Molins’ proposed acquisition of Portugal-based Secil seems set to complete. First, the competition body the Autoridade da Concorrência (AdC) approved the transaction this week. Then Molins’ shareholders consented to the deal on the following day. Let’s take a look at what’s been happening.

Spain-based Molins announced in late December 2025 that it had struck a deal with Portugal-based Semapa to buy the latter company’s cement subsidiary outright for €1.4bn. The transaction was expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026. Barring the unexpected, this now looks likely to happen. Molins said it would pay for the acquisition using a combination of cash and funds from a syndicated credit agreement and a bond issuance.

Molins placed Secil’s cement production capacity at around 10Mt/yr. This compares to an integrated capacity of 9.1Mt/yr as calculated from the Global Cement Directory 2025 with integrated plants in Angola, Brazil, Lebanon, Portugal and Tunisia. In addition the group also runs a grinding plant in Angola. Plus, on the cement side, Secil manages a terminal in Spain, a terminal in the Netherlands and has operations in Cape Verde. This gives a price of €153/t for the integrated cement plant capacity in the acquisition deal using the latter capacity figure.

This should be added to Molins’ existing cement footprint around the world. It operates majority-controlled cement companies in Spain, Argentina and Tunisia. It also holds joint-control of Cementos Moctezuma in Mexico (with Buzzi) and owns minority stakes in cement companies in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Colombia and Uruguay. Working out Molins’ current cement production capacity around the world is difficult due to the number of minority stakes it owns. However, Global Cement Magazine placed it at around 11Mt/yr in the December 2025 issue. Molins placed its ordinary Portland cement (OPC) production capacity at around 23Mt/yr in its annual report in 2024.

The addition of Secil is a serious acquisition for Molins that expands its geographic footprint. The new network of plants in the Iberian peninsula is the obvious sign of enlargement in its home territory. Yet, the plants in Brazil give the company the makings of a regional market leader in Latin America approaching the likes of Cemex, Cementos Argos and Votorantim. Molins’ made acquisitions in 2024 in the aggregates business in Spain and Bangladesh, and the concrete business in Colombia. Investments in recycled aggregates in Spain and alternative fuels - with a focus in Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia and Bangladesh - were also made that year. Major acquisitions in 2025 included a deal with Titan to buy 80% of Baupartner, a Bosnia-based pre-cast company, the purchase of a 90% stake in Zenet, a Spain-based manufacturer of reinforced and prestressed precast concrete components, and Concremat, the leading precast concrete company in Portugal.

A separate point to note was the resignation of Molins’ previous chair Juan Molins Amat in mid-2025. He was succeeded by Julio Rodríguez. Local press has framed this as a battle between the three arms of the Molins family that controls the company. However, the three parties reportedly coordinated to vote for the Secil deal.

Molins’ decision to buy Secil looks set to take the cement business to a new level, particularly in Iberia and South America. To finish, concrete is a major part of this deal that we’ve not really covered here. Molins reported concrete sales of 1.6Mm³ in 2024. However, Secil said it produced just under 2Mm³ in the same year. This will be a major increase in output in addition to all of these recent precast expansions in Europe.

The long-running debate over the price of cement in Nigeria flared up again once more this week. Think tank Agora Policy published a report on the local cement sector and it blamed the structure of the industry for the situation. What’s more it also presented a compelling range of data backing up its argument. We’ll take a closer look.

Agora Policy published its report entitled ‘Market Power and Failure of Competition Policy in Nigeria’s Cement Industry,’ in early February 2026. It is well worth a read. It questions why the price of cement was so high in a country that had declared itself ‘self-sufficient’ in cement in 2012 and where production capacity was higher than demand. Its data then goes on to show that cement producers in Nigeria appeared to have higher profit margins than producers in Asia, Europe and elsewhere in Africa. It stated that cement producers in Nigeria reported average profit margins of approximately 49% in September 2025 and 34% in 2024. This compared to 20 - 36% in North America, 15 - 25% in Asia, 20 – 30% in Europe and 18 – 30% elsewhere in Africa. It then noted that cement prices in Nigeria had been higher than the average for Sub-Saharan Africa for nine of the 11 years from 2015 to 2025. It acknowledged that input costs such as taxes, negative currency exchange rates, energy prices and transport fees had played a role in pushing up prices. However, it directly blamed the structure of the market citing price leadership, regional dominance and control of critical inputs.

Distinctly from previous rows about prices in Nigeria, the think tank does not call for imports to be allowed in or increased. Instead, it recommends the following measures: access to limestone and clinker to be liberalised; logistics to be improved; regional market share to be scrutinised; operational data to be submitted to competition authorities; and general competition regulations to be tightened.

Notably, one of the things Agora Policy’s report mentions is how it views the use of excess production capacity by the local cement companies to control the market. Its interpretation is that, “incumbents with large unused capacity can credibly threaten to temporarily flood the market and cut prices if a new competitor attempts to enter.” So, plans by producers, such as BUA Cement announcement in January 2026 to build a new 3Mt/yr cement production line in Sokoto State, can be viewed as both addressing a market need and a strategic one. More capacity can potentially relieve price pressure or even reduce it but it can also be used to deter competitors from building plants. Another example of producers building new capacity in a market where capacity is greater than demand occurred in the last week. Lafarge Africa said it plans to expand its Ashakacem Plant in Gombe State and Sagamu Plant in Ogun State.

None of this is to say that the main cement companies in Nigeria appear to have broken any competition laws. They may simply be taking advantage of the existing market structure as most companies would in this situation. The debate on the price of cement in Nigeria has been a recurring one since 2020, with few answers so far. The acquisition of Lafarge Africa by China-based Hauxin Cement in mid-2025 did mark a change to the market composition. Yet, whether Huaxin Cement chooses to follow the logic of the local market situation or do something different remains to be seen. The real question at this point is whether the recommendations that Agora Policy has made are the right ones and if a government would actually want to implement them and be able to. A criticism of Agora Policy’s recommendations might point out that it is simply identifying general features of the cement business. Clinker production requires a high level of capital investment, mineral resources need to be secured, logistics are key for a heavy commodity and so on.

Finally, Arvind Pathak, the Group Managing Director of Dangote Cement reminded investors this week that his company is planning to make all of Africa self-sufficient in cement production. It’s both a noble goal and a commercial prize for a region with Africa’s demographic potential. Yet, if the experience in Nigeria is anything to go by, simply becoming self-sufficient in cement without governments making other changes may not be enough to build the Africa of tomorrow.

The European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) carbon price took a tumble this week following comments suggesting a rethink by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Minds have been focused by the start of the Cross Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in January 2026, high energy prices and poor growth. The challenge is now on in the lead up to the next proposals to update the EU ETS, expected by July 2026.

As the abrupt change in the carbon price shows, words have power. Especially from prominent politicians. So, when former President Barack Obama told a podcast host this week that aliens were real, the world took notice. Obama subsequently clarified, with some exasperation, that he had responded to a light-hearted question in kind with his belief. Similarly, when Merz said last week that the EU’s carbon market should be revised or delayed, the markets took note. The ETS carbon price fell by 12% from €79/t on 11 February 2026 to €69/t on 16 February 2026. The share prices of large Europe-based cement producers such as Holcim and Heidelberg Materials also fell.

Merz’s speech to the European Industry Summit in Antwerp on 11 February 2026 called for the EU to become competitive again. He noted that the economy had grown by 8% in China in recent years, by 2% in the US and only 1% in the EU. His remedy is to reduce bureaucracy, promote a common European legal framework to make trans-national business easier, improve the common energy market to reduce energy prices, cut AI regulations in and make ‘better’ merger rules. However, all of these well-signposted measures paled in comparison to comments Merz made on a panel at the event about the possibility of changing the ETS. His words were also similar to those of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who told reporters last week that the EU needed to review the ETS.

Meanwhile, across the channel in the UK, the government launched its second consultation on its CBAM. The British version is set to start in 2027 and exactly the same kind of arguments and counter-arguments are popping up as in the run up to the EU CBAM. The UK’s Mineral Products Association (MPA) has been lobbying to make sure that the scheme doesn’t hurt the local cement and concrete sectors. Cue familiar issues such as time to test the new system, clarity on the default values importers will pay when emissions can’t be verified, protection for local manufacturers… and so on.

Carbon taxes like the EU ETS are political instruments. They require certainty that they will persist for years or decades before companies will make investments in response to them. So, if the heads of some of the largest economies within the EU start to publicly question the viability of the ETS, why should anyone take it seriously, much less open up the cheque book to build fancy untested technologies such as carbon capture plants!? Naturally, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen defended the scheme at the Antwerp event. She argued that decarbonisation has been possible in tandem with economic growth over the longer term. It is likely to have been a tough crowd, given that she was making this point at a conference about industrial competitiveness in Europe.

The most likely amendment to the ETS being touted in the press may be an extension of the free allocation system beyond the mid-2030s. Or, in other words, a brake could be imposed on how fast the cost of the carbon tax mounts up for protected industries such as cement. This would also effectively restrict more expensive forms of sustainability such as carbon capture to projects funded by governments, unless there was a step-change in the technology, CO₂ transport infrastructure and so on. All the talk by industry in the run-up to the CBAM was about stopping an external leak of the system and exposing local industry to ‘unfair’ imports. At the moment it looks like the actual leak will come from within. At which point, accusations about carbon taxes merely being a form of economic protectionism seem more credible.

2026 has begun as the year of the ‘underdeveloped’ cement market, with new cement plant projects underway from Bangladesh to Zimbabwe. Only one industry announced two new cement plant projects: Afghanistan – which only had three plants to begin with!

The plants, when operational, will be the 1.1Mt/yr Yatīm Taq plant in Jowzjan Province and 1Mt/yr Aliabad plant in Kunduz Province. Both provinces lie in Afghanistan’s northern borders, opposite Turkmenistan and Tajikistan respectively, with the new plants situated in their mountainous interiors, 320km apart from one another.

The Aliabad and Yatīm Taq plants diverge in the matter of funding: Aliabad is a joint Afghan-Tajik-Chinese venture, including two separate Chinese parties. Meanwhile, Yatīm Taq is a foreign enterprise. Türkiye’s local consul general announced the investment on 14 January 2026. We can fill in the details with the help of an earlier announcement from October 2024: Türkiye-based 77 Inşaat concluded a deal to build a US$163m cement plant at the same location. This would appear to be a match and supplies us a best estimate of a price tag for the Yatīm Taq plant – though plans do change.

Table 1 (below) lists all on-going cement plant builds in Afghanistan as reported in the Global Cement News to date, with the latest announced projects at the top.

Table 1: Current cement plant projects in Afghanistan.

Few plants have publicly stated commissioning dates: Ghori (#3) was on schedule for April 2027, per plant head Shafiullah Wahidi, speaking on 30 October 2025; Shurandam (#8) had been due in October 2025. Elsewhere, estimates include ‘in the near future’ (Yatīm Taq cement plant, in October 2024). Considering how unlike anything previously achieved in the Afghan cement sector these undertakings are, a little vagueness is understandable.

Besides the Jabal Saraj plant in Parwan Province (commissioned: 1944) and Ghori I plant in Baghlan Province (1962), Afghanistan’s youngest plant is the Soviet-era Ghori II. It began construction using a US$42m Czechoslovakian loan in 1986, and reportedly never reached its intended capacity before further works stalled indefinitely in 1989.¹ Three decades of war brought Soviet and subsequent US-led coalition withdrawals and precipitated a complete takeover by the Taliban in 2021. The latest tranche of new-builds belong to a different generation both technologically and in the life of Afghanistan.

In addition to the age difference, and connected to it, is the matter of size. Ghori II, Ghori I and Jabal Saraj, in descending capacity order, command 400,000t/yr, 200,000t/yr and 30,000t/yr. The above projects in Table 1, if fully realised, will raise the national installed capacity by a multiple of 14.

The new, billion-dollar Afghan cement industry is partly being grafted onto the old: when commissioned in 2027, the Ghori project (#3 in Table 1) will be the 1.8Mt/yr Ghori III plant, part of an expanded 2.4Mt/yr complex. In October 2025, the Ghori I and Ghori II plants more than doubled combined production to 700t/day, corresponding to a capacity utilisation of 43% across the existing complex.

Meanwhile, the Jabal Saraj project (#4) brings together local investors Alfala ul Alami and Awfi Bahram and Qatar-based Al-Maham International Group for a 1.1Mt/yr expansion of the country’s smallest plant, up to 1.13Mt/yr. After this, the joint venture plans to further triple capacity, up by another 2.2Mt/yr, to 3.33Mt/yr, turning the plant into Afghanistan’s largest. The last update on the project emerged back in January 2025: the first phase of exploration work was underway.

To call Afghanistan an underdeveloped cement market is not to dismiss its part in the global cement industry. The country exports coking coal, including to neighbouring Pakistan. Following the closure of the Afghan-Pakistan border amid deteriorating relations in October 2025, northern Pakistani cement producers began to rely on imports from Indonesia or Africa for their coal supply. The loss of the Pakistan coal market ‘heavily’ impacted Afghan economic growth.²

Afghanistan’s population was 42.6m in 2024, up by 3% year-on-year and by 30% decade-on-decade.³ The growing market is a target for Iranian, Tajik and Uzbek producers – the last of which shipped 273,000t of cement there in the first nine months of 2025. Afghanistan was formerly the destination for 7% of Pakistan’s cement exports, contributing 10% of all sales for Cherat Cement and 6% for Fauji Cement in 2025.

All that was needed for the industrial transformation of domestic cement production was investment. In 2026, on the 40th anniversary of the Ghori II plant’s Prague-backed groundbreaking, funding no longer flows from Europe – nor under the auspices of a foreign invasion. Instead, it lies along a new, financial axis between China and West Asia. Following the announcement of the Aliabad project on Monday 2 February 2026, operators from five foreign countries will compete in the Afghan cement sector as its new plants come online, beginning any time now.

There are difficulties: Afghanistan is landlocked. Its regime (which, uniquely in the world, has banned education for girls beyond the age of 12) gives rise to issues for producers’ global market access. A complete reliance on coal will also hamper efforts to realise international standards. There are also creative solutions, however. One country recognises the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, and also happens to be looking for a market for its oil, after losing India on 2 February 2025.⁴ That country is Russia.

Afghanistan’s mid-2020s cement plant-building drive has spawned previously unheard-of partnerships across cultural chasms, all under conditions of informal international relations. It presents a vision of this erstwhile peripheral nation of South, West and Central Asia as a connector of them all in an emergent super-region. Naïve expectations have gone to die in Afghanistan in the past; on the other hand, this collaboration with nations as diverse as China and Türkiye may have a liberalising effect on the political culture of Afghanistan and transform its cement sector, if not in this generation, then in time.

References

1 Afghan Biographies, ‘Ghori Cement Factory,’ October 2023, https://afghan-bios.info/index.php?option=com_afghanbios&id=2301&task=view&total=3600&start=1089&Itemid=2#

2 TRT World, ‘Why is Taliban relying on cement production to achieve Afghan self-reliance,’ 26 March 2024, https://www.trtworld.com/article/17519719

3 World Bank Data, ‘Population, total - Afghanistan,’ August 2025, ‘https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?end=2024&locations=AF&start=1960

4 Reuters, ‘US to cut tariffs on India to 18%, India agrees to end Russian oil purchases,’ 2 February 2026, www.reuters.com/world/india/trump-says-agreed-trade-deal-with-india-2026-02-02/