Ian Riley at the WCA

Ian Riley left his post as CEO of the World Cement Association (WCA) at the end of January 2025, after more than five years in the role. Here he discusses how the WCA and global cement sector have changed over this period.

Global Cement (GC): How has the WCA changed since you took the helm in September 2019?

Ian Riley (IR): The WCA was established in 2016 to give independent cement makers a voice and to promote best practices in operations and sustainability. It was run by a very small team with most staff, including CEO Norman Greig, working part-time. They endured a difficult couple of years before being able to attract major members to the organisation in around 2018.

When I took over as CEO in September 2019, I would say that the WCA was still in a kind of start-up phase. Since then, and particularly since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, membership has expanded to 70. Around half of members are clinker manufacturers, mainly independent producers, and around half are technology and equipment suppliers.

Geographically, the largest WCA members are from China. However, they are mainly those that operate outside of China as well as domestically. Other than this, the WCA has a strong producer presence in Asia and Africa. European members are both producer and equipment suppliers, and most North American WCA members are climate tech start-ups.

GC: How about member activities?

IR: There’s been quite a lot of development in terms of what the WCA does for its members. As most cement-making WCA members operate in a single region, there is quite an appetite to see how they’re doing against their peers elsewhere, which WCA facilitates through cross-company benchmarking.

WCA has also established committees where members discuss pertinent topics. For example, we have the Operation and Performance committee, which specialises in plant efficiency. We have the Zero-Carbon Committee, which specialises in decarbonisation within the bounds of the cement plant, and the Product, Materials and Concrete Committee, which looks at decarbonisation outside of the main plant and production process. This includes novel cement blends like LC3 and geopolymers.

GC: How has the cement industry changed since you joined WCA?

IR: The biggest change I’ve observed since 2019 is that, at that time, cement producers were thinking of the decarbonisation challenge in terms of technical processes that happened at the plant. CO₂ was the new dust, or NO_x or SO₂. We add some technology to the plant and the pollutant is removed - problem solved.

However, in around 2022 it became clear that decarbonisation is not just about capturing a gas and putting it underground. The cement sector must reimagine itself on a deeper level. How will raw materials change? How will products change? What new demands will be placed on equipment? How do cement plants fit in with the industrial system of the future? The objective, to reduce CO₂ emissions, is still the same, but the solutions now bring in a wider range of stakeholders, including policy makers, other industries and the general public. For example, will cement companies become suppliers of CO₂ to the chemicals industry? It may even be that the current paradigm of locating plants near to limestone and solid fuels is turned on its head by 2050. However, there is huge uncertainty when it comes to exactly how the industry will change. We can expect at least another 5 - 10 years before the picture crystallises.

The second way the industry has changed is that China, which represented around 57 - 58% of global cement production between 2014 and 2019, has undergone a clear and sustained decline. This had been on the horizon for many years and the reduction from the peak is already 20%.

The third change is that, over the past five years, Indian companies have really entered the top tier of international cement companies when it comes to scale and innovation. UltraTech, Dalmia, JK Cement and others have been pioneering when it comes to reducing embodied CO₂.

GC: What is your proudest achievement during your tenure as WCA CEO?

IR: I would say our number one achievement is the engagement that we’ve managed to generate with delegates at the WCA conferences. We’ve structured the events quite deliberately to engage the audience in active discussion, and we’ve had a lot of very nice comments in terms of both the relevance of the content and the ability to get deeper information. It is really the raison d’être of the WCA. Around 70% of the 200-350 delegates we host at these events are CEOs, COOs, managing directors and senior managers. This means that we have been able to cultivate very high level discussions, not only on decarbonisation, but on a range of other topics too.

GC: How will the cement sector change in the next 5 - 10 years?

IR: In terms of big trends, China will continue to see a marked decline in cement output, falling to around a third of global production in the next 15 years from around half at present.This kind of decline has been seen previously in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, where a peak to 50% peak was observed in as little as five years. The exact timing of this is very difficult to predict for China however, as different regions have different levels of development. As some start to demand less cement, others will demand more. However the overall trend is clearly down. Travelling in the other direction will be India, although I would caution against some of the more bullish projections of cement sector growth there.

I think we’ll see Europe continue to lead on decarbonisation, but the pace is a big question. Very few of the big CO₂ capture projects have reached Final Investment Decision. There’s still the question of whether they will really go ahead. I’ve listened to people who are building these plants talk about some of the challenges that the projects face, with regards to technology, planning and counterparty readiness. For example, a logistics company is not going to start building a CO₂ handling terminal until it has a contract. It can’t sign the contract until the specifications are known. The specifications take a long time to define and depend on a whole range of factors. It’s not just a case of the chicken and the egg, but generations of chickens and eggs. I think the next five years will be quite interesting because we’ll start to see how that’s panning out. Will we stick with the more established amine technology or will something else come to the fore?

GC: Does that last sentence mean that you think there will be a dominant CO₂ capture solution for the cement industry? This seems to be at odds with what others have told us in the past.

IR: I think that the cement industry will adopt a predominant standard process that fits most plants. However, no solution will be right for all plants. Power costs will make a big difference as to which of the options is the most attractive.

There will obviously be exceptions to the rule, but these will be relatively few and far between. There will be larger differences in how CO₂ is transported and stored than how it is captured.

Also on the decarbonisation side, I think we’ll see China and India develop decarbonisation solutions that will be widely deployed. In China it will likely be on the CCUS side. In India it is more likely to be innovative solutions coming from start-ups. Both countries have a lot of cement plants and a lot of talented engineers.

GC: What advice do you have for your successor?

IR: There are a couple of points. Firstly, it’s really important to be full time in this role and, beyond this, give it your all. I was originally recruited to work half-time in this role. I soon found that one foot in and one foot out is no way to be immersed in an organisation as crucial as WCA.

Secondly, travel a lot. My own travel plans were interrupted almost as soon as I began due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is interesting to observe that the real growth in membership really took off after the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions. While it is possible to have conversations over video, it’s no substitute for building deep and meaningful relationships. There is a strong human desire to meet face-to-face to have full and frank discussions.
Talking of being frank, it is important to challenge members with interesting and controversial topics. It is not easy to get animated about ‘safe’ topics, nor will the conversation advance if members are allowed to have the same conversations on repeat. One point that I keep making is that developers, the cement and concrete industries’ ultimate clients, are being asked by various regulations and schemes to decarbonise faster than the cement and concrete industry is planning to. We need to step on the gas. My successor should continue to ruffle a few feathers and alert the industry to its blind spots like this.

GC: What kinds of topics have animated WCA members recently?

IR: One of the topics that generates a lot of heat is the perceived slow progress of the new cements. There are members with more academic backgrounds, perhaps from equipment suppliers, who are frustrated with producers for not moving fast enough. There are also a lot of discussions about why the industry can’t take the low-hanging fruit like alternative fuels and raw materials in places like the Middle East and Africa. There are plenty of reasons that progress is taking time. We need alignment, as I mentioned, between policy makers, cement producers, their suppliers, clients and other industries.

GC: What’s next for Ian Riley?

IR: I have set up a company called Xeroc with some former Holcim colleagues. The company will look to mitigate the two main changes faced by concrete: its high CO₂ footprint and poor recyclability. We think that some innovative thinking and a developer-focused ethos will enable us to generate some good progress in these areas.

GC: Hopefully we can talk about it some day Ian, but for now, thank you for your time.

IR: It was a pleasure!

About Ian Riley

Ian Riley was appointed as CEO of the World Cement Association (WCA) in September 2019. He left his role at the end of January 2025. Before working at the WCA, he held management roles in the UK, the US, Australia and Japan before moving to China in 1998. He entered the cement sector in 2006 with Huaxin Cement and became Greater China Country Head for LafargeHolcim (now Holcim) in 2014.