Displaying items by tag: Ghana Standards Authority

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.

Ghana: Minister of Trade and Industry, K Hammond, has presented the Ghana Standards Authority (Pricing of Cement) Regulations 2024 in Parliament. This legislative instrument aims to control cement prices in response to rising costs.

The legislation follows government efforts to persuade manufacturers to reduce prices and address public concerns over escalating costs, according to the Daily Guide Network. Despite opposition from the National Democratic Congress lawmakers and cement producers, the regulation will likely become law after a 21-sitting day period in Parliament. The new law will introduce a price stabilisation fund to ensure consistent cement prices across the country.

Mr Hammond said "For a long time, we haven’t seen cement prices de-escalating. It's always escalating. I think there's something fundamentally wrong with the pricing of cement in the country.”

Ghana: The Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) is set to close down several cement manufacturing firms for producing low-quality products, as part of its effort to combat substandard cement production nationwide, according to Adom Online. This initiative aligns with the protections outlined in the Ghana Standards Authority Act 2022. Currently, there are only 14 licensed cement plants in Ghana.

Director General, Alex Dodoo, said "The GSA has done research and we have noticed that some particular players believe that the only way to compete is to reduce the quality of cement. We have closed three of them and I can assure you that in the coming days a lot more will be closed down. If there is one thing we will not compromise on, it is quality.”

Ghana: A nine-member committee has been established to monitor and coordinate the local cement industry in Ghana, in line with the Manufacture of Cement Regulations (LI 2480).

The committee, inaugurated in Accra on 5 April 2024, is chaired by Professor Alex Dodoo of the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA). Other members include representatives from the GSA, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Environmental Protection Agency, Ghana Institution of Engineering, Association of Ghana Industries, Chamber of Cement Manufacturers of Ghana, and an expert in cement production nominated by the Minister.

During the inauguration, Trade and Industry Minister Kobina Hammond said “The committee will appraise, evaluate and approve local content and local participation plans and reports of cement manufacturing entities. They will also promote the production, wholesale and retail of cement and cement components.”

According to LI 2480, there is a requirement for manufacturers of cement to register with the Committee. Regulation 11 in LI 2480 state that ‘A person shall not manufacture cement in the country unless the person registers with the Cement Manufacturing Development Committee in accordance with these Regulations.’ The regulations state that a person who did not register with the Cement Manufacturing Development Committee to manufacture cement shall not be granted a licence to manufacture cement under these regulations.

Ghana: The Ghana Standards Authority has enacted new quality standards for cement products. BNN Breaking News Ghana has reported that the new standards are intended to uphold safety for users of concrete buildings. This will reportedly be accompanied by increased enforcement against substandard products, including the roll-out of a new licensing system.

Ghana: Two managers at Kumasi Cement Ghana have been arrested by officials from the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) and the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA). Huang Guangshun and Fang Yuan were detained for continuing to operate the company despite being requested to stop, according to the Graphic newspaper. Samuel K Frimpong, the Ashanti Regional Manager of the GSA, said “They claimed to have been asked to keep producing by an unnamed top government official, but we acted per the law and got them arrested.”

Kumasi Cement Ghana, Xin An Safe Cement Ghana and Unicem Cement Ghana had their licences revoked by the GSA in mid-November 2023 for using inferior materials in cement production. The closure of the cement plants is part of a government strategy to stop the production of ‘substandard’ cement in the country.

Officials from Xin An Safe Cement Ghana and Unicem Cement Ghana have signed an agreement at the head office of the GSA to “adhere to specified quality standards in cement manufacturing”. They pledged to “comply with all regulatory standards and requirements governing cement manufacturing in Ghana.” However, the GSA is yet to allow the companies to restart their operations.

Ghana: The Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) has reported discoveries of Empire Cement brand cement on sale on the open market despite neither it nor the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) having issued permits for Empire Cement to produce cement. Graphic Online News has reported that the suspect products are wrongly labelled with certification marks. GSA director general Alex Dodoo warned that this constitutes an offence.

African cement producers have confirmed their interest in calcined clay over the last month with two new projects. The big one was announced last week when FLSmidth revealed that it had received an order from CBI Ghana. This follows the launch of a Limestone Calcined Clay (LC3) project in Malawi in mid-March 2022 in conjunction with Lafarge Cement Malawi.

FLSmidth says that its order includes the world’s largest gas suspension calciner system and a complete grinding station. The kit will be installed at CBI Ghana’s plant near Accra in the south of the country. The new clay calciner system is expected to substitute 30 - 40% of the clinker in the final product, resulting in a reduction of up to 40% CO₂/t of blended cement compared to Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). Overall the equipment manufacturers reckon that the grinding plant will reduce its CO₂ emissions by 20% compared to its current output. There has been no indication of how much the order costs but CBI Ghana expects energy and fuel savings, as well as lower overheads from clinker imports.

The public announcement of the Ghana project was also foreshadowed by the visit of Professor Karen Scrivener to the Ghana Standards Authority in February 2022. This was significant because Scrivener is the head of the Laboratory of Construction Materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and has been one of the key instigators of the LC3 initiative since the early 2000s. Other calcined clay cements are available such as Futurecem or polysius activated clay (see below) but LC3 is arguably the most famous given its promotion in developing countries.

The Malawi project is at a much earlier stage. The government launched the public private partnership LC3 project in mid-March 2022 in conjunction with Lafarge Cement Malawi and Terrastone, a brick manufacturer. The Ministry of Mining is currently developing a memorandum of understanding with the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), a Germany-based development agency. India-based Tara Engineering has also been linked to the scheme.

One thing to note about the Malawi project is that it is the first calcined clay project in the cement industry based in East Africa. All the other African ones are based in West Africa. The other two projects in this region are run by Turkey-based Oyak Çimento and its subsidiary Cimpor. The first of these is a 0.3Mt/yr calcined clay and a 2400t/day cement grinding production line that was commissioned in mid-2020. This plant is based at Abidjan in Ivory Coast. The second is a new plant that Germany-based ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions is building for Oyak Çimento at Kribi in Cameroon. This unit has a 720t/day calcined clay and a 2400t/day cement production capacity and it will use the supplier’s ‘polysius activated clay’ technology. ThyssenKrupp’s involvement came to light in early 2020 and commissioning was scheduled for late 2021. However, no update on the state of the project has been issued so far in 2022.

As the above examples show, Sub-Saharan Africa has at least one live calcined clay plant, two plants are being built and there’s one more at the development stage. This puts the region neck-and-neck with Europe, which has a similar mixture of current and developing projects. This column has been covering the wider trend of the growing usage of various types of blended cements recently, particularly in Europe and the US, with slag cements, Portland Limestone Cement (PLC) and more. With PLC, for example, note the transition of another two North American cement plants to PLC this week alone. As for calcined clay cement, it is fascinating to see the focus move to a different part of the world. Several commentators have predicted that the future looks set to be dominated by blended cements using whichever supplementary cementitious material (SCM) is most available for each plant. The growth in calcined clay confirms this view.

Global Cement is researching clay calcination use in the cement industry for the next edition of the Global Cement Directory. Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with any information on new industrial and research installations.

Ghana: Professor Karen Scrivener has paid a working visit to the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA). The visit was part of a tour by Scrivener to Ghana to discuss innovations in cement and cementitious products and to introduce Limestone Calcined Clay Cement (LC3) to the authority, according to the Ghana News Agency. The Head of Laboratory of Construction Materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland met with GSA management and staff of the Building and Civil Engineering Lab at the Authority's Head Office in Accra. Scrivener noted that she was interested in learning more and engaging with the GSA on standards and its testing capabilities as well as a potential collaboration in capacity building in cement and cementitious products.

Ghana: The Cement Manufacturers Association of Ghana (CMAG) has appealed to the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) to investigate the quality of Chinese cement imports. In a letter of the GSA George Dawson-Ahmoah cited two companies in Tema and Ejisu that allegedly sell cement products of ‘questionable’ quality, according to the Business and Financial Times newspaper. He also posited that samples of cement from these companies were ‘alarming’ and that this explained why their prices were ‘ridiculously’ low.

CMAG consists of Ghacem Limited, Diamond Cement group, CIMAF Ghana and CBI Ghana Limited. However, when asked by the local media why Chinese companies supplying Ghana were not part of the association, Dawson-Ahmoah said that they had been invited.