Displaying items by tag: Asia

India: Aditya Birla Group subsidiary UltraTech Cement will invest US$1.23bn to grow its cement production capacity by 10% to 241Mt/yr. The company’s board has approved new plant projects and expansions amounting to 22.8Mt/yr of additional capacity, scheduled to begin coming online from the start of the 2028 financial year on 1 April 2027.

Chair Kumar Mangalam Birla said “The latest capacity expansion follows US$5.69bn invested in the past five years. The investment reflects the company’s confidence in the Indian economy and the scale of its infrastructure ambitions. When capital is deployed strategically, it energises ecosystems, deepens industrial linkages and creates durable employment. As India enters a transformative era of infrastructure and economic development, UltraTech is well-positioned to meet the rising demand for cement.”

Australia: Boral has applied to extend its Montrose quarry in Victoria. The Star Mail newspaper reported that the company proposes to expand the quarry’s extraction area by 12.5ha, allowing access to a further 20Mt of additional materials, equivalent to 30 years’ supply for Boral’s local operations.

North Korea: State-owned Komusan Cement has successfully deployed alternative raw materials derived from quarry overburden in cement production at its Komusan cement plant in Hamgyŏng Province. State-run Korean News has reported that the producer presented the resulting products at a provincial building materials exhibition.

The Komusan cement plant reportedly had ‘decades-worth’ of overburden in stockpiles, but previously lacked the equipment to properly process it.

Indonesia: Cement production in Indonesia fell by 8.0% year-on-year in September 2025 compared to September 2024. Volumes fell from 6.24Mt to 5.74Mt, according to data from the Asosiasi Semen Indonesia (ASI). Blended cement accounted for 4.10Mt (71% of production), with ordinary Portland cement (OPC) accounting for 1.64Mt (29%).

The nation’s cement producers sold 6Mt of cement in September 2025, 1.3% less than the 6.07Mt sold in the same month of 2024. All regions of the country experienced a decline in sales, with the sole exception of Bali-Nustra, which noted a 16.3% rise in despatches.

The biggest regional market, Java, saw despatches slip by 0.3% to 3.11Mt from 3.12Mt in September 2024. The next biggest region, Sumatra, saw a fall of 3.5%, from 1.36Mt to 1.31Mt. Despatches in the third-largest market of Sulawesi were down by 2.2% from 0.49Mt 0.48Mt.

In partial compensation for falling domestic sales, cement exports rose by 11.0% in September 2025 relative to a year earlier. Volumes rose from 90,400t to 100,350t. Top export markets, in descending order by volume, were East Timor, followed by the Maldives, the Philippines, Taiwan and Papua New Guinea. Small amounts of clinker were also exported, primarily to Bangladesh, Taiwan, Angola, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Mozambique.

Kazakhstan: Steppe Cement has announced that its revenue for the third quarter of 2025 has grown, principally due to increased sales volumes. The company’s revenue for the period rose by 21% year-on-year to US$34.0m. Sales volumes grew by 13% to 0.70Mt.

For the nine months that ended on 30 September 2025, Steppe Cement saw its revenues rise by 28% year-on-year to US$74.9m. Total sales volumes came to 1.55Mt, 15.7% higher than the 1.34Mt sold in the first nine months of 2024.

Steppe Cement’s CEO Javier del Ser Perez said "During the first nine months of 2025, the company has achieved record production volumes of clinker and cement, exceeding the results of any comparable period in previous years. The plant continues to increase production and remains focused on driving further growth whilst limiting the capex required."

Steppe Cement estimates that total cement demand for 2025 in Kazakhstan will be 13Mt, with the group's market share expected to stay at 14 - 15%.

Philippines: The Cement Manufacturers’ Association of the Philippines (CeMAP) has welcomed the government’s move to impose a temporary safeguard duty of US$6.00/t on two kinds of imported cement as a measure to strengthen the local industry. In a statement on 16 October 2025 CeMAP said it ‘respects the decision’ of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to adopt the recommended measures of the Tariff Commission (TC). CeMAP had hoped that the duty, which will apply for three years, would have been higher.

The DTI earlier found a causal link between the increased imports of cement products and the serious injury to the domestic industry. This was later confirmed by the TC. In its report to the DTI, the TC said the safeguard duty is the difference between the weighted average store price of imported cement and the weighted average selling price of locally-made cement during 2024.

India: Dalmia Bharat has reported an almost five-fold increase in consolidated net profit for the second quarter of the 2026 financial year (FY2026), which ended on 30 September 2025. The company’s net profit for the quarter was US$27.1m, up from US$5.6m a year earlier. The company’s revenue from operations rose by 10.7% year-on-year to US$388.3m.

At the same time, Dalmia Bharat announced that its 3.6Mt/yr Umrangso clinker line commenced trial production in September 2025 and is on schedule to start commercial production by the start of 2026. This will increase the company’s installed cement capacity from 49.5Mt/yr to 53.1Mt/yr.

Kazakhstan/Uzbekistan: The head of Kazakhstan’s Cement and Concrete Producers Association (QazCem), Erbol Akimbayev, has claimed that Uzbekistan’s Cabinet of Ministers issued a confidential order in July 2025 that disrupted cement exports from Kazakhstan, ‘severely impacting’ bilateral trade.

Akimbayev alleged that the document requires Kazakh exporters to declare cement at a price 10 times higher than normal and pay taxes accordingly, making exports unprofitable, according to local press.

Akimbayev said “As a result, in August 2025, imports of Kazakh cement to Uzbekistan dropped to zero for the first time in seven years. At that price, no one in Uzbekistan will buy it. But if Uzbekistan acts this way, Kazakhstan has every right to introduce reciprocal measures.”

He added that the association is in discussions with government bodies and industry partners, warning that reciprocal measures could lead to a fall in imports from Uzbekistan. He suggested that Uzbekistan is seeking to protect its domestic producers amid market oversupply ‘by any means necessary.’

Australia: Zeotech has executed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Cement Australia to exchange information and conduct testing for the company’s AusPozz high-reactivity metakaolin product. The collaboration will assess AusPozz’s technical performance and value, alongside evaluating Cement Australia’s infrastructure and supply chain options, with the aim of advancing its commercialisation.

Cement Australia general manager sales, marketing and risk Phil Halpin said “Cement Australia is pleased to enter this arrangement with Zeotech. The company’s high-grade kaolin has strong potential as a viable feedstock for producing high-reactivity metakaolin. Our planned technical assessment of AusPozz will focus on validating its performance as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) for low-carbon concrete applications. In parallel, Cement Australia will undertake a detailed evaluation of the infrastructure and end-to-end supply chain requirements.”

Zeotech executive director Shane Graham said “We are pleased to be partnering with one of Australia’s largest suppliers of building materials. The MoU provides a framework for ongoing collaboration aimed at accelerating the development of AusPozz and evaluating pathways toward commercial-scale production. This partnership represents an important step in supporting the decarbonisation of the built environment through the development of high-performance, low-carbon construction materials.”

India: Recycling equipment manufacturer Fornnax Technology has launched the R-MAX3300, its largest secondary shredder, at IFAT India 2025 in Mumbai on 14 October 2025. The machine is designed to process low-density waste streams such as municipal solid waste, commercial and industrial waste, bulky waste, legacy waste, wood waste and construction and demolition waste. The R-MAX3300 produces refuse-derived fuel (RDF) and solid recovered fuel (SRF) with particle sizes between 30 and 50mm.

Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology Jignesh Kundaria said “With the rising challenges of waste management in India and globally, this machine is not just a product; it’s a powerful tool for change. We engineered it to handle the most difficult waste streams with unparalleled efficiency, turning what was once considered unusable waste into a valuable resource. It directly addresses the urgent demand for effective, large-scale shredding technology that can support cement kilns and waste-to-energy facilities in achieving the desired output.”

According to the company, India currently generates over 160,000t/day of municipal solid waste. Simultaneously, the global industrial shredder market is expected to grow at a 5-6% CAGR, driven by stricter recycling regulations and increasing waste generation.