No consolidation has happened yet in the Saudi Arabian cement industry but exports have started to be announced. Yanbu Cement signed an export deal in March 2018 to despatch 1Mt of clinker and 0.5Mt of cement from one year from 1 April 2018. Prior to that, Al Jouf Cement Company started a contract to export 72.000t/yr to Jordan from late February 2018. Earlier still, Bahrain was expected to benefit from a lifting of cement export tariffs at the end of January 2018.
Its early days yet but some of sort of action is starting to happen about the country’s falling cement sales. If export deals are in the early stages of being set following the lifting of the ban, then local movements of cement have intensified. As Al Rajhi Capital reports in its latest market update, that producers have been forced by low sales and high inventory levels to take action. It says that cement companies have started to sell products in different parts of the country than they do normally leading to a ‘price war’. The financial services and analytical company has pinpointed the central region as the key battleground as company market shares have fallen over the last six months as northern producers have moved in.
Graph 1: Cement sales (Mt) by quarter in Saudi Arabia, 2015 to March 2018. Source: Yamama Cement.
Cement sales fell by 15% year-on-year to 11.8Mt in the first quarter of 2018 from 13.7Mt in the same period in 2017. This is the first time in recent years that sales did not rise from the fourth quarter to the following first quarter. Not a good sign. Despite the bad news, a few producers did mange to increases their deliveries in the first quarter, including Saudi Cement, Hail Cement, Umm Al Qura Cement and United Cement.
Bizarrely, into this sales environment, plans for the long delayed Al Baha Cement cement plant project have re-emerged. The project previously has received coverage at various stages over the years. This time it has reportedly gained a licence to set up the company and it hopes to start tendering for the build in the second half of 2018. The investors may want to leave it a little longer given the current state of the Saudi cement industry.
