Displaying items by tag: Cherat

Pakistan: Five companies have signalled interest in bidding for Attock Cement. These include Alpha Cement Company, Bestway Cement and Cherat Cement Company, along with military investment fund Fauji Foundation and utilities provider Kot Addu Power Company. Pakistan Today News has reported that Fauji Foundation and Kot Addu Power Company’s plans consist of a joint acquisition of 84% of Attock Cement, followed by a mandatory public offer for the free float. Alpha Cement Company, meanwhile, may seek to buy as much as 92%, through a follow-on offer.

Attock Cement commands 3Mt/yr of capacity in South Pakistan, reportedly an increasingly attractive region, amid the on-going ‘revival’ of exports from Karachi port.

Alpha Cement Company was incorporated in Karachi in November 2024.

Pakistan: Cherat Cement has submitted a proposal to Water and Sanitation Services Peshawar (WSSP) to use municipal solid waste from the city as refuse derived fuel (RDF) under a public-private partnership. The company said that approximately 500t/day of waste is collected from Peshawar and currently dumped at a 1.6Mt capacity landfill. The initiative would replace coal in cement production and generate revenue for WSSP while tackling the issue of solid waste management.

Pakistan: Cherat Cement has commissioned a 6MW solar power plant at its facility in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The project forms part of a 9MW total capacity, with the remaining 3MW expected to be commissioned in the 2025 financial year. The company did not disclose its total renewable energy capacity in the notice.

Pakistan: Cherat Cement CEO Azam Farooq and fellow executives met Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Faisal Karim Kundi on 15 November 2024 to discuss the potential establishment of a new cement plant in Dera Ismail Khan. The Balochistan Times newspaper has reported that the Governor ‘assured full support’ for the proposed project.

Pakistan: Cherat Cement made a net profit of US$52.9m during the 2023 financial year (FY2023), which ended on 31 July 2023, around 1% lower than the previous year. This was despite a 13% year-on-year rise in gross profit in FY2023 to US$32.9m, as cost of sales rose by 18% to US$88.4m. Distribution costs also rose by 15%, while financial costs, mainly higher interest rates, rose by 41%.

Pakistan: Cherat Cement expects cement consumption in Pakistan to fall by 3 – 4% year-on-year in the 2023 financial year, which will end on 30 June 2023. Amid the general decline, the company foresees a slight rise in areas devastated by recent flooding with the onset of repair and rebuilding works during the second half of the financial year. Exports are expected to fall by 20%, with prices remaining level while costs increase due to the high price of imported coal.

Pakistan Business News has reported that Cherat Cement is reappraising the investment cost and planned commercial operation date of its upcoming 8000 – 9000t/day new cement plant. It previously valued the project at US$158 – 173m.

Pakistan: Cherat Cement and Lucky Cement are among three companies to have imported 10,000t of coal from Afghanistan in the two-month period up to 11 July 2022. Asian News International has reported the other company was Fauji Fertilizer Power Station.

The local coal price in Afghanistan was US$188/t on 11 July 2022.

Cement producers in the north of Pakistan have started to increase their use of coal from Afghanistan in response to the ongoing volatility in energy markets. Research from a report by Darson Securities found that companies were already using up to 70% Afghan coal in their fuel mix with a further 20% being considered. Most of the northern producers are reported to have secured the cheaper Afghan coal for about two months of inventory, although Maple Leaf Cement was said to have four to five months of inventory. Meanwhile in the south of the country, producers were reported to be facing a tougher situation as Afghan coal costs more for them due to higher logistics charges and export orders were being reduced due to the low cost of clinker internationally. So they are focusing on the domestic market instead.

Graph 1: Cement despatches in Pakistan, 2015 – 2021. Source: All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association.

Data from the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) shows that cement despatches have been steadily growing since the mid-2010s with a blip in 2020 caused by the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The upward trend has been driven by local sales. Exports have generally grown at the same time, with more variance, but they are yet to regain the high of nearly 11Mt reported in 2009. On a rolling annual basis, local sales have remained steady since mid-2021 but exports have been slowly falling. In April 2021 they were 9.17Mt but by February 2022 they were 7.33Mt. For the February 2022 figures APCMA blamed this on the growing cost of production, rising international freight rates, mounting coal prices and a trade ban with India. On that last point for example, Pakistan-based producers exported 1.21Mt of cement to India in the 2017 – 2018 financial year before exports stopped after February 2019. Despite a brief respite in the spring of 2021 talks are still ongoing to resume trade with India.

On the corporate side the country’s largest cement producer by capacity, Lucky Cement, drew the same conclusion as the APCMA with its half-year results to 31 December 2021. Its local sales volumes were down a little but its exports were down a lot. It noted that the reason its local sales were falling but national industry local sales were up slightly was due to some competitor plants being non-operational in the previous year. However, the company managed to keep sales revenue and earnings increasing year-on-year by successfully combating growing input costs with price rises. Bestway Cement, the country’s other large producer, reported a tougher situation in the second half of 2021, with both local sales and export volumes down. This was attributed to a boom in construction activity in the second half of 2020 as Covid-19 lockdowns were eased. Demand for cement since then was said to be ‘sluggish’ due to inflation and high commodity prices. It also pinned its marked fall in exports on political and economic instability in Afghanistan. However, turnover and operating profit were both up due to higher selling prices.

Elsewhere in the sector news since the start of 2021, Pakistan’s exports to South Africa remained stymied in early 2020 due to a review of ongoing tariffs and the government decision to restrict infrastructure projects to only using locally produced cement. On the sustainability front the APCMA started to set out its decarbonisation strategy in November 2021. It may have a long way to go given that a think tank reported earlier in the year that the cement sector was the largest emitter of coal-related CO₂ emissions in the country, even more than power generation. Alongside this plenty of capacity additions have been announced. Lucky Cement started commercial cement production at its 1.2Mt/yr integrated Samawah cement plant in March 2021. Various new cement plants and upgrades to existing plants have been proposed by Bestway Cement, Cherat Cement, Fauji Cement, Kohat Cement Company, Lucky Cement and Maple Leaf Cement. Finally of note to a sector troubled by energy prices, in September 2021 the Pakistan International Bulk Terminal said it was going to upgrade its coal handling capacity to around 17Mt/yr by 2024.

Last week’s Global Cement Weekly covered Turkey. The contrasts are interesting because both of these countries have high cement exports and have raised energy concerns recently. This leads to the question of whether other cement exporters may be vulnerable to the current situation. Pakistan isn’t the only country where the cement industry is facing the negative effects of growing energy costs. This week in the sector news, Spain-based Tudela Veguín has shut down the kiln at its La Robla plant down for 10 days due to high electricity prices, Thailand-based Siam Cement Group (SCG) announced it was reviewing its investment plans and the UK-based Mineral Products Association lobbied the government on the issue.

The shift to Afghan coal by Pakistan’s cement producers is rational given the current situation. No doubt fuel buyers all over the world are doing similar things. In January 2022 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast that Pakistan’s gross domestic product would grow by around 4% for 2021, 2022 and 2023 but current geopolitical events may test these estimates. Over the last year domestic cement demand has remained strong but inflation, growing input costs and the impetus to further rise prices may change this. Meanwhile, lots of new production capacity is in the pipeline and, if or when it is built, it may add additional competition pressure. This may present a problem in Pakistan if capacity utilisation levels drop but input costs keep on going up.

Pakistan: Cherat Cement’s board of directors has approved plans for a US$215m integrated cement plant at Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pakthunkhwa. The company has already invested US$8.24m in acquiring land and leases for the plant. When commissioned in mid-2024, it will have a capacity of 11,000t/day.

Pakistan: Cherat Cement plans to spend US22m on an upgrade to Line 1 at its integrated plant in Nowshera district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The project includes the installation of a new crusher and general maintenance on the production line.