Global Insulation reviews the insulation industry of the EU. High inflation casts uncertainty over the sector’s efforts to rebuild after costs touched critical levels across the region a year ago. Meanwhile, the bloc faces its greatest challenges yet: war on its borders, rumblings of discontent from within and two thirds of current annual CO2 emissions still to abate by 2030.
A total of 311 domestic insulation lines serve the market in the 27 member states of the EU - 0.69 lines per million people across the region’s 448m-strong consumer base. The industry is part of a highly diversified manufacturing sector, the total volume of which was valued at Euro6.18Bn in 2022.1 A major vulnerability was exposed in the form of the EU’s dependence on fossil fuels after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a shortage from early 2022. At the end of that year, policy makers were preparing a gas import price cap of Euro275/MWh. Mercifully for insulation producers, gas prices returned down to Euro44/MWh during the first half of 2023, down by 55% year-on-year from Euro97/MWh.2
Production
Two insulation types - expanded polystyrene (EPS) and mineral wool - together account for 155 (50%) of the lines, as shown in Figure 1. Other major types include extruded polystyrene (XPS), polyurethane (PU), polyisocyanurate (PIR) and extruded polypropylene (XPP). Figure 2 maps the EU, with states shaded according to their leading type of insulation by number of lines.
24 of the EU’s 27 member states produce insulation, giving an average of 13 lines per insulation-producing member state. Germany is the leading producer of the four main types of insulation, with 36% of EPS lines, 18% of mineral wool lines, 19% of glass wool lines and 27% of XPS lines. It jointly leads XPP production, alongside Spain, with 43% each, while France and Italy lead PU production at 29% each and Ireland leads PIR production at 29%.
Figure 3 breaks down the EU’s insulation sector to show the relative size of the industry in each country. Meanwhile, Table 1 (overleaf) combines data for insulation lines by country and by insulation type. Figure 4 charts the progression of the total number of lines of each of the five main types of insulation across the EU over the five-year period between 2019 and 2023.
| Country | EPS | MW | GW | XPS | PU | PIR | XPP | Other | Various | TOTAL | |
| 1 | Germany | 34 | 11 | 11 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 10 | 10 | 80 | |
| 2 | France | 17 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 45 | ||
| 3 | Italy | 4 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 25 | ||
| 4 | Spain | 4 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 22 |
| 5 | Netherlands | 7 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 20 | ||
| 6 | Poland | 1 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 14 | |||
| 7 | Belgium | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 12 | ||
| 8 | Czech Republic | 3 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 11 | ||||
| 9 | Austria | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 9 | |||||
| 10 | Finland | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 9 | |||||
| 11 | Hungary | 1 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 9 | |||
| 12 | Romania | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 9 | |||||
| 13 | Ireland | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 7 | ||||
| 14 | Sweden | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 7 | |||||
| 15 | Greece | 3 | 1 | 2 | 6 | ||||||
| 16 | Slovakia | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | ||||||
| 17 | Slovenia | 1 | 3 | 4 | |||||||
| 18 | Denmark | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 | ||||||
| 19 | Croatia | 2 | 2 | 4 | |||||||
| 20 | Lithuania | 2 | 1 | 3 | |||||||
| 21 | Portugal | 2 | 1 | 3 | |||||||
| 22 | Latvia | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||||
| 23 | Bulgaria | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| 24 | Cyprus | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| TOTAL | 95 | 60 | 58 | 26 | 17 | 7 | 7 | 40 | 39 | 311 |
Table 1: EU member states by total number of insulation lines, with totals broken down by insulation type. Plants with lines of more than one type are additionally tallied in the ‘Various’ column. Estonia, Luxembourg and Malta have no lines. Source: Research towards the Global Insulation Directory 2024.
Producers
95 different companies participate in the insulation industry of the EU, each commanding on average 3.27 lines across 2.78 separate plants. Figure 5 breaks down the industry’s total plants to show the respective sizes of the 10 largest producers. Outside of the top 10, 65 producers have single plants, eight have two, five have three, six have four and one other producer (Recticel) has five.
News
Financial news
EU market leader, France-based Saint-Gobain, noted home renovations as a source of ‘resilient’ demand in the first nine months of 2023. This offset slowing demand for new builds in the southern Europe, but failed to do so in northern Europe.
Hungary-based Masterplast recorded a 30% year-on-year decline in its sales in the third quarter of 2023, to Euro68.9m. EU markets that contributed to the decline included its native Hungary (down by 45% year-on-year), Romania (23%), Germany (47%), Italy (4%) and Slovakia (23%), while local sales grew by 8% in Croatia and by 21% in Poland.Full coverage of the latest company results can be found on Page 33.
New plants
Naturheld, a subsidiary of Ziegler Group, inaugurated its Hütten wood fibre insulation plant in the Neustadt an der Waldnaab District of Bavaria, Germany, in mid-2023. The plant is 100% renewably powered and uses waste wood from Ziegler Group’s wood processing operations in the region. Grenzebach supplied the plant’s equipment, which includes a novel wood blending system. The plant has a wood fibre production capacity of 6t/hr, with the possibility of expanding to 10t/hr. It brings Ziegler Group’s wood fibre insulation production capacity to 1.5Mm2/yr.
Austria-based Austrotherm announced the inauguration of its Calan expanded polystyrene (EPS)insulation plant in Romania’s Hunedoara County at the end of 2022.
Projects
Croatia is the EU member state with the most insulation plant projects currently underway. Ediltec Croatia is in the process of building a 250,000m2/yr insulated panel plant in Lepoglava, Varaždin County. 30km away in the same county, Knauf Insulation is building a second line at the Novi Marof mineral wool insulation plant to double its capacity. The producer will invest Euro116m in the project, which it expects to complete in 2025. Lastly, Austrotherm announced an upcoming new EPS insulation plant in Zabok, Krapina-Zagorje County, in June 2023, due for commissioning in mid-2024.
Knauf Insulation broke ground on its construction of its second Târnăveni mineral wool insulation plant in late March 2023. When commissioned in 2024, the new plant will have a production capacity of 100Mm2/yr and employ 100 people. Knauf Insulation estimated its eventual combined investments across both of its Târnăveni plants as Euro130m.
Austrotherm installed a solar power plant at its Purbach insulation plant in its native Austria earlier in 2023. The producer previously executed a Euro19.3m upgrade to the plant over Winter 2022 - 2023. This consisted of the construction of a new extruded polystyrene (XPS) production hall equipped with extrusion technology supplied by Germany-based KraussMaffei Group.
Masterplast subsidiary Pimco is setting up a Euro34.4m, 20,000t/yr glass wool plant in Szerencs, in Hungary’s Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County.
Other news
Italy-based public-private investment company Simest acquired a 44% stake in Ediltec Croatia for Euro1.9m in September 2023.
In Denmark, Belgium-based Etex acquired calcium silicate and vermiculite high-temperature insulation systems producer Skamol in March 2023.
Saint-Gobain previously prepared continuity plans for 2023 for its gas-consuming insulation plants in Europe. Under the plans, plants have the flexibility to operate using reduced energy or alternative energy sources. Over half of the group’s European insulation plants already use electric furnaces. Saint-Gobain said that it hedged 60% of its gas and electricity purchases for 2023.
Conclusion
As the climate changes for the more extreme, Europe’s insulation producers will see opportunities as well as risks. They are used to paying for their CO2 under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, and brought extra oversight to their fossil fuels intake after costs neared critical levels in 2022. As such, practices that will define global insulation production up to 2030 and in the decades to follow are already tried and tested - in the ever-resilient insulation sector of the EU.
References
1. Eurostat, ‘Industrial production statistics,’ 24 July 2023, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Industrial_production_statistics
2. EMBER, ‘Demand has collapsed amid continued high energy prices,’ 30 August 2023, https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/eu-fossil-generation-hits-record-low-as-demand-falls/
