Displaying items by tag: GCW308

Further shifts in the South Korean cement industry this week as Ssangyong Cement purchased Daehan Cement. Private equity firm Hahn & Company owns both producers so this looked like a realignment exercise. Yet it follows a corporate version of pass-the-parcel within the local cement industry. Hyundai Cement was acquired by Hanil Cement in the first half of 2017, Halla Cement was bought by investment firms from LafargeHolcim in mid-2016 and Tongyang Cement was bought by Sampyo Group in 2015.

Ssangyong Cement’s purchase is seen in the local media as an attempt to reaffirm its market dominance. Before the Hyundai Cement auction, Ssangyong Cement was the market leader with a cement production capacity of 15Mt/yr and a market share of around 20%. Hanil Cement’s on-going purchase of Hyundai Cement will see it increase its production capacity from 7Mt/yr to over 15Mt/yr. Ssangyong Cement’s transaction for Daehan Cement puts it back in the lead again.

The local industry is notable for the high ratio of cement grinding plants to integrated plants. The Korean Cement Association (KCA) reported that the country had 12 integrated plants to 23 grinding plants in 2015. This compares to other developed countries in relatively remote places such as Australia and Chile that also have high numbers of grinding plants. South Korea doesn’t import that much clinker though. One difference is its prominent steel industry that has hovered around 70Mt/yr since 2014 and which puts it in the top ten of world producers. Subsequently, as POSCO’s Sunghee Han explained at the Global Slag Conference 2016, 13.9Mt of granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) was produced in 2015 and the majority of this ended up being used as supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) either to grind cement or to make concrete. The size of this slag market underlines the value of the Daehan Cement sale, as it is a major slag cement producer.

Other notable point about the local cement industry includes the presence of a few extremely large multi-kiln plants with production capacities in excess of 7Mt/yr. The country also has a relative scarcity of limestone. South Korea is the fifth biggest importer of limestone in the world at US$34m. It brings limestone in principally from the UAE, Japan, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Notably it also has one of the world’s longest single conveyors, with a length of 12.8km, connecting a quarry to Ssangyong Cement’s Donghae plant.

Graph 1: Cement production and consumption in South Korea, 2010 – 2015. Source: Korean Cement Association.

Unlike the European cement-producing nations that this column has covered in recent weeks, fundamental market structural changes do not appear to be driving the merger and acquisition activity in South Korea. As Graph 1 shows, production and consumption fell from 2010 onwards but has started to pick up since 2013. Instead, a general slowing of the economy from 2010 and a relaxation of the rules triggered merger and acquisition activity. Unsurprisingly then, perhaps, given the potential opportunities for market manipulation, that the Fair Trade Commission fined six of the seven major producers a total of US$168m in early 2016 for alleged price fixing. With the private equity firms widely expected to exit the market after a relative short time, the cement industry looks set to remain volatile for the next few years. Doubtless the market regulators will be watching very carefully indeed to see how it all plays out.

France: LafargeHolcim has appointed Heike Faulhammer as Group Head of Research & Development with effect from 1 July 2017. She will be based at the group’s global research and development (R&D) centre near Lyon, France.

Faulhammer, aged 50 years, joins LafargeHolcim from Arkema, a French chemicals producer, where she has spent 20 years in research, production, product innovation-related functions and sustainable development. In particular, she acted as a Director at Arkema’s global R&D centre in Lacq. Faulhammer graduated from the University of Freiburg (Germany) and holds a PhD in Chemistry.

US: Martin Marietta Materials has appointed James AJ Nickolas as its new chief financial officer (CFO) with effect from mid-August 2017. He will also become a Senior Vice President and will report to C Howard Nye, chairman, president and chief executive officer (CEO). He replaces Anne H Lloyd who is set to retire in September 2017.

Nickolas, aged 46 years, joins Martin Marietta from Caterpillar where he currently serves as the head of Corporate Development. Previously, as Group Chief Financial Officer of Caterpillar’s Resources Industries segment, he was responsible for financial planning and reporting, internal controls, compliance and M&A activity. Before joining Caterpillar in 2008, Nickolas was Executive Director at JP Morgan Securities where he worked on originating and executing debt and equity capital raising and mergers and acquisitions. He began his professional career as a Certified Public Accountant at Coopers & Lybrand where he was a senior tax associate. He holds a BS degree in Accounting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and both an MBA in Finance and a JD degree from the University of Chicago.

Lloyd, aged 56 years, joined Martin Marietta in 1998 as Vice President and Controller. She was named Chief Accounting Officer in 1999 and was promoted to CFO in 2005. She was named Executive Vice President in 2009. As CFO, she has led the financial areas of Martin Marietta, including financial reporting, accounting, internal audit, investor relations, tax and treasury.

Spain: Casimiro Molins Ribot, the chairman of producer Cementos Molins, has died at the age of 97 years. He had been a member of the board of directors of Cementos Molins for 71 years, where he occupied various executive positions, according to the Expansión newspaper. Casimiro Molins Ribot graduated in Law from the University of Barcelona. In 1945 he was named director and secretary at the board, in 1972 he took the post of chief executive officer (CEO) and since 1986 he has been the chairman of the company.

UK: Stephen Eastick has re-joined Vortex Global. In his new role he will be responsible for the oversight of sales and rep groups throughout Europe. Previously, Eastick was a member of the Vortex Global internal sales team from 2011 to 2015. In that time, he was tasked with managing Asian markets. Most recently, he was employed as an external salesperson for Eclipse Magnetics.

New Zealand: Holcim New Zealand has reported a loss of US$8.9m in 2016 as it changed its business from production to importation and distribution. The subsidiary of LafargeHolcim made a profit of US$58m in 2015, according to the Business Desk news agency. Its distribution costs also rose to US$54m from US$45m. A company spokesperson attributed the rising distribution costs to a transition away from manufacturing.

The company’s results in 2016 benefited from its sale of its lime business to Canada’s Graymont. It also closed its Westport cement plant and invested in import terminals. It operates terminals in Auckland and Timaru and depots in Dunedin, Lyttelton, Nelson, Wellington and Napier.

Cyprus: The Statistical Service of Cyprus has stopped reporting data on the cement industry following a request by a local cement producer. It has announced that to safeguard ‘statistical confidentiality’ it will no longer disseminate monthly data for the production, sales and exports of cement and clinker. The department of the Republic of Cyprus apologised to the users of the data stating that it is obliged, under the provisions of the Statistics Law of 2000, to respect the request.

The island’s main cement producer is Vassiliko Cement, which operates an integrated plant in the southern Republic of Cyprus. Italy’s Italacementi owned a minority stake in the company before its takeover by HeidelbergCement. LafargeHolcim’s subsidiary Boğaz Endüstri ve Madencilik runs a cement grinding plant in the so-called northern Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

Peru: The Association of Cement Producers (Asocem) has forecast that cement production will grow by 1 - 1.5% in 2017. This is based on predicted growth in the second half of 2017 following a decline in production of 5.5% over the last 12 months, according to the Gestión newspaper. Despite this production continued to fall in May 2017, by 6.4% year-on-year to 0.78Mt, although the rate has slowed since April. Cement demand is expected to rebound due to the reconstruction work after El Niño-related flooding and government infrastructure projects.

Lebanon: Cimenterie Nationale has officially inaugurated a new bag filter at its Chekka cement plant. The new filter is expected to reduce dust, NO_x and SO₂ emissions by more than half, according to the L'Orient-Le Jour newspaper. The filter has been in operation since late May 2017.

Russia: Anhui Conch plans to start building a cement pant in the Ulyanovsk region by the spring of 2018. The local development corporation also announced that staff have been recruited for the project and early design work has started, according to Construction magazine. The 5000t/day plant is expected to start operation by early 2021.