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    Gas Supply Security Update

    News

    Dear Customer

    It is being reported in multiple media centers across Europe of the potential impact and restrictions of gas supply due to the current crisis in Eastern Europe.
    We can confirm, with the knowledge we have of market circumstances today, both UCB (UK) in England and UCB Cast Profil in Spain will see no interruption to manufacturing / processing of material and will continue to produce continuous cast iron bar while there is demand.

    Both the UK and Spain source their gas predominantly from independent locations to where any current issues are arising.

    • The UK is satisfying half of its domestic demand through its own production of gas; a further third is satisfied with imports from Norway and the rest is complemented with imports of LNG from countries such as Qatar and the US
    • Spain typically imports 60% of its LNG from North Africa / Africa with the remainder coming from the USA and Middle Eastern producers

    The primary operation of melting our iron is electric based.
    Gas is consumed during pre-heating operations of equipment used during the casting process, and then predominantly it used in downstream processing of the product (annealing, stress relieving etc).

    We have numerous improvement projects running to reduce gas dependency on both sites;

    • In Spain we are targeting a maximum of 5% of total energy being from natural gas through process changes
    • In UK we are targeting up to 40% reduction in gas use through plant and equipment modernization

    As stated initially, although UCB hopes to be isolated from any direct impact of gas supply reduction in mainland Europe, we are anticipating there will be an indirect impact. We believe this will surface through much higher gas costs. Exposure to this impact is impossible to mitigate now and so we work hard to install the measures to reduce our future dependency.

    If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.


    James Brand - Managing Director (Foundries)