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Trying it on and liming it up
Written by David Perilli, Global Cement
12 April 2017
Unsurprisingly the European Commission blocked Duna-Dráva Cement’s (DDC) attempted purchase of Cemex Croatia this week. Merging the country’s biggest cement producer with its largest importer was going to be a challenge for the commission. Whereas in previous transactions the various parties offered business disposals to ease the commission’s concerns, here all they were got was access to a cement terminal in Metković in southern Croatia. And this facility on the Neretva river is currently being leased by Cemex! Clearly this didn’t give the impression of being a long term solution.
Compare this with the merger between Lafarge and Holcim in 2015 where multiple sales were proposed to make sure the deal went through. Or look at the acquisition of Italcementi by HeidelbergCement in 2016 where the parties sold Italcementi’s Belgian subsidiary Compagnie des Ciments Belges to Cementir to make the deal happen. In comparison to these deals the attempt by HeidelbergCement and Schwenk, through their subsidiary DDC, comes across as a calculated gamble designed to test the resolve of the commission. If the commission had somehow passed the proposed acquisition then the companies would have cornered the market. If it turned it down, as it has, then nothing would be lost other than putting together the bid. HeidelbergCement had its mind on bigger things as it bought and then integrated Italcementi.
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager summed up the mood of the commission: “For mergers between direct competitors, we generally have a preference for a clean, structural solution, such as selling a production plant. HeidelbergCement and Schwenk decided not to offer that. Instead they proposed to give a competitor access to a cement terminal in southern Croatia. Essentially, this amounted to giving a competitor access to a storage facility – without existing customers or established access to cement, without brands and without sales or managerial staff.”
Elsewhere, the other big story in the industry news this week was Votorantim’s decision to focus on the lime business in Brazil by adding lime units to some of its existing cement plants. Given the dire state of the local cement and construction industry, initiatives to break the deadlock have been expected. The alternative is plant closures and divestures, such as the ongoing talks by Camargo Corrêa to sell the other big local producer, InterCement. Votorantim plans to build lime units attached to the cement plants at Nobres in Mato Grosso, Xambioa in Tocantins, Primavera in Pará and Idealiza in Goiás. Unfortunately the agricultural areas of the country and ones with cement plants don’t overlay neatly. Cement production is mainly focused in the south-eastern states and Votorantim are targeting the Cerrado, in the centre of the country, for the lime business.
The scale of the project, at US$50m, the scale of the lime business generally and the addition of lime units at cement plants suggest that the pivot to lime can only be a sideline to cement and construction. Given the similarity of the cement and lime production processes the announcement would be much more significant were Votorantim set to convert clinker kilns into lime ones. A notable example of this was at Cement Australia’s Gladstone plant in Queensland, Australia. Here a mothballed FCB-Ciment clinker kiln was converted into a lime kiln in the early 2000s. At the time the cost of the conversion project was valued at just under US$20m. If Votorantim was seriously thinking of doing this at a few of their underperforming cement plants then one would expect the bill to be higher than US$50m. However, it’s early days yet.
The cost of climate change policies on cement production in the UK
Written by David Perilli, Global Cement
05 April 2017
Check out this great graph that the UK Mineral Products Association (MPA) released in its latest sustainable development report this week. It lays out where the MPA says the various direct and indirect costs come from climate change policies per tonne of cement.
Graph 1: The cumulative burden of direct and indirect cost of climate change policies on the cement sector (per tonne of cement). GBP£1 = Euro0.94 at time of writing. Source: MPA.
If it’s correct then the two biggest contributors from carbon taxes on the price of cement in the UK arise from the Carbon Price Support (CPS) mechanism and the Renewable Obligation (RO). Between them the two policies account for around two-thirds of the carbon tax burden on the price of cement. Of note to an industry advocacy body like the MPA, both of these derive from local legislation and they could be changed or dispensed with separate to the Brexit negotiations to extricate the UK from the European Union that have just officially started.
The MPA then goes on to warn that these added costs could rise from GBP£3.24/t at present to GBP£4/t in 2020 and then the truly terrifying (to energy intensive manufacturers at least) GBP£17/t. Subsequently the MPA has flagged these potentially mounting costs as the biggest threat to the UK cement industry in the near future. Failure to act could mean more foreign imports, loss of jobs and damage to the security of supply. All very heavy stuff. The MPA’s warning was nicely timed to precede the UK government’s response to a consultation on another decarbonisation scheme, the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme. Here, the government is about to exempt high-energy users, including cement producers.
Essentially, the key message from the MPA’s report is that the cement sector is picking up but it is still below sales levels in 2007. At the same time it has made all these environmental improvements and, now, steadily tightening regulations threaten its future. Just compare this with the situation in the US where the Portland Cement Association (PCA) recently applauded President Donald Trump’s executive order to roll back environmental legislation from the Obama administration. Despite this it insisted that its members were committed to manufacturing products with a ‘minimal’ environmental footprint.
Funnily enough the MPA didn’t mention environmental issues when it released its updated Brexit priorities for the UK government. This is understandable given the graph above that suggests that the majority of the carbon costs on cement production come from UK legislation. However, sharing a land border with the EU south of Northern Ireland may give rise to all sorts of market skulduggery once any sort of post-Brexit deal becomes clear. And this doesn’t even take into account moving secondary cementitious materials about, like slag, or the UK’s international market in solid recovered fuels (SRF) and the like. Differences in UK and EU overall carbon costs on cement may start to have acute implications for producers in both jurisdictions as the negotiations build. In this atmosphere moves like Ireland’s Quinn Cement’s last month, to build a terminal on the UK side of the Irish border, make a lot of sense.
China embraces alternative fuels
Written by David Perilli, Global Cement
29 March 2017
Lots of fascinating information has been emerging in recent weeks about changes in the Chinese cement industry as the larger producers have published their annual financial results. One example is the focus on using alternative fuels to fire up kilns. As explained below, the spotlight on co-processing is state-mandated and this is why the producers are now keen to promote their adherence. Even so, as ever with China, the scale of the change is staggering.
For example, Anhui Conch reported that it had completed 15 waste treatment projects and one sludge treatment project in 2016. In addition it had three projects still undergoing construction at the year-end. The group said that it co-processed 600,000t of domestic waste in its cement kilns in 2016. All of this was achieved by a company that says it only started co-processing municipal waste from its first project in 2010. China Resources Cement’s (CRC) progress was slower but it managed to start a co-processing project at its plant in Binyang County, Guangxi in December 2015 and a sludge project in Nanning City, Guangxi in July 2016. New projects at Tianyang County, Guangxi and Midu County, Yunnan are being built at present, with completion expected by the end of 2017.
Long held rumours about production overcapacity in China came to head in 2015 with the National Bureau of Statistics in China (NBSC) reporting that sales dropped in 2015 following a decade of steady growth. Then the results of most of major producers followed this by falling in 2015. CRC presented a good history of what happened next in the Chinese cement industry in its results report [LINK]. In brief, in 2016 the Chinese government implemented supply-side structural reforms focusing on production efficiency, reiterating attempts to stop new production capacity being built and pushing environmental reforms. Throughout the year various government offices released guidelines to encourage market consolidation, cut obsolete production capacity, increase co-processing rates and decrease the energy needed to produce each tonne of clinker.
Graph 1: Cement sales in China, 2012 – 2016. Source: National Bureau of Statistics in China.
Whether or not any of this has helped the Chinese cement industry to overcome the problems it faced in 2015 is unclear. As Graph 1 shows, Chinese cement sales started to rise again slightly to 2.35Bnt in 2016 from 2.31Bnt in 2015. Sales revenue from some of the major cement producers presents a more varied picture as can be seen in Graph 2. Anhui Conch’s revenue rose by 9.7% year-on-year to US$8.12bn in 2016, China National Building Material Company’s (CNBM) revenue rose by 1% to US$14.8bn and CRC’s revenue fell by 4.2% to US$3.3bn. CRC may have suffered here from its relative business concentration in southeast China. Both Anhui Conch’s and CNBM’s results seemed to look patchy in mid-2016 when they released their half-year reports, but both sales and profits seemed to pick up sharply in the second half of the year.
Graph 2: Sales revenue from selected major Chinese cement producers. Source: Company annual reports.
As the current set of structural reforms kick in within the Chinese cement industry it will be interesting to see what happens next. From plans to cut 10% of local clinker production capacity by 2020 to ambitious environmental aims the sector barely has time to catch its breath. The question is whether the major producers balance sheets are being helped more by a recovering local market or by the reforms. Either way the uptake of alternative fuels is encouraging.
Update on the UAE
Written by David Perilli, Global Cement
22 March 2017
Given the low oil price the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) (including the UAE) have taken a knock in recent years. So, the news this week that Arkan has closed its Emirates Cement plant in Al Ain for good may not be too surprising. The building materials producer opened its whopping 5.7Mt/yr Al Ain Cement plant in late 2014 and, now that rising energy costs have become too much of a burden it appears to have shut down the older plant for good and moved the production across. Now it says the new unit is operating at nearly full capacity.
Arkan’s cement business saw its revenue fall by 9% year-on-year to US$220m in 2016 from US$239m in 2015. Net profit fell more sharply, by 25% to US$20.6m. The chairman cited a ‘harsh current market cycle’ as the cause of his company’s woes and also blamed a heavy rainstorm in March 2016. The storm caused an interruption in production due to a damaged conveyor belt at its Al Ain Cement plant that stalled the production on half of its raw material handling line. The producer turbocharged its sales and profits in 2014 with the opening of the new plant and managing to continue the growth in 2015 but it slowed down in 2016. Arkan has also been in the alternative fuels news this week with the announcement of plans to test burning spent pot lining. This certainly hints at a producer trying to minimise its fuel spend.
Other local producers have had similar experiences. Fujairah Cement reported that its revenue fell by 2.5% to US$162m from US$167m although it did manage to grow its profit by 12% to US$15.4m. Earlier in the year it attributed the rise in profits to higher prices and cost control on the production side. The producer, a subsidiary of India’s JK Cement, operates a dual Ordinary Portland Cement and White Cement plant. Union Cement’s revenue fell by 10% to US$153m from US$170m and its profit fell by 19% to US$22.9m from US$28.2m.
A report by Deloitte on the construction market in Dubai published in early 2016 showed that the UAE became a net exporter of cement in 2010. Local producers exported 3Mt of cement in 2012 and this was aided by high energy cost subsidies. Prior to this the nation had been importing large amounts of cement and building up its local production capacity to meet its voracious real estate market. However, this previously caused problems in 2007 when the real estate market crashed. More recently the Dubai Chamber reported that the potential value of construction projects awarded in 2016 was US$36.5bn. Overall in the GCC the value of contracts fell by 17% year-on-year. Locally, the Dubai construction sector’s real added value, or its contribution to the national gross domestic product, fell in 2012 before rising slowly subsequently but its growth rate picked up in 2013 and then started to slow down.
Looking at the broader economy the World Bank reckoned in the autumn of 2016 that growth in the UAE was predicted to continue slowing in 2016 before picking up in 2018 due to rising oil prices. In the midst of uncertain times a report by the Dubai Chamber called for cement producers to improve their competitiveness, save on production costs, use more alternative fuels and push exports. To this end Arkan’s trial with spent pot lining and today’s news of a technology start-up promoting a fly ash and slag cement for 3D printing suggest a cement and construction industry marking time before growth returns.
European Emissions Trading System: Integrating industrial, trade and climate policies
Written by Bruno Vanderborght, Lesscoo GmbH
15 March 2017
The Global Cement Weekly column of 22 February 2017 entitled ‘European Union (very) slowly tightens the screws on its Emissions Trading Scheme,’1 bears witness to the misconception that we must choose between protecting the cement industry OR the climate. Quite the opposite is true: the objective is the cohesion between economic prosperity, meeting cement market demand AND lowering CO2 emissions.
It is undisputed that, if climate protection is aspired to, there needs to be an adequate regulatory incentive that supports, perhaps even strengthens, industry’s profitability when companies act to lower their CO2 emission. Some companies have tried selling low CO2-cement at a price premium, marketing their lower embedded carbon. In a commodity market of a grey powder where low prices are a decisive purchasing point, this obviously doesn’t fly.
The only sustainable business incentive is to pass on the full cost of CO2 not only in production but also in consumption of products. This would effectively result in higher cement sales prices for high-CO2 cement and lower prices but higher margins for low-CO2 cement, without losing competitiveness to producers that do not face regulatory CO2 constraints. Hence, a win-win-win situation for low carbon cement producers, consumers and the environment. This is after all the purpose of the sectoral ETS mechanism with inclusion of importers and no free allowance allocation.
The studies undertaken by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for CEMBUREAU simulated the potential gross margin for the domestic cement industry in case of different leakage prevention mechanisms. While this may sound shocking for some, there is nothing wrong with aiming at maximisation of gross margin. Quite the opposite, gross margin maximisation is absolutely necessary for the cohesion between economic prosperity and climate protection and the effectiveness of an ETS.
The BCG studies led to the conclusion that in case of a tightening CO2 allowance cap and under certain market conditions the importers’ inclusion mechanism can yield the best margin for the industry. Since however, as the Global Cement Weekly column mentions, the EU only very slowly tightens the screws on the supply of emission allowances, there will be sufficient free allocation for industry and there remains little need to lower emissions and thus little need for an importers’ inclusion mechanism.
CEMBUREAU called into doubt the representativeness of the technology penetration reported by the Cement Sustainability Initiative’s Getting the Numbers Right database. It is a well-established fact that the penetration of modern preheater precalciner kilns in most emerging countries is higher than in Europe, because the industry is younger outside of Europe and hence most installations have been built with more recent, more energy-efficient technology. Besides the CSI database, cement CO2 inventories exist for about 10 emerging countries. They all confirm the same.
Beyond the comparison with other regions however, an emissions trading system that after 12 years still enables one fifth of production being made using the most energy-intensive technologies objectively misses its purpose.
Despite consuming up to 50% more energy than the Best Available Technology, such installations can survive thanks to free allocation and the revenues from waste derived fuels. The industry legitimately highlights the environmental benefits of using waste as a fuel. However, it is questionable whether keeping energy-intensive installations alive thanks to cheap energy from waste is consistent with this environmental narrative.
The proposed changes to the EU ETS will not improve its effectiveness for the cement industry. Quite the opposite, it will make it even less effective because the introduction of a dynamic allocation based on a clinker benchmark completely nullifies the need for the industry to lower the clinker content in cement.
CEMBUREAU indeed has the right to protect the industry it represents, but is probably short sighted and ill informed when it does so to the detriment of society’s necessity to mitigate climate change. The rejection of the importers’ inclusion mechanism is a missed opportunity for the European Union to make the ETS effective and for the cement industry to maintain its competitiveness in a carbon constrained world.
Eric Olsen, CEO of LafargeHolcim, the largest global cement company, and chairman of the Cement Sustainability Initiative, has called for a meaningful and increasing carbon price that can be passed through the whole product value chain and for trade policy to be included in the ETS.2
Lakshmi Mittal, Chairman of ArcelorMittal, the largest global steel company, has also called for a border adjustment measure and inclusion of consumption in climate policies.3 High quality research by leading economists exists on this topic.4 Now that the reform of the EU ETS enters the trilogue negotiation between European Council, Commission and Parliament, these industry leaders should step forward with a concrete and workable solution to combine industrial, trade and climate policies by 2020.
1. http://www.globalcement.com/news/item/5836-european-union-very-slowly-tightens-the-screws-on-its-emissions-trading-scheme
2. WEF, Davos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_mhqcNR0uA
3. Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/8341b644-ef95-11e6-ba01-119a44939bb6
4. Climate Strategies, UK: http://climatestrategies.org/?s=consumption