September 2024
Guyana: Vas Energy subsidiary Georgetown Cement Company has broken ground on construction of its upcoming La Resource, Essequibo Coast cement plant. The Guyana Chronicle newspaper has reported that the company plans to spend US$100m in establishing the plant. When commissioned in mid-2022, it will supply all of Guyana with the possibility of export to neighbouring countries. This will reduce the cost of imported cement by 30%. Georgetown Cement Company plans to employ 180 – 200 people at the plant.
NCL Industries plans Mattapalli cement plant expansion to 3.6Mt/yr and establishment of new grinding plant 24 June 2021
India: NCL Industries is planning to expand its 2.7Mt/yr Mattapalli plant in Suryapet district, Telangana, to 3.6Mt/yr capacity at a cost of US$13.5m. The work includes the installation of vertical roller mills to replace the plant’s ball mills. Times of India newspaper has reported that the company says that it will complete the expansion by 2022.
Its plan also involves the establishment of a new 660,000t/yr grinding plant at nearby Anakapalle, at a cost of US$26.9m. The producer will invest a further US$810,000 in setting up three new ready-mix concrete plants in Hyderabad and Vizag, bringing its total number of concrete plants in the state to eight.
Mexico: Holcim subsidiary Holcim Mexico has inaugurated its new 650,000t/yr cement grinding plant at Umán in Yucatán. The cost of the project was US$40m. The plant will receive clinker from its integrated plants at Macuspana in Tabasco, and Orizaba in Veracruz. The producer says that the plant will optimise delivery times for cement customers in the area. It says that it will create 400 local jobs.
General director Jaime Hill Tinoco said, “At Holcim we are very proud to continue growing with the community, as well as to continue promoting well-being in the region through the creation of direct jobs, infrastructure and investment with this new grinding plant that, as I pointed out on the day that the first stone was laid, will strengthen national and foreign investments in benefit of the growth of the region.”
Vicem increases five-month cement sales in 2021 24 June 2021
Vietnam: State-owned Vicem produced 10.5Mt of cement in the first five months of 2021, an increase of 9% year-on-year. Total cement and clinker sales rose in the period by 8% to 12.8Mt, according to the Viet Nam News newspaper. The company is targeting 26Mt-worth of cement production in 2021, up by 8% year-on-year.
Switzerland: Holcim has launched its Transport Analytics Center (TAC) software platform across its logistics fleets in 50 countries. The centre optimises route mapping, increasing deliveries’ predictability and safety, according to the company. This enables transport emissions tracking, including those of its third-party suppliers. Holcim says that the platform will cover 1.4bn kilometres of journeys by over 60,000 trucks annually. The producer hopes to use the software to reduce its Scope 3 emissions related to transportation and fuels by 20% in 2030 compared to the 2020 baseline of 29Mt of CO2.
Chief information officer Jochen Werling said, “TAC is a great example of how we are becoming a data-driven organisation. With our extensive industry expertise and advanced technologies we are developing cutting-edge digital solutions that are tailored to our specific business needs. TAC is a breakthrough for us as well as for our broader industry.”
Update on Argentina 23 June 2021
Two news stories merit a closer look at Argentina this week. Firstly, Loma Negra fired up the kiln on its new 2.7Mt/yr production line at the L’Amalí cement plant in Olavarría. Work on the US$350m started in 2017 but was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Notably, engineers from China-based Sinoma International Engineering, who built the plant, caused a stir when they arrived in Argentina in full personal protective equipment in late 2020 to continue work on the project. Full commissioning of the second line at the plant is scheduled for July or August 2021.
Almost at the same time, the Argentine government announced it had persuaded local building materials producers to stick to reference prices for construction materials, including cement, in order to control inflation. Loma Negra, Cemento Avellaneda and Petroquímica Comodoro Rivadavia (PCR) were said to be on board with the ‘voluntary’ plan. Building materials prices generally were reported to have risen 85% year-on-year in May 2021 compared to a national inflation rate of 49%. The new arrangement is planned to last until the end of 2021 with revisions to the reference prices every two months.
Graph 1: Cement sales in Argentina including imports and exports, 2016 – 2021. Note that the 2021 figure is an estimate. Source: Asociación de Fabricantes de Cemento Portland (AFCP).
Data from the Asociación de Fabricantes de Cemento Portland (AFCP) doesn’t show any obvious signs of disruption from inflation so far in 2021. Cement sales grew by 50.5% year-on-year to 4.55Mt in the five months to May 2021 from 3.02Mt in the same period in 2020. The cement market in Argentina didn’t shut down but it hit a low of 0.41Mt in April 2020 before compensating with a strong second half of the year, most likely due to pent-up demand as the economy reopened following local coronavirus-related lockdowns. At the time of writing the AFCP has forecast that cement sales will reach 11.3Mt in 2021, a slight rise over the 11.1Mt reported in 2019, when the market was more stable. However, cumulative sales to May 2021 are slightly behind similar sales in 2019.
Loma Negra’s upgrade at its L’Amalí plant follows Holcim Argentina’s inauguration of a new 0.5Mt/yr clinker production line at its Malagueño cement plant in Cordoba in May 2021. This project also added a 0.63Mt/yr cement grinding unit at the site as well as a new 120,000 bag/day despatch unit. Altogether it had a price of US$120m. This followed the announcement in late April 2021 that the subsidiary of LafargeHolcim was planning to open 1000 new branches of its Disensa retail chain in the country by 2024.
Loma Negra reported a 13% drop in sales to US$436m in 2020 from US$500m in 2019. However, its adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 3% to US$139m from US$136m. This was partly aided by the sales of its Paraguayan operations during 2020. At face value, Cemento Avellaneda had a tougher time of its in 2020 with its sales down by 22% to Euro111m and EBITDA down by 9% to Euro37m. However, once adjusted on a like-for-like basis with constant currencies and without a hyperinflation adjustment, its sales and earnings actually rose by 22% and 45% respectively.
Holcim Argentina’s director Christian Dedeu was interviewed by national news agency Télam in May 2021 around the time of the upgrade at the Malagueño cement plant was officially completed. When asked by the company had made the investment he said that the country had potential for both the residential and infrastructure sectors. He also pointed out that the subsidiary of Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim had been forced to import clinker at times of high demand previously. The announcements for both the Loma Negra and Holcim Argentina new lines were made at the end of 2017 when the market hit a high in sales volumes. Since then the country has faced rocketing inflation, further delays to it debt repayment programme to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the coronavirus pandemic. Producing more commodities, such as clinker, domestically certainly seems enticing with high inflation and unfavourable foreign currency exchange rates. So, the new production lines from Loma Negra and Holcim Argentina are well timed in this sense unless they get hit by any mounting input costs, from imported raw materials for example. On the other hand the government’s measures to curb inflation such as reference prices for cement may constrain the cement producers’ flexibility. As the local construction industry slowly recovers after 2020, continued uncertainty lies ahead.
Austria: W&P Zement has appointed Jerneja Potocnik, Florian Salzer and Peter Ramskogler as its finance, technology and sales directors respectively. The trio started their roles in April 2021. The appointments are intended to allow managing directors Lutz Weber and Bernhard Auer to focus on the development and growth of the parent company Alpacem and its other subsidiaries with respect to sustainability and digitisation. The decision is also planned to allow W&P Zement to work on modernising its integrated plants at Wietersdorf and Peggau.
Kuwait: The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has banned all export and re-export of cement and other construction materials from Kuwait. However, it has allowed individual citizens to import construction materials for personal use. The ban is part of a raft of a measures intended to stem the increase in building material prices. The Kuwait News Agency has reported that cement prices rose after the resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak in India suspended Indian imports.
The ministry subsidises building materials including cement and concrete. In May 2021 it paid US$45m towards such subsidies. It continues to monitor the cement market and cement production for ‘unlawful’ price rises.
Kuwait’s cement production capacity is 9.0Mt/yr, while 2020 consumption was 6.0Mt.
Bombs found at India Cements plant in Tamil Nadu 23 June 2021
India: Two pipe bombs have been found by police at India Cements plant at Sankarnagar, Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu. The explosives were discovered after the plant manager was asked for a ransom of around US$70,000, according to the Indo-Asian News Service. Police suspect that the bombs were left at the site by former employees whose contracts were terminated due to coronavirus-related restrictions. However, terrorist activity is also being considered. The cement producer said that no one was hurt in the incident and production at the site continues uninterrupted.
Dominican Republic produces 5.1Mt of cement in 2020 23 June 2021
Dominican Republic: The Dominican Association of Portland Cement Producers (ADOCEM) reports that the local sector produced 5.1Mt of cement in 2020. 4.4Mt was consumed locally and around 0.7Mt was exported, according to the El Día newspaper. The country has five integrated plants and two grinding plants.