CRH invests €210m in Ukraine cement plant: first ever Joint Implementation Project registered by UN

CRH plc, the international building materials group, announces that the United Nations Joint Implementation Supervisory Committee (JISC) has registered CRH’s project to convert its cement plant at Kamenets-Podilsky in Western Ukraine from wet to dry process. The €210 million total investment will be a flagship project for CRH in Central and Eastern Europe.

This is the very first Joint Implementation Project to be registered (JI 0001). It is an important milestone in the abatement of CO2 emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and demonstrates the importance of emission reductions to CRH and the participating countries, Ireland and Ukraine.

Under the JI project, €140 million will be spent on replacing an existing 3 million tonne per annum wet process plant with a new state-of-the-art dry process cement plant. It will have the potential to reduce emissions of CO2 in Ukraine by up to 3 million tonnes by 2012 and is a significant part of CRH’s corporate CO2 reduction plan. An additional €70 million will be invested to modernise the plant’s existing cement milling capacity and infrastructure. The new plant will be the largest investment in the Ukrainian cement industry since independence in 1991 and marks growing inward investment in the Ukrainian economy.

CRH was assisted in the JI application process by a number of agencies notably; Global Carbon BV which developed the investment as a JI project; TUV SUD Group which validated the project; the Ukrainian Ministry of Environment and the Irish Environmental Protection Agency which issued Letters of Approval and the UN JISC which completed the registration process.

Commenting on this development, Liam O’Mahony, CRH Chief Executive, said “CRH has operated successfully in Ukraine since 1999 and is one of the largest cement producers in the country. This project is an important milestone in the abatement of emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and a clear sign of CRH’s commitment to reducing specific CO2 emissions across its operations. It demonstrates CRH’s commitment to meeting the needs of the Ukrainian economy in an environmentally friendly and operationally efficient manner”.