We focus on lime this week with an acquisition by Carmeuse in Argentina and a deal between Mississippi Lime Company (MLC) and Fortera. Plus, SigmaRoc bought Dolomitas in Lithuania last week and Martin Marietta’s acquisition of Lhoist North America (LNA) completed at the end of August 2026. Let’s find out more.

Belgium-based Carmeuse announced on 10 September 2026 that it had acquired a controlling stake in Argentina-based lime producer Caleras San Juan (CSJ). No value for the transaction was declared. Carmeuse did report that CSJ and its affiliates have a production capacity of over 0.75Mt/yr. It added that the company is “...well positioned to meet growing demand for lime across Argentina and central Chile.” The Valor Econômico newspaper reported that Carmeuse purchased an 80% stake in the business with manager and shareholder Raúl Cabanay retaining a 20% share. CSJ increased its production capacity from the mid-2010s and operates four Maerz kilns. The most recent of these kilns was lit in June 2026.

This transaction follows Carmeuse’s deal to buy a controlling stake in Chile-based Cbb for just under US$500m in 2025. That one was notable for both its lime and cement assets, since Cbb operated three integrated cement plants and one grinding plant at the time of the takeover. Although as Global Cement Weekly noted at the time, the profit from Cbb’s lime division was bigger than that from its cement division. At that time, we wondered whether Carmeuse might be tempted to divest the cement and concrete business but it doesn’t appear to have happened yet. The next step from here is how Carmeuse might use its lime plants and deposits in both Chile and Argentina to its commercial advantage. Options such as being the key supplier to certain key consumer industries such as lithium or copper on both sides of the Andes and synergistic benefits in procurement and logistics are obvious ones. On lithium for example, Carmeuse noted in its 2026 sustainability report that its acquisition of Cbb made lithium become the group’s second-largest end market for lime.

Meanwhile, in North America MLC signed an agreement with Fortera on 8 September 2026 to develop a commercial unit designed to produce over 0.3Mt/yr tons of low-carbon ReAct cement. Fortera’s ReCarb technology will be used to capture industrial CO₂ emissions from MLC’s production of high-calcium lime, converting the CO₂ directly into cement. The partners have not said where the unit will be but they have said that it will add “domestic cement production capacity in the US.” One of MLC’s sites at Calera in Alabama, Ste. Genevieve in Missouri, Verona in Kentucky or Bonne Terre in Missouri might be the location. The agreement gives MLC one way to both deal with its CO₂ emissions and create a new revenue stream. Graymont announced a similar deal with Fortera in mid-2025

This follows the news that SigmaRoc bought Akcinė Bendrovė ‘Dolomitas’ (Dolomitas) in Lithuania from its shareholders for €110m, with a further bill of €8m for certain non-core assets. Its target produces around 3.5Mt/yr of high-quality dolomite limestone, holds around 25 years of reserves and has the potential to extend this by an additional 20 years. SigmaRoc noted that Dolomitas is an “essential supplier to a significant network of companies and sectors in the Baltic States.” Its services also include logistics handling, through a network of its own trucks and open wagons for rail use and terminals.

As mentioned above, Martin Marietta’s acquisition of or combination with LNA completed in late August 2026. Readers can find more about this transaction here. Other recent lime news stories of note include an investment of around US$16m by the government of Papua New Guinea in late July 2026 into Pacific Lime and Cement’s (PLC) Central Lime project. In return the government received a 13% stake in the local subsidiary. The project intends to start quicklime production in the first quarter of 2027. The company wants to become the country’s first integrated lime and cement manufacturing operation.

All of the lime news stories covered above show the variety the industry can cover. Big deals by Carmeuse in South America, Martin Marietta in North America or SigmaRoc in the Baltics show similar commercial motivations to the kind of ones we normally cover in the cement sector. MCL’s (and Graymont’s) agreement with Fortera reminds us that lime manufactures too calcine limestone and increasingly face the same challenges in finding how to capture and/or use the CO₂. Places like Papua New Guinea want to develop and companies like PLC are trying to help them.

And finally… as a reminder of the wider range of sectors that lime is used in, Switzerland-based sugar manufacturer Schweizer Zucker lit its new lime kiln last week. The Maerz HPS S2 lime kiln was put into operation in ‘sugar operating mode.’ Sugar beets started being processed and the first sugar of the 2026 campaign started earlier this week.

Financial results from the major Chinese cement producers have been emerging this week. The market remains in a state of contraction with cement output and corporate revenue reflecting that. The difference, so far in the first half of 2026, is that increasing numbers of these cement companies are making a loss.

Firstly, cement output fell by 9% year-on-year to 741Mt in the first half of 2026 from 815Mt in the first half of 2025. This isn’t the steepest rate of decline for the first half since 2020 with worse rates reported in the first halves of 2022 and 2024, at 15% and 11% respectively. Output has been decreasing annually since at least 2021, at a mean rate of 8%/yr. Commentary by the China Cement Association (CCA) blamed the poor first half of the year on falling levels of investment on infrastructure and real estate. The former fell by 2.4% and the latter by 18% to US$566bn. Although the CCA did note a modest increase in spending on railways. Unfortunately July 2026 appears to have brought no respite with continued year-on-year decline in output of cement.

Graph 1: Cement output in China, H1 2020 to 2026. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China.

Each of the large China-based cement companies detailed here reported heavy falls in revenue in first half of 2026 with the exception of Huaxin Cement. As in previous years this is due to that company’s focus on overseas investments. By sales volumes of cement and clinker, and based on sales revenue, Anhui Conch is the largest cement producer in China. CNBM has a higher revenue overall but it covers a wider range of businesses and we have restricted our coverage here to its Basic Building Materials Segment. Anhui Conch’s reaction to the poor first half of 2026 was to blame it on weak market demand, competition and ‘other factors.’ This may sound familiar to previous years. Unsurprisingly, it noted positive performance from its trading business (exports) and its overseas investments. It also recorded a wind and solar generation and energy storage capacity of 1431MW. This is a massive figure.

Graph 2: Sales revenue from selected Chinese cement producers. Source: Company financial reports.

CNBM’s Basic Building Materials Segment reported a similar story blaming falling volumes of concrete and prices for all three heavy building material. However, it did say that its sales volumes of aggregates rose. BBMG’s assessment was along the same lines although it also noted a ‘rebound in coal prices’ in the second quarter. Although it was more optimistic than the CCA on the local real estate market. spotting rising prices in certain key cities in the second quarter. It should be noted that BBMG runs property development and operation businesses. Finally, China Resources Building Materials Technology was circumspect about its situation. It did say that it had demolished several production lines through capacity replacement and that its cement capacity utilisation rate fell to 53.5% from 56.8%.

CNBM’s Basic Building Materials Segment, BBMG and China Resources Building Materials Technology all reported a loss in the first half of 2026. China Cement Network estimated this week that the cement sector in China would make a loss of US$450m - 750m in the first half. Of the 19 companies that have released financial results, 15 reported falling revenue and 10 reported losses.

Meanwhile, Huaxin Cement said it sold 34.8Mt of cement and clinker in the first half of 2026. 13.2Mt of this came from its overseas businesses, an increase of 57%. Notable overseas development in this period included the completion of the second phase of a grinding plant in Zimbabwe, a kiln upgrade in South Africa, restoring production at a plant in Mozambique with operation scheduled for late August 2026, work on a new production line at Dondo in Mozambique scheduled for the third quarter of 2026 and ongoing work on two production lines in Nigeria scheduled for the end of the year. The group said it had mostly completed preparatory work on its proposal to buy a majority stake in Holcim Philippines.

To finish, it has been a bad first half of the year for cement companies in China. This follows the market conditions of the last five year. What is new though is that increasing numbers of these companies also appear to be now making losses unless they can access overseas markets or different sectors. Something’s going to have to give at some point. In late August 2026 the woes of the real estate sector in China were reflected in the sentencing of Hui Ka Yan, the founder of company Evergrande sentenced to life in prison. His company has been emblematic of the issues facing the sector, and contributory ones such as building materials, in China since 2020.

Holcim held a ceremony launching a new calcined clay production line in the Czech Republic this week. Around the same time LeadIT (the Leadership Group for Industry Transition) published a report on calcined clay kiln projects around the world using its second quarter 2026 data from its Green Cement Technology Tracker. It must be time for an update on calcined clay!

Various dignitaries attended the launch event on 3 September 2026, including Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. The new production line has a capacity of 0.58Mt/yr. This will supply products in the group’s ECOPlanet low-carbon cement range. Holcim says that the €40m project is the largest investment in the history of Holcim Czech Republic, with around €13.5m granted by the Modernization Fund of the Ministry of the Environment. Hence the politicians turned up for the photo opportunity.

LeadIT’s handily timed report revealed that six calcined clay projects were planned to be commissioned in 2026, including the one in the Czech Republic. The others are at PPC’s West Riebeek plant in South Africa, a new Ciments de Côte d’Ivoire (CIMCI) plant in Ivory Coast, CIMAF’s Ouagadougou plant in Burkina Faso, CIMAF’s Bobo-Dioulasso plant in Burkina Faso and Cimpor’s Souselas plant in Portugal. Commissioning is expected for most of these by the end of 2026. However, progress on the two CIMAF projects is more uncertain. In addition to these, LeadIT has also identified five calcined clay projects that have been delayed and another five that have no announced commissioning date. Its research has 14 projects currently in the pipeline with an investment of US$405m and a calcined clay production capacity of 3.3Mt/yr. Despite the large number of new projects on the way, LeadIT says it is difficult to forecast the pipeline of new projects due to a drop in new announcements in 2025 and 2026.

Graph 1: Commercial scale calcined clay projects under development by planned commissioning year and project status. Source: LeadIT report Clinker-free cement: calcined clay paves a path to cement decarbonization, September 2026.

As mentioned last time Global Cement Weekly covered calcined clay, equipment suppliers have taken note of the nascent market. For example, Aumund Fördertechnik launched its electrified Linear Calcination Conveyor in late 2025. Denmark-based CemGreen is marketing its CemTower calcination technology. Both of these developments have been covered in Global Cement Magazine in more detail. Raw materials suppliers are also circling this space. Brick and building materials manufacturer Forterra, for example, noted in its half-year report in July 2026 that it was looking to ‘utilise’ some of its surplus clay reserves for “...calcination on a much larger scale.” In mid-2025 LKAB Minerals said it was working with Forterra on using brick waste from the latter’s Kings Dyke plant. LKAB Minerals then built a calcined clay production line at Flixborough, UK, which was scheduled to start production in August 2025. Another example of this could be found in July 2026 when Green360 Technologies (G360) signed a commercial supply agreement with Holcim Australia to provide its calcined clay product. This deal is also noteworthy as Calix said earlier in the year that it was toll-processing up to 30,000t/yr for G360. Readers may be more familiar with Calix for its supply of pre-calciner technology for the Low Emissions Intensity Lime And Cement (LEILAC) projects.

Clay is also being looked at in other forms for use in cement production. One such approach is ThyssenKrupp Polysius’s meca-clay technology, which activates clay without calcination. In late 2025 Titan Group signed a deal with ThyssenKrupp Polysius to develop the technology. This follows work between ThyssenKrupp Polysius and Schwenk Zement that was presented at the Global FutureCem Conference 2023 in Brussels. Hoffmann Green Cement Technologies launched its technology H-CLAY for the cold-processing of clay in June 2026.

We can see that interest in calcined clay as a secondary cementitious material (SCM) in cement production continues. The announcements of new calcined clay projects may have slowed in 2025 and 2026 but a number of previously planned projects are reaching commissioning. At the same time, some companies are focusing new equipment to support this and others on supplying calcined clay as a raw material to cement producers. Then there are the projects looking at using clay without calcination. Clay usage as an SCM may not have the big-ticket prestige of expensive carbon capture projects but it is already here at scale, at lower cost, at multiple locations and delivering CO₂ reductions.

This week a Nigeria-based government regulator has concluded that there may be some anti-competitive behaviour occurring in the local cement sector. One of the other countries it compared Nigeria to was Tanzania. However, Tanzania has been having its own problems with cement supply recently. Let’s explore what’s been happening.

Arguments over the price of cement in Nigeria are a regular occurrence that this column has covered multiple times over the last decade and beforehand. Our last one, in February 2026, covered a think-tank that blamed the situation on structural issues with the market. The latest allegations come from the Anticompetitive Practices Department (ACP) of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC). In a preliminary report its findings “...suggest possible manipulation of prices of cement in the Nigerian market.” The ACP started the investigation due to the apparent high price of cement locally, compared to other countries, despite plenty of limestone sources and surplus production capacity. All the major cement producers in the country cooperated with the ACP apart from one. The department then goes on to note that three large companies account for 90% of cement production in the country.

The ACP actually compared prices in different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to Nigeria. For example, it says that the retail price of cement is US$5.40/bag (50kg) in Nairobi, Kenya or US$4.80/bag in Tanzania. The commission notes that the price of cement rose significantly in the first half of 2026. Its exemplar prices suggest that cement in Nigeria sold for US$7.20/bag in January 2026, US$9.65/bag by the middle of the year and as high as US$11.13/bag by July 2026. The FCCPC press release doesn’t do the calculations but the figures it provides suggest that Kenya has a cement production capacity of 160kg/capita but Nigeria has one of at least 252kg/capita. Nigeria apparently produces more cement per person than Kenya but it may cost twice as much! The FCCPC has asked the large producers to explain their pricing methods, production capacity utilisation and export data and “relevant commercial relationships.”

Local press coverage in Nigeria over the last week included the assessment of cement expert Kevin Tar, who concluded that cement shouldn’t cost more than US$6.00/bag including production and logistics costs. His figures even included 20 - 25% profit for the manufacturers. For comparison, the net profits of two of the main cement producers in Nigeria - BUA Cement and HBM Nigeria - each increased by at least 50% year-on-year in the first half of 2026. Dangote Cement in its half-year results noted that inflation had been an issue due to rising fuel prices connected to the US - Iran war.

Unfortunately, one of the countries the FCCPC used to try and show that cement prices might be unduly high in Nigeria was Tanzania, which has been having troubles of its own in recent months. The government has given cement producers eight days to cut prices and improve supply after prices reportedly nearly hit US$10/bag in some places. Producers have blamed the situation on mechanical failures at some of the main integrated plants. The cement companies will be back before the Ministry of Industry and Trade on 28 August 2026 for a progress report on the situation.

A number of cement producers raised their prices in July 2026 blaming rising input and production costs, and tax changes amongst other reasons. One tax rise was an increase in specific excise duty rates for the 2026 - 27 tax year that started in July 2026. The government told local press at the time that the country has 15 cement plants with a production capacity of 13.6Mt/yr. These plants had produced 10.3Mt in the last year against a demand of 8.5Mt/yr. The remainder was exported to Malawi, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi and other countries. Global Cement Magazine published an overview of the cement market in Tanzania in its January 2025 issue by authors Holtec Consulting. At the time they noted the country’s relatively low cement consumption per capita and high potential for growth in the sector as the economy developed. Hopefully the current debacle is merely a hiccup on that path.

Nigeria and Tanzania possess cement sectors at different stages of development. Yet both are encountering price spikes at the moment. Nigeria’s industry is more concentrated and much larger. It may be suffering from its perennial structural problems and inflation-based issues. Tanzania’s sector is more diverse. In its case import tariffs on clinker from East African Community countries may be making the market less nimble in the face of a local clicker supply bottleneck. In addition, inflation on fuel prices and the new tax system could be playing their part too. Exports may also be an issue as, anecdotally, they appear to have risen in 2025 and so-far in 2026.

Whether an eventual FCCPC investigation finds anything in Nigeria remains to be seen. Yet, mounting cement prices in another country in Sub-Saharan start to flesh out an argument for a wider trend going in the region.