EP Power Minerals and LEAG work together to extract natural pozzolans

Environmentally friendly raw material will make an important contribution to the decarbonization of the cement industry.

LEAG has prevailed over its competitors with its expertise in the field of mine planning and operation and is now supporting EP Power Minerals GmbH in a pioneering project:

EP Power Minerals, European market leader in the marketing of additives for the concrete and cement industry, is developing a mining project to extract natural pozzolan in Iceland with its subsidiary EP Power Minerals Iceland ehf. The natural material will be used as an additive in concrete and cement. It partially replaces the clinker, whose production generates substantial carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, the CO₂ footprint of the building material is significantly reduced.

Until now, the concrete and cement industry has mainly used hard coal fly ash as a clinker-reducing additive. However, fly ash - as a by-product of coal-fired power generation - is finite in its availability. This means that natural pozzolan from Iceland, which is comparable to fly ash in its composition, will play a key role in achieving environmental targets in the construction industry in the future.

With its many years of experience as a mining operator, LEAG will plan the pozzolan extraction, transportation and loading for the mining area in Iceland for EP Power Minerals - in parallel with the necessary approval procedures - and later set up the technical mining plant itself. Several million tons of the material are to be transported to customers every year in the future.

“We are delighted to have gained an experienced partner in LEAG for this important future project,” says Andreas Hugot, Managing Director of EP Power Minerals. “Together, we can now work on providing our customers with natural pozzolan as a new raw material that has the long-term potential to reduce CO₂ emissions in Europe by millions of tons per year.”

“We are proud that, as part of the Iceland project, we can make our contribution to the implementation of the EPH Group's sustainability strategy with the expertise of the long-standing mining operator,” says Dr. Philipp Nellessen, LEAG Board Member for Production. “Our goal is to build an infrastructure for the deposit in Iceland that is suitable for all interest groups and allows us to extract and supply the natural pozzolan safely at all times.”

The raw material will be transported to customers on the American and European markets by ship. To this end, a seaport for large bulk vessels is to be built on the coast, not far from the deposit. The ships are to be loaded via a jetty around two kilometers off the coast.

Volcanic ash - a natural pozzolan

Pozzolans are natural or synthetic compounds of silica, alumina, limestone, iron oxide and alkaline substances that are usually formed under the influence of heat. Pozzolanic ash was already used in ancient Rome as an admixture to clays for the production of ceramics, primarily to improve the strength of the end product. Pozzolanic earth was also used as an additive for Roman concrete (Latin: “opus caementicium”) and by the Phoenicians.