Snow clearance

The need to ensure winter maintenance is clear, both from an economic perspective and in terms of road safety: the removal of snow and ice, in addition to significantly reducing accidents involving personal injury and damage to property, leads to a reduction in vehicle fuel consumption, and therefore energy savings, and, above all, enables economic activity to continue, particularly the road transport of goods.

The road salt market is highly specialised due to its unpredictability (demand forecasts do not extend beyond a week) and its extreme variability. Immediate demand can be very high (in the region of 100,000 tonnes per day for the whole of France) and therefore requires very long-term planning in terms of product availability, both for the salt producer and for users.

In France, salts used for winter maintenance are mainly produced:
• At the Groupe Salins mine in Varangéville, near Nancy, ideally situated in the north-eastern quarter of France.
• At the Salin-de-Giraud saltworks in the Camargue, where the River Rhône enables this sea salt to be transported in an environmentally friendly manner, by large-capacity barges, to the regions where it is used.

‘Advanced’ storage (close to the points of use) and the sale of these de-icing salts are handled by ROCK, a subsidiary of the 
Salins Group, based in Mulhouse.

Find out more about our clearing salt solutions.