Brazil: Paulo Camillo Penna, the president of the National Union of Cement Industry (SNIC), has blamed a fall in national cement sales on a truck drivers strike. Despite forecasting growth a strike in May 2018 caused sales to halt for 10 days. Cement sales fell by 1.5% year-on-year to 25.4Mt in the first half of 2018 from 25.8Mt in the same period of 2017.
SNIC originally expected the local cement industry to grow its sales by 1 – 2% in 2018. However, the poor first half of the year and a slowdown in the country’s economic growth has led SNIC to revise its forecast downwards.
