Happy New Year to all of our readers. If you are a new reader to Global Cement Magazine, Welcome. If you a regular reader, then welcome back to the magazine - yes, it really is Global Cement Magazine that you hold in your hands!
As you can tell, we have had a full redesign of Global Cement Magazine to give it a fresher and more modern look. We hope that it makes the magazine even easier to read - and for you to find the information that you are looking for.
However, in this case, beauty is way more than 'skin deep.' Apart from the cosmetic makeover of the design of the magazine, you will discover a much more fundamental change in the magazine, in terms of what is included and also - critically - what is not. Some elements of financial news that go stale very rapidly will now only be included on our web site or in our weekly newsletter. We will cut down on the number of conference and exhibition reports that we include in the magazine (typically we will only include reports on the specialised events that Global Cement has itself organised such as Global Slag and Global CemFuels, and a small number of other prestigious events, such as the AUCBM, IEEE, TCMB and AFCM), but with additional information, photo galleries and video reports being available online (where space is effectively infinite).
In addition to the very popular country reports that are already included in Global Cement Magazine, we will be undertaking a great deal more travel, visiting cement plants and cement companies around the world and reporting back to our readers in a monthly cement plant report. If you have an interesting cement plant and would like us to come to visit, please do get in touch!
Our readers have also asked us to include more in-depth interviews with well-known industry figures, and we start our series in this issue with cement industry stalwart Luigi Di Matteo, well-known guru of the alternative fuels scene for cement. Expect more revealing chats over the coming months.
The 'global' studies that we have published in the past, such as our popular Top 75 Cement Companies, and the recent analysis of global and regional distribution of cement capacity, have been popular and widely cited by industry analysts and participants, and we aim to research and produce more articles along the same lines. We will aim to include at least one 'keynote' global cement article in each issue.
Technical papers are perennially popular with readers and we are now actively looking for more top-level industry technical papers. Prospective authors should think to themselves, 'Where will my paper receive the most readers?' We believe that the answer is in Global Cement Magazine - 'the world's most widely-read cement magazine.'
'World's most widely-read?' I can almost hear you ask, 'Really?' Yes - we are confident in this claim, since we are the first and so far only cement magazine that allows readers worldwide to download the full digital version of the magazine - And that sends thousands of print copies of the magazine around the world to cement producers as well. Our print distribution is audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) and we are in the midst of applying for a digital audit as well. With the pass-on rates we enjoy from readers (derived from our annual reader survey) we already have the highest world-wide readership of all cement magazines - and we are increasing our print distribution yet higher. In fact, we expect the number of print readers to increase by around 15,000 readers per month compared to the past, to a total combined digital and print readership of over 50,000 readers per issue. Potential advertisers should also pay heed to this number.
You will also notice in this issue a number of articles which give you the option to read more online. We trust that if the taster that you see in the print (or digital) magazine whets your appetite, you will click through to access more - including more photos, movies and other media. In fact, www.GlobalCement.com is set to become the world's most popular cement-related web site (at least of the sites that we can gain numbers for): we're working hard to keep improving the site and a great deal of development work is going on in the background, the fruits of which you will see later in the year.
Our redesign, the www.GlobalCement.com web site, the Global Cement Weekly newsletter, the Global Cement Directory and the Global Cement Conferences should underline and re-emphasise that this is Global Cement - and that you should not confuse Global Cement with anyone else! If you need to be reminded about what we can do for you, please see the summary page - 'The Global Cement Universe' on page 13.
Global Cement can help immensely - please contact our advertising or editorial personnel using the details on page 3. We look forward to hearing from you!