.

04:02 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
Okay, so essentially, will that give you enough to not take well water for your freshwater at this point?

04:09 Valentin Tijeras 
100%

04:09 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
OK, and when will that be finished?

04:12 Valentin Tijeras 
Our planning for that is by September, we have the water up-and-running.

04:18 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
I know the photovoltaic plant construction being started last year, is that finished? And what’s that percentage as far as total energy consumed there.

04:28 Valentin Tijeras 
It’s finished. And believe it or not, Emerson, we are now waiting for permits.  I guess it’s the same case as in North America. So, for the last three or four months, we are waiting for the permits to have it up and running. We expect it to happen any time, so it is ready. Once that it has all the permits, we will be producing 15% of the energy that we consume. The plan is, we have already started with the second stage to double the power production. So we will be around 30% in one year from now.

05:01 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
Carbon reduction was 6%, from 2019 to 2020 as was noted in the report. And it says your plan to reduce each year by 5% per the goal in SGD 13. Is the company meeting or beating that 5% reduction since 2020?

05:19 Valentin Tijeras  
We are, but the key thing here Emerson is that it’s not something that happens linearly. We are very excited because one of the major contributors to our carbon footprint is the resin that we use — the resin is coming from fossil-fuel origin. And what we are developing, and we are starting to use in production in some of our colors, is resin that is coming from a bio-origin that reduce carbon footprint very significantly. So we expect that we are going to exceed the goal for this year and the year after, thanks to these changes in the resin.

05:55 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
HybriQ® is using more recycled alternative materials in quartz-surface production. How will that change the percentage of raw materials coming from Spain locally, which is now at 48%?

06:08 Valentin Tijeras 
Unfortunately, in the short term, we are not going to improve the amount of recyclable materials coming out of Spain, and the reason why is because we have grown so fast that there is no more — the industry has not been able to come up with our demands. So almost all the recycled glass that we can source in Spain, we are already sourcing, and we have to source it somewhere else. Now, our goal is in the short term, that we find some raw materials coming from origins as close as possible and develop the recyclers that we have around so they can provide us with a bigger amount of recycled raw materials.

06:48 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
Now, I also noticed that, of course, producing Dekton® is going to be much more energy-intensive than Silestone®. Can you tell me a little bit more about this thermal-energy-heat recovery for the kilns and how that’s going to impact your natural-gas use?

06:56 Valentin Tijeras 
Sure, we are super concerned with natural gas not only because of the carbon footprint; as you can imagine, with the price of natural gas here in Europe, it’s been crazy. We used to pay like $30 a megawatt hour last year, and this number is now around $250. So imagine it’s eight times more expensive than it used to be. For us, it’s critical that we reduce the consuming of gas. We are using co-generation techniques to take the excess heat that we have in the ovens conducted to our atomizers and our line machines. So we don’t need to use new energy, but keep what’s produced there.

And also we are investing a lot in making our ovens more-efficient. So in 2021, we reduced the energy consumed in our ovens by 6.1%. And in 2022, we have reduced by 8.5%. It’s a continuous fight against energy consumption, and it makes lots of sense not only from an environmental point of view, but also from an economic point of view.

08:01 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
Cosentino invested and spent $2 million in 2021 in North America concerning environmental assets, control and management. What did that entail? And what are the plans here in the next few years for North America?

08:12 Valentin Tijeras 
For us our production footprint in North America is our production workshops, and there will be an improvement in our waste management and our water management. So, as much as possible, trying to reduce the water that we have to use in our processes. We use the leftovers that we produce and all the investments made in order to minimize the impacts that we had. It’s been put in place. And we plan to keep on investing that so we will reduce our carbon footprint as much as we can.

08:43 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
Was there anything else you did want to add to any of that?

08:46 Valentin Tijeras 
In fact, it’s a pleasure for us to talk about these kinds of initiatives. We feel that this is the way to go. We are not making that just because it makes sense from an environmental point of view, but also because it makes sense from an economic point of view, and we are in better alignment day-in day-out when you’re doing the right thing. It’s not only that you are doing good for the planet0; it’s also good for business. And that’s something that I would like to transmit to the rest of the industry that that it makes some sense.


09:22 Emerson Schwartzkopf 
If you’d like to know more about Cosentino and sustainability, check the transcript of this podcast for a link to Cosentino’s sustainability report.

https://www.cosentino.com/news/cosentino-looks-to-the-future-with-its-new-sustainability-report/

This is Emerson Schwartzkopf, reminding you to keep track of the hard-surfaces industry at stoneupdate.com.