We manufacture at four world-class production facilities in Türkiye and the US.
We extract trona ore and process it into natural soda ash and specialty grades of sodium bicarbonate and sodium sesquicarbonate through proprietary processes. These optimise resource recovery while delivering industry-leading performance on carbon, water and waste.
Westvaco, US
WE Soda’s Westvaco plant is where trona mining was invented more than 70 years ago. Located in Wyoming’s Green River Basin, it sits on the largest deposit of trona in the world.
Miners have been going underground to extract trona here since the 1950s and we benefit enormously from those decades of history and mining expertise. The first natural soda ash plant in the world was our Sesqui facility. We have added Mono and ELDM units and between them they produce around 75% of our total US capacity.
At Westvaco we use the long-wall mining method in the coal industry; it's more efficient than other methods and recovers more of the ore body. The ore is brought to the surface using miles of conveyor belts and hoists.
Westvaco plays a key role in the history of Wyoming and continues to be important to the state today.
Granger, US
Our Granger facility, also in Green River, employs secondary-recovery solution mining and contributes roughly 25% of our total US capacity.
Granger was originally built as a conventional mine that was reaching the end of its useful life. Now it has been reborn, converted into a solution mine. Borrowing technology that is used in part of the Westvaco site, the old caverns have been flooded and the dissolved trona is brought to the surface for processing. The mine is around 4 million cubic metres in size and is filled with enough water to fill around 1,600 swimming pools. The water that is pumped into the mine remains underground for around six months before it is removed as brine and processed into soda ash.
Our Wyoming sites are sitting on around 90% of the world’s trona deposits and represent not just the long-term future of WE Soda but of the global trona industry.
Eti, Türkiye
WE Soda’s Eti site produces the lowest carbon soda ash in the world and our research and development team is committed to creating a product at scale with a carbon footprint close to zero.
Eti is already a pioneering facility as it was the first site in the world to use primary solution mining on a commercial scale. Trona ore was discovered here in the late 1970s during routine coal exploration. It was believed that mining the ore was not possible as the deposit is around 450 metres underground. However, we took a risk and collaborated with the state-owned company Eti Maden to use solution extraction. We now see this method as the future of trona mining across the world.
Commercial operations started here in 2009 and were expanded in 2017. The plant consists of three units: extraction, processing and a cogeneration facility producing power and steam for use in the plant.
Eti produces and sells around 2 million mt of soda ash and sodium bicarbonate annually. The site has around 20 years of remaining mineable trona reserves.
Kazan, Türkiye
Close to Türkiye’s capital Ankara, Eti’s big brother Kazan is our largest production facility. Also using solution extraction, the site produces around 3 million mt of soda ash and sodium bicarbonate each year.
Kazan started commercial operations at the end of 2017 and gradually expanded its production capacity. We have plans to grow the plant still further and increase production to around 4 million mt each year. This expansion will be focused on lower carbon and specialty products. These include pharma grade sodium bicarbonate and bicarbonate used for flue gas desulphurisation.
As well as the solution extraction and processing units, Kazan has a cogeneration facility and onsite solar power. These produce power and steam for use in the plant and excess power generation is exported to the national grid.
Kazan has around 30 years of remaining mine life.