Displaying items by tag: Clinker

Australia: The new Geelong grinding plant, situated near Lascelles Wharf in Victoria, has commenced operations. It has the capacity to grind 1.3Mt/yr of granulated blast furnace slag and clinker. It will utilise slag to reduce landfill waste and substitute cement in concrete products. According to Boral’s post on LinkedIn, the plant will provide direct and indirect job opportunities to help boost the Geelong economy.

Catalonia: Cement consumption in Catalonia decreased by 3% year-on-year to 1.1Mt in the first half of 2024. Cement production rose by 0.2% year-on-year to 3.21Mt. However, cement and clinker exports dropped by 25% to 1.5Mt.

The president of Ciment Català, Salvador Fernández Capo, said "The continued infrastructure deficit is hindering Catalonia's economic growth, affecting the well-being and quality of life of its citizens and diminishing the competitiveness of the country's economy.”

Nepal: Exports of cement and clinker reached US$48bn in the 2024 financial year, tripling the figure from 2023, according to the Department of Customs. Exports of cement were US$23.5m, while clinker exports stood at US$22.5m.

This follows the government’s introduction of an 8% cash incentive for mine-based product exports and the identification of cement as a potential export item in the Nepal Trade Integration Strategy 2023. Policy changes, including tariff waivers on significant electricity usage by manufacturers, also contributed to this growth.

France: Irish cement producer Ecocem plans to industrialise a new technology that will be implemented at its Dunkirk site in northern France by 2025. The technology, called ACT, replaces clinker with limestone filler to reportedly reduce the carbon footprint of cement by 70% compared to the average French cement.

The company is relying on public funding from Bpifrance, the Hauts-de-France region and the urban community of Dunkirk.

A battle over cement pricing in Ghana reached a new stage this week when the Chamber of Cement Manufacturers (COCMAG) hit back at proposed government regulation. Frédéric Albrecht, the chair of the association, told a meeting that about 80% of local production costs linked to cement manufacture are related to the local currency exchange rate. So fixing the price would do little to address the main cause behind rises.

Albrecht was speaking at a stakeholders’ forum organised by the Ghana Chamber of Construction. The group was convened to discuss the government’s proposed Ghana Standards Authority (Pricing of Cement) Regulations 2024 that were formally presented in the country’s parliament in early July 2024. The association argues that the cement sector has not been consulted properly over the proposal and that introducing it could have negative consequences for the construction sector as a whole. It says that imported clinker is subject to numerous taxes and that the average price of cement has actually lagged behind the rate of inflation.

The government is dealing with an economic crisis that forced it to default on its external debts in 2022 and ask the International Monetary Fund for support. This has led to depreciation of the local currency and high inflation. Around the same time the authorities have also been attempting to regulate the cement sector more closely. In 2022 the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) took action against a brand of cement, Empire Cement, that appeared to be on sale without any of the required permits. Then in the autumn of 2023 the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) shut down Wan Heng Ghana’s grinding plant in Tema after the company failed to pay a major tax bill. Action by the GSA followed when it shut down three more plants in the Ashanti Region - Xin An Safe Cement Ghana, Kumasi Cement Ghana and Unicem Cement Ghana - for using inferior materials in cement production.

In April 2024 a nine-member committee was established to monitor and coordinate the local cement industry. Notably, cement producers have been required to register with the committee in order to secure a licence to manufacture cement. Kobina Tahir Hammond, the Trade and Indus¬try Minister, then said in late June 2024 that the government wanted to intervene in cement pricing to protect consumers from what he described as the ‘haphazard’ increment in cement prices by manufacturers. A legislative instrument doing just that was presented in parliament on 2 July 2024. Around the same time the GSA reportedly threatened to close down ‘several’ more cement plants for non-compliance.

The cement industry in Ghana is particularly vulnerable to currency exchange effects as it is dominated by grinding plants. One integrated cement plant, Savanna Diamond Cement, was launched in the north of the country in the mid 2010s. However, this compares to 14 licensed grinding plants in the country reported in the local media. This includes units run by Ciments de l’Afrique (CIMAF), Dangote Cement, Diamond Cement (WACEM) and Heidelberg Materials subsidiary Ghacem and its CBI Ghana joint-venture amongst others. This makes it one of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with the most grinding plants, along with places such as Mozambique and South Africa. When the Ministry of Trade and Industry started a consultation on regulating the cement sector in late 2023 it calculated that the country produced 7.2Mt of cement in 2021 and that the country had an overcapacity of 3.5Mt. This gives the country an estimated cement production capacity of just below 11Mt/yr.

Some sense of the growing costs that the cement sector in Ghana is facing can be seen in the Ghana Statistical Trade Report for 2023. Clinker was the country’s third biggest import by value at US$206m. It was only exceeded by diesel and other automotive oil products. The Ghana Statistical Service reported that most of the country’s imported clinker in 2023 came from Egypt, South Africa and its neighbours in West Africa. Both Dangote Cement and Heidelberg Materials flagged up the country’s economy as being hyperinflationary in their respective annual reports for 2023.

Argument and counter-argument over cement pricing is prevalent around the world especially in Africa. Fellow West African country Nigeria, for example, has endured plenty of very public dialogue and debate about the price of cement. In Ghana’s case it seems more likely than not that factors beyond the control of the local cement companies are driving the prices given the grinding-dominated nature of the sector with lots of different companies involved. Negative currency effects and inflation look more likely to be driving cement prices than anything else, although one should always be wary of the potential for cartel-like behaviour by cement producers. The economic crisis in Ghana certainly fits the bill for the conventional introduction of price controls on selected commodities but getting the fine tuning right could be difficult in practice. Fixed prices will reassure consumers in the short term provided supplies hold. Beyond this the actual causes of the high cement prices should emerge in time.

Italy: The President of the Italian cement association Federbeton, Stefano Gallini, has highlighted the disadvantages of cement and clinker production relocating to non-EU countries with lower costs, according to Milan Finance.

New data from from the Federation of Italian Cement Producers reports that imports of non-European cement into Italy rose by 22.6% year-on-year in 2023 to 3.6Mt. From 2018 to 2023, the import of intercontinental cement has increased by 572%, compared to a 6.5% increase in European purchases.

Vietnam: The average export value of Vietnamese cement and clinker has dropped sharply in 2023 due to falling prices, with the average price for clinker declining to US$31-32/t in May 2024, from US$46-48/t in 2022. The Vietnam News Brief Service reports that the Ministry of Construction (MoC) has identified an increase in export tax from 5% to 10% starting 1 January 2023, and additional anti-dumping duties imposed by the Philippines in March 2023, as barriers reducing the global competitiveness of Vietnamese clinker.

In response, the MoC has proposed eliminating the export tax on clinker and revising policies to allow for VAT refunds on clinker exports. According to the MoC, resolving these tax and VAT issues is key to the success of Vietnamese clinker exports, which currently lag 20% behind international competitors,

India: Ultratech Cement has commissioned an additional 3.35Mt/yr of clinker and 1.8Mt/yr of grinding capacity at a unit in Tadipatri, according to Reuters. This expansion is part of a broader 22.6Mt/yr capacity expansion announced in June 2022, which will bring the company's total cement capacity to 154.86Mt/yr.

Uganda: Richard Todwong, leader of the National Resistance Movement party, launched his Karamoja mobilisation tour at the clinker cement plant in Moroto District on 24 June 2024. The plant is owned by West International Holding, a subsidiary of China West Cement, and is currently under construction. Once operational in 2025, it will produce about 6000t/day of clinker and cement, according to New Vision. The project is valued at US$300m, spanning 81 hectares and employing over 1000 people in the Karamoja sub-region. Uganda imports over 50% of its clinker supply and this project will reportedly support the government’s import substitution initiative by allowing for local manufacture of clinker.

Germany: Berlin-based AI startup Alcemy, in partnership with German cement producer Spenner, has produced a commercially viable low-carbon cement alternative named ‘CEM X’. This product reportedly reduces carbon emissions by 65% and has less than 30% clinker content, according to the company. The composition incorporates a blend of 33% granulated blast furnace slag and 37% limestone.

Alcemy CEO Leopold Spenner said "With 'CEM X,' we have reached a significant milestone on our journey to decarbonising the cement industry.”