October 2025

India: Ramco Cements has entered into an agreement with Ramco Industries, a fellow subsidiary of Ramco Group, to buy a 216,000t/yr grinding plant at Kharagpur in West Bengal. The deal covers the land and equipment at the site. The cement producer will pay US$2.6m as part of the agreement.

Sri Lanka: The Sri Lanka Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) has allowed Insee Cement and Tokyo Cement to increase the prices of a 50kg bag of cement. The Ministry of Industry and Commerce gave its approval subject to the ratification of the CAA as it is a price-controlled commodity, according to the Times of Sri Lanka newspaper. The cement producers made the request to raise their prices due to increasing costs of raw materials. However, the country’s three other producers have not made any request to the CAA to raise their prices and the cost of imported cement is reported unchanged.

Nepal: The Nepal Bureau of Standards and Metrology (NBSM) has taken action against seven cement producers that have broken its standards in the current financial year that runs to mid-July 2018. The bureau found defects in product declarations made by the industries, according to the Republica newspaper. The sanctioned cement companies were MJP Cement, Ganapati Cement, Hetauda Cement, National Cement, Supreme Cement, Himalayas Cement and Nepal Ambuja Cement. The bureau has suspended the license of MJP Cement and asked the other companies not to sell their products until the quality is restored.

The cement producers were found to be breaking the quality of their products, incorrectly declaring products and failing to meet technical requirements such as the compressive strength grade mandated by the Nepal Standard Regulations. The NBSM has asked all the companies to provide it with written clarification within 15 days of the inspection.

Trinidad & Tobago: Storms and a poor market in Trinidad and Tobago have reduced Trinidad Cement’s sales in 2017. Its sales revenue fell by 9% year-on-year to US$254m in 2017 from US$280m in 2016. It made a loss of US$37.8m in 2017 compared to a profit of US$7.77m in 2016. However, the group reported that Jamaica was an exception and that it continued to display ‘robust’ economic growth that partly offset the group’s falling sales.

South Africa: Peter Nelson has resigned as the chairman of PPC. He has been replaced by Jabu Moleketi. The changeover follows the demand in late February 2018 by Prudential Investment Managers, a large shareholder of PPC, that Nelson leave the role. Sydney Mhlarhi and Dawn Earp have also resigned as non-executive directors of the cement producer.

Moleketi is the Non-Executive Chairman of Brait as well as the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), Vodacom and Harith General Partners. He was the Deputy Minister of Finance (South Africa) from 2004 to 2008 and MEC of Financial and Economic Affairs in the Gauteng Provincial Government from 1994 to 2004. During his tenure as the Deputy Minister of Finance, he was the chairperson of the Public Investment Corporation. Moleketi holds a Masters in Financial Economics from the University of London and an Advanced Management Programme from Harvard.

Other personnel changes include the appointment of Noluvuyo Mkhondo and Antony Ball to the board as non-executive directors of PPC.

Mkhondo is an investment banking and corporate finance professional, having spent time at Goldman Sachs International and Anglo American in the UK where she was responsible for mergers and acquisition execution, investment evaluation and strategic long term financial planning. During her time at Goldman Sachs and Anglo American, she executed cross-border transactions in Consumer / Retail, Healthcare, Real Estate and Metals and Mining across the UK, Africa and the Americas. Mkhondo is a Chartered Accountant by profession, having begun her career in the Audit and Advisory Financial Institutions services Team at Deloitte in Johannesburg. In addition, she has an MBA from London Business School where she was a Mo Ibrahim Scholar.

Ball is the co-founder of Value Capital Partners (VCP). Prior to that, his notable business accomplishment was the founding in 1990 and building of Brait, a South African private equity business. Ball is a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Cuba: The government has allocated over US$26m to upgrade three of the country’s cement plants. Pavel Cansino Ávila, deputy director of the Cement Business Group, told the Cuban News Agency that the Santiago de Cuba plant, also known as the José Mercerón plant, will be replaced with a new plant. The new unit is scheduled to be built by 2021 and it will have a production capacity of 1.2Mt/yr. The Siguaney plant and the Nuevitas plant will also be upgraded in 2018.

In 2017 the six local cement plants were unable to meet a government order of 1.57Mt of cement. Failures occurred due to lack of maintenance budget for the plants, issues due to a lack of packaging materials and logistics issues with deliveries.

Chile: Hurtado Vicuna Group has asked its minor shareholders to support a merger between its subsidiaries Cementos Bicentenario (BSA) and Cementos Polpaico. Hurtado Vicuna holds a 57.1% share in Cementos Polpaico, according to the Diario Financiero newspaper. However, two of the company’s major shareholders, Volcan and Megeve, may oppose the merger. If successful the merger would create Chile’s largest cement producer. As part of its acquisition of Cementos Polpaico, Hurtado Vicuna agreed to sell some of BSA’s assets. This potentially could involve the divestment of BSA’s 26 concrete plants.

Algeria: Production overcapacity has reduced the profits of LafargeHolcim’s subsidiary in Algeria. A source at the cement producer told the El Watan newspaper that the cement market had been hit by overcapacity since July 2017. New capacity is expected to increase local production to a surplus of 20Mt/yr in 2020. LafargeHolcim Algeria aims to export 5Mt/yr but this will still leave an additional production capacity of 15Mt/yr that is expected to lead to a price war and the potential shutdown of plants. In its 2017 annual report the cement producer said that, “…profitability in Algeria diminished in the second half of the year, on the back of weaker cement demand and a shift from a sold-out to an over-supplied environment.”

Namibia: The Whale Rock Cement plant is set to start producing cement at its new grinding plant near Otjiwarongo in April 2018. Using the Cheetah Cement brand name the company had originally intended to start production in January 2018, according to the Namibia Press Agency. Clinker for the plant has been imported from Egypt. Previously, the imported cement was reported by local media as coming from China.

Originally the company intended to buy clinker from a local producer but the negotiations failed leading the cement producer to buy imports instead. Around 24,000t of clinker from a total of 40,000t have been transported from Walvis Bay to Otjiwarongo by 732 trucks. Once fully operational in August 2018 the plant is expected to create around 600 jobs. The company is a joint venture between China’s Asia-Africa Business Management and Whale Rock Cement.

Nepal: Arghakhachi Cement and Jagdamba Cement are planning to build new cement plants. Arghakhachi Cement is spending US$48m on building a new integrated plant, according to the Kathmandu Post newspaper. The new plant will be launched by mid-2018. The company already operates an integrated cement plant at Birpur in Kapilvastu.

Jagdamba Cement is planning to build a 1500t/day cement plant in eastern Bhairahawa. The new unit will create 400 jobs. The cement producer operates two cement-grinding plants at Bhairahawa and Birgunj. The company produces Ordinary Portland Cement, Pozzolana Portland Cement and Pozzolana Slag Cement products.