Simcoa Operations is one of the world’s leading producers of silicon. Vice president Jim Brosnan tells Jane Bordenave how a dedication to efficiency and zero waste has helped it get there.
Founded in Western Australia in 1989 as part of the Barrack Group, Simcoa Operations did not have an easy birth. Almost immediately, the Barrack Group found it was laden with debt that it was struggling to service, due to the local financial situation around that time and depression in the silicon market caused by new silicon smelters in Brazil coming online. Shortly after that, the smelter and all its operations were taken over by a consortium of banks that had initially provided Barrack Group with funding for the project.
Despite this turbulence, Simcoa Operations did not crumble, instead becoming a profitable operation, which was assisted by its purchase in 1995 by ShinEtsu, a major Japanese chemical corporation and a leading manufacturer of silicones, optical fibre and silicon wafers. The company itself produces some of the highest quality metallurgical grade silicon in the world, which is sold globally for the making of products such as microchips, aluminium alloys and bathroom sealants.
The company’s quartz mine is located roughly 170 kilometres north of Perth and, as well as mining the quartz, Simcoa Operations also operates a silicon smelter at its Kemerton site south of Perth to produce silicon from the quartz. “We use submerged arc furnaces to strip off oxygen from the quartz, leaving us with the silicon,” explains VP Jim Brosnan. “As the silicon-oxygen bond is one of the strongest in nature, the furnaces operate at temperatures of 3,000—4,000 degrees Celsius in order to cause the reaction. As you can imagine, the process is very energy-intensive.”
The process also requires other input materials, specifically charcoal, and the whole operation creates a range of by-products. However, the business does not treat this material as refuse, having a long-standing philosophy that ‘there is no such thing as waste’. A use is found for all of the incidental materials created during the production process—for example, silica fume, which is collected from the furnace off-gases during the smelting process and sold as an additive to strengthen concrete; and quartz too small to be used in the manufacturing process, which is sold to the construction industry for decorative use in concrete. As Brosnan says: “If you treat something as waste, you have to pay someone to get rid of it; but if you find a use for it, you get a return.”
In addition to finding uses for its own waste, the company also finds use for other people’s. “We actually produce our own charcoal, sourcing the raw materials from local sawmills or where land is being cleared to make way for bauxite mining,” says Brosnan. “Once again, we find other uses for anything that doesn’t suit our needs or is a by-product—such as for soil improvement or improving barbeque briquettes.”
This approach is driven by Simcoa Operations’ continuous strive for efficiency. It is the world’s most efficient silicon producer, having benchmarked itself over the years, firstly against its competitors and then itself, constantly pushing to reduce waste and improve efficiencies. “We don’t monitor what is happening in our business on a day-by-day basis as many other companies do,” explains Brosnan. “Instead we have a constant data stream which we monitor on an hour-by-hour basis, showing us our rate of production, how our furnaces are running and constantly tweaking the way we are doing things. This also helps us to see very quickly if there are any problems, or where improvements can be made.”
Having found a use for nearly all the physical ‘waste’ produced in the silicon manufacturing process, the next step is to recover the massive amounts of heat that are produced by the two furnaces, finding a way to turn it into energy for the site.
As well as stressing the importance of efficiency, the firm considers its people to be one of its greatest assets. When it celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2009, around 20 per cent of the staff were also celebrating 20 years of employment there. “Efficiency, training, housekeeping, safety—all these things are interlinked,” explains Brosnan. “Well-trained employees can help us identify potential efficiency savings and are less likely to have accidents at work, or to cause them, and so on.”
The training benefits enjoyed by employees is one feature that sets Simcoa Operations apart—as well as examining the jobs people are doing across the board to offer them relevant training, the company has been working closely with a local technical college to develop a certified furnace operator course. These classes take a holistic approach to the student’s needs, including teaching modules that are not specific to silicon smelting, meaning the trainee will have a certificate that will be useful in their future career if they decide to move on. “We are also the only company in the region that still has a big sit-down dinner at Christmas, and we thank our employees for their contributions to our success in the form of gift vouchers for the local department store.”
Currently, the firm’s annual silicon output is 33,000 tonnes, produced by smelting 80,000 tonnes of quartz in two on-site furnaces. And the company has ambitious plans for further growth. “Demand for silicon is soaring, partly due to a general growth in the market, but largely because of the expanding fibre-optic and photovoltaic industries,” explains Brosnan.
To meet this increase in demand and boost output, the company is in the process of building a third furnace. “This furnace will increase our output by 50 per cent, and there are some plans to increase it by 100 per cent. However, we have been left in a kind of limbo by the new resources profit tax that will be coming into force on July 1, 2012. The rate of this new tax is 40 per cent, but as yet we are unsure how it will affect us, meaning our fourth furnace plan is currently on hold.”
In the future, as well as hopefully doubling capacity, the company is also considering the possibility in the longer term of diversifying into downstream processing. “Obviously there is an opportunity in the sale of downstream products, as it is a sector that is growing so quickly; so moving into that area ourselves is a logical next step for consideration,” says Brosnan.
With such a high profile in the industry, an ongoing drive for efficiency and evident care for its employees, one thing is certain—Simcoa Operations will be continuing to provide high quality silicon to make all our lives more technologically advanced for a long time to come. www.simcoa.com.au
