Displaying items by tag: Government

India: ACC Chair Karan Adani says that he expects the cement industry to benefit from the an anticipated US$2.2tn in new public infrastructure spending between 2025 and 2030.

Press Trust of India News has reported that Adani said "ACC crossed the 100Mt/yr cement capacity milestone in April 2025, propelling us closer to our ambitious 140Mt/yr target by the 2028 financial year." The company’s capacity corresponds to 15% of an all-India installed capacity of 686Mt/yr.

Nepal: The government plans to shut down Udayapur Cement Industry, which operates the Jaljale cement plant, in mid-July 2025. The República newspaper has reported that the government has received a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between workers, local people and political parties to contest the closure. Critics reportedly accuse the government of trying to bankrupt the company in order to sell it.

Poland: The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) has launched an investigation into Cement Ożarów, Cemex Polska, Dyckerhoff Polska, Góradżdże Cement, Górażdże Beton and Holcim Polska over potential cement cartelisation. The office has not stated the exact triggers of such an investigation at this time.

ISB News has reported that UOKiK previously discovered an 11-year-long conspiracy to divide the market and fix prices between seven companies in 2009.

UOKiK President Tomasz Chróstny said "The return of a cartel would be particularly outrageous, considering that cement is one of the basic construction materials, necessary for the development of housing, road infrastructure and the entire economy."

If found to have been party to any agreement restricting competition, companies can expect penalties as high as 10% of turnover.

Australia: Minister for Climate Change and Minister Chris Bowen says that the government is ‘considering’ the enactment of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to prevent carbon leakage from high emissions-intensity products, including cement.

The Australian Parliament committed to 43% national CO₂ emissions reduction between 2005 and 2030 in 2022, and capped emitters’ individual carbon footprints in 2023. Final advice from a government Carbon Leakage Review was due after May 2025, and was possibly complicated by on-going US climate and trade reforms under President Trump. The Australian Cement Industry Federation bemoaned a lack of action on carbon leakage in March 2025. It warned of jeopardy to both decarbonisation and 1400 jobs in the Australian cement sector.

Australia’s construction industry imported 40% of its cement used in 2024.

Greece: Titan Greece has obtained Enterprise Greece’s strategic investment status for its upcoming 1.9Mt/yr-capacity IFESTOS carbon capture project at the Kamari cement plant in Boeotia. The status also extends to an upcoming Business Park adjacent to the plant. The IFESTOS project is currently at the stage of basic design and environmental studies, with a final investment decision due in 2026. An anticipated 750 direct and indirect jobs will result from the construction and operation of the carbon capture unit.

Titan Cement Group’s Europe regional executive director Yanni Paniaras said "IFESTOS’ inclusion underlines the importance of the project for Greece. Preparation continues apace.”

A week ago, there were two fully-financed cement plant carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) projects underway in the US.¹ Now, there aren’t.

Projects to decarbonise National Cement Company’s Lebec, California, plant and Heidelberg Materials North America’s Mitchell, Indiana, plant were each set to receive up to US$500m in US Department of Energy (DoE) funding on a one-for-one basis with private investments. The projects were to include eventual 950,000t/yr (Lebec) and 2Mt/yr (Mitchell) carbon capture installations. Additionally, the Lebec plant was to transition to limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) production and the use of alternative fuels (AF), including pistachio shells. Both were beneficiaries of the DoE’s US$6bn Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP), touted by former US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm as ‘Spurring on the next generation of decarbonisation technologies in key industries [to] keep America the most competitive nation on Earth.’ Disbursement of funding under the programme was frozen by executive order of President Trump in January 2025.^{2, 3}

On 30 May 2025, Trump’s Secretary of Energy announced that the government in which Granholm served had approved spending on industrial decarbonisation without a ‘thorough financial review.’ He cancelled remaining project funding in signature Trumpian style, in list form.⁴ Among 24 de-funded projects, Lebec and Mitchell accounted for US$1bn (27%) of a total US$3.73bn in allocated funds that have now been withdrawn.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the management of the Lebec and Mitchell plant and the teams that had been working to deliver these projects. Heidelberg Materials has yet to comment, though CEO Dominik von Achten was in North America in late May 2025. National Cement Company parent Vicat, meanwhile, conceded the setback with a strong statement of its commitment to CO₂ reduction, to 497kg/t of cementitious product globally.⁵ There was a diplomatic edge to the statement too, however. Echoing the Secretary of Energy, Vicat said that its target remains ‘solely based on existing proven technologies, including energy efficiency, AF substitution and clinker rate reduction’ – as opposed to ‘any technological breakthroughs’ like carbon capture. There are currently no public details of possible back-up financing arrangements for these projects; for now, the best guess at their status is ‘uncertain.’

Alongside these group’s local subsidiaries, another organisation that has to do business daily with the DoE is the American Cement Association (ACA). President and CEO Mike Ireland has continually acknowledged the complex needs of the government, while stating the association’s case for keeping support in place. With regard to these funding cuts, Ireland’s emphasis fell on the latter side: “Today’s announcement is candidly a missed opportunity for both America’s cement manufacturers and this administration, as CCS projects have long been supported by bipartisan members in Congress and bipartisan administrations.”⁶ He reasserted the ACA’s understanding that carbon capture aligns with the administration’s strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing and innovation.

The early 2020s heyday of US carbon capture was founded on gradual, consensus-based politics – unlike its demise. Table 1 (below) gives a non-exhaustive account of recent and on-going front-end engineering design (FEED) studies and the funding they received:

Additionally, MTR Carbon Capture, which is executing a carbon capture pilot at St Marys Cement’s Charlevoix plant in Michigan, previously received US$1.5m in Fossil Energy Research and Development funding towards a total US$3.7m for an unspecified cement plant carbon capture study.¹⁰

Market researcher Greenlight Insights valued industrial decarbonisation initiatives under the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (ODEC – the now defunct DoE office responsible, among other things, for the IDP) at US$65.9bn in cumulative returns in April 2025.¹¹ The government has yet to publish any account of how it might replace this growth, or the 291,000 anticipated new jobs that would have come with it. Given all this (along with the extensive financial and technical submissions that accompanied each project), the issues raised by the DoE are presumably budgetary, or else founded in a perception of CCUS as essentially uneconomical.

Carbon capture is very, very expensive. A fatuous reply is that so is climate change, just with a few more ‘verys.’ Hurricane Ian in September 2022 cost US$120bn, more than enough to fund carbon capture installations at all 91 US cement plants, along the lines of the former Lebac and Mitchell agreements.¹² Unlike climate change, however, carbon capture remains unproven. Advocates need to continually justify taxpayer involvement in such a high-risk venture.

At its Redding cement plant in California, Lehigh Hanson successfully delivered a funding-free FEED study, with its partner Fortera raising US$85m in a Series C funding. This presents an alternative vision of innovation as fully-privatised, in which the government might still have the role of shaping demand. This is borne out in the IMPACT Act, a bill which ‘sailed through’ the lower legislature in March 2025.¹³ If enacted, it will empower state and municipal transport departments to pledge to buy future outputs of nascent reduced-CO₂ cements and concretes.

A separate aspect of the funding cancellation that appears decidedly cruel is the targeted removal of grants to start-ups. Two alternative building materials developers – Brimstone and Sublime Systems – were listed for a combined US$276m of now vapourised liquidity. Both are commercially viable without the funding, but the effect of this reversal – including on the next generation of US innovators who hoped to follow in their footsteps – can only be chilling. As non-governmental organisation Industrious Labs said of the anticipated closure of the ODEC in April 2025: “We may see companies based in other geographies start to pull ahead.”

Heidelberg Materials’s Brevik carbon capture plant came online in June 2025, 54 months after the producer secured approval for the project. The term of a presidency is 48 months. This probably means that producers in the US will no longer see CCUS as a viable investment, even under sympathetic administrations.

Even as government funding for CCS flickers from ‘dormant’ to ‘extinct,’ the sun is rising on other US projects. Monarch Cement Company commissioned a 20MW solar power plant at its Humboldt cement plant in Kansas on 27 May 2025. The global momentum is behind decarbonisation, even if economics determines that it will only take the form of smaller-scale mitigation measures at US cement plants into the medium-term future. We can hope that these, at least, might include the AF and LC3 aspects of National Cement Company’s plans at Lebec.

References

1. Clean Air Task Force, ‘Global Carbon Capture Activity and Project Map,’ accessed 3 June 2025, www.catf.us/ccsmapglobal/

2. Democrats Appropriations, ‘Issue 5: Freezing the Industrial Demonstrations Program Undermines U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness and Strands Private Investment,’ January 2025, www.democrats-appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-appropriations.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/5%20DOE%20Frozen%20Funding%20-%20Industrial%20Demos.pdf

3. Colorado Attorney General, ‘Attorney General Phil Weiser secures court order blocking Trump administration’s illegal federal funding freeze,’ 6 March 2025, www.coag.gov/press-releases/weiser-court-order-trump-federal-funding-freeze-3-6-25/

4. US Department of Energy, ‘Secretary Wright Announces Termination of 24 Projects, Generating Over $3 Billion in Taxpayer Savings,’ 30 May 2025, www.energy.gov/articles/secretary-wright-announces-termination-24-projects-generating-over-3-billion-taxpayer

5. Vicat, ‘Cancellation of funding agreement for the Lebec Net Zero project by the US Department of Energy,’ 3 June 2025, www.vicat.com/news/cancellation-funding-agreement-lebec-net-zero-project-us-department-energy

6. American Cement Association, ‘Statement from the American Cement Association on Department of Energy’s Cancellation of Clean Energy Grants,’ 30 May 2025, www.cement.org/2025/05/30/statement-from-the-american-cement-association-on-department-of-energys-cancellation-of-clean-energy-grants/

7. Gov Tribe, ‘Cooperative Agreement DEFE0031942,’ 30 September 2022, www.govtribe.com/award/federal-grant-award/cooperative-agreement-defe0031942

8. Higher Gov, ‘DECD0000010 Cooperative Agreement,’ 13 May 2024, www.highergov.com/grant/DECD0000010/

9. Gov Tribe, ‘Cooperative Agreement DEFE0032222,’ 7 February 2025, www.govtribe.com/award/federal-grant-award/cooperative-agreement-defe0032222

10. Higher Gov, ‘DEFE0031949 Cooperative Agreement,’ 1 May 2023, www.highergov.com/grant/DEFE0031949/

11. Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, ‘Jobs, Economic Impact of OCED Closure,’ 11 April 2025, www.c2es.org/press-release/oced-closure-could-cost-65-billion-290000-jobs/

12. National Centers for Environmental Information, ‘Events,’ accessed 4 June 2025, www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/events/US/2022?disasters%5B%5D=tropical-cyclone

13. US Congress, ‘H.R.1534 - IMPACT Act,’ 26 March 2025, www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1534

Kenya: A judge has upheld the appointment of Mohamed Osman Adan as the managing director of East African Portland Cement Company (EAPCC). Employment and Labour Relations Court judge Byram Ongaya ruled that Adan was the only applicant to meet the 70% score threshold as prescribed in the company’s Human Resources and Procedures Manual.

“The court finds that the board’s recommendation that Mr Adan be appointed the managing director cannot be defeated upon the tests in Article 73(2) (a) on selection on the basis of personal integrity, competence, and suitability; and, Article 232 (g) on fair competition and merit as the basis of appointments and promotions,” said Ongaya.

Mr Adan’s appointment had been challenged by lawyer Apollo Mboya, who alleged that the board of directors had overturned Kenyan President William Ruto’s appointment of Bruno Oguda Obodha as managing director.

Najmat Al Samawa Cement (NAS Cement) in Iraq announced this week that its second production line was successfully fired up on 13 May 2025. The new 5500t/day line was formally announced in May 2023. It joins the existing line at the site and should bring the plant’s total production capacity to around 3Mt/yr. The plant is a joint-venture between Pakistan-based Lucky Cement Limited and the Al Shumookh Company in Dubai and its representatives in Iraq.

Global Cement Magazine interviewed Intezar Ahmad, the Director of Operations at NAS Cement, in the November 2024 issue. He explained that China-based TCDRI was the main contractor for both the original and new lines. Equipment for Line 2 was also supplied by Fives Pillard, Loesche and IKN. Commissioning was scheduled for the second quarter of 2025. This, nicely, appears to be spot on. Lucky Cement added in its statement about the new line this week that it is also building a new 0.65Mt/yr cement grinding mill at the plant. This addition is expected to be commissioned during the second half of the 2025 calendar year. Lucky Cement also operates a cement grinding plant, under a joint-venture, in Basra.

The expansion at NAS Cement is by no means the only one as there have been a number of project announcements over the last three months. Germany-based Gebr. Pfeiffer revealed in late-March 2025 that it had won an order to supply a vertical roller mill for the Al Amir cement plant in Najaf. This contract was awarded through the China-based contractor Sinoma Suzhou. Commissioning is planned for the second half of 2026. Then, one month later in April 2025, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani made a statement launching ‘implementation works’ at four cement plants in Al-Muthanna Province. This included the 6000t/day Al-Arabi Cement Plant, the 6000t/day Al-Khairat Al-Muthanna Cement Plant, the 6600t/day Al-Samawa Cement Plant and the 6000t/day Al-Etihad Cement Plant. Al-Sudani also mentioned the start of commercial operations at NAS Cement’s second line. Subsequently, IVI Holding signed a US$240m deal with Sinoma Overseas in mid-May 2025 to build a 6000t/day plant in Al-Muthanna Province. Presumably, this is one of the projects that the government highlighted. Finally, the Kurdistan Region prime minister Masrour Barzani inaugurated the 6300t/day Dabin cement plant at around the same time. This last project was built by PowerChina together with a power station.

The Iraqi economy has been doing well in recent years. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported in May 2025 that the non-oil sector experienced “very strong growth” of 13.8% in 2023. This slowed down to 2.5% in 2024 due to a slowdown in public investment and in the services sector, and a weaker trade balance. However, the IMF noted that the agriculture, manufacturing, and construction sectors had remained resilient. Non-oil sector growth is forecast to remain subdued in 2025 amid a “...challenging global environment and financing constraints.” In its coverage of the new line at NAS Cement, Pakistan Today reported that the country has a notional cement production capacity of around 40Mt/yr but that many of the older plants have suffered from under-investment. Accordingly, the domestic market is around 25Mt/yr supported by state-funded housing projects, oil-field infrastructure schemes and reconstruction in Mosul. 3 - 4Mt of this is supplied via imports from Iran and Türkiye. The newspaper also noted the risk that all these new cement plant projects may face from variable gas supplies from the government. NAS Cement, for example, switched from heavy fuel oil (HFO) to gas in 2022.

Cement sector capacity expansion is coming in Iraq following a revived local economy. Risks abound though due to the country’s economic outlook, its dependence on oil and an geopolitical uncertainty. Yet money is being spent and new projects are starting to be commissioned. Onwards!

Demand for heavy building materials in the UK dropped in the first quarter of 2025, with ready-mix concrete sales reaching a new 60-year low.¹ In an update last week, the UK’s Mineral Products Association (MPA) attributed the decline to existing economic headwinds, compounded by global trade disruptions, reduced investor confidence and renewed inflationary pressures.

Major infrastructure projects – including the HS2 high-speed railway in the English Midlands, the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset and the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk – failed to offset delays and cancellations by cash-strapped local councils to roadwork projects. Residential construction, meanwhile, is ‘slowly but steadily’ recovering from historical lows, amid continuing high mortgage rates since late 2024.

The most interesting part of the MPA’s market appraisal was its warning of ‘new risks emerging in the global economy.’ These concern the new tariffs raised by the US against its import partners. The possible consequences, the MPA says, imperil the UK’s supply chains, construction sector and growth.

Of particular immediacy is the threat of imports into the UK from countries that previously focussed on the US market. The MPA said that the industry ‘cannot compete’ against increased low-cost, CO₂-intensive imports. It named Türkiye, which sends around 6.9Mt/yr of cement and clinker to the US, as a key threat. Türkiye became subject to the blanket 10% ‘baseline’ tariff on 2 April 2025.

The MPA probably didn’t have a particular company in mind when it said this. However, it bears noting that Turkish interests gained a share of UK cement capacity in October 2024, when Çimsa acquired 95% of Northern Ireland-based Mannok. Besides the Derrylin cement plant (situated on the border between Fermanagh, UK, and Cavan, Ireland), Mannok operates the Rochester cement storage and distribution facility in Kent, 50km from London. The facility currently supplies cement from Derrylin to Southern England and the Midlands. It could easily serve as a base of operations for processing and distributing imported cement and clinker from further afield.

Meanwhile in South West England, Portugal-based Cimpor is building a €20 – 25m cement import terminal in the Port of Bristol. The company is subject to 20% tariffs on shipments to the US from its home country. Its parent company, Taiwan Cement Corporation, is subject to 32% US tariffs from Taiwan.

But the plot thickens… On 8 May 2025, the UK became the first country to conclude a trade agreement with the US after the erection of the new tariff regime, under which the US$73bn/yr-worth of British goods sold in the US became subject to a 10% tariff.² The latest agreement brought partial relief for an allied sector of UK cement: steel. 180,000t flowed into the US from the UK in 2024.³ In 2024, the UK exported 7120t of cement and clinker to the US, up by a factor of 10 decade-on-decade from just 714t in 2014, all of it into two US customs districts, Philadelphia and New York City.⁴

In what may be one of the first true ‘Brexit benefits,’ UK cement exporters now ‘enjoy’ a US tariff rate half that of their EU competitors, notably those in Greece. Like the UK’s more modest volumes, Greece’s 1.82Mt/yr-worth of cement and clinker exports stateside also enter via the US’ eastern seaports, at New York City, Tampa and Norfolk. Given the overlaps in ownership between the Greek and UK cement sectors, it is conceivable that optimisation of cement export flows across Europe may already be under discussion.

On 6 May 2025, the UK and Indian governments announced a trade deal that will lift customs duties on almost all current Indian exports to the UK. UK MPs are still seeking clarifications as to whether this will include industrial products that might be dumped.⁵ Theoretically, the threat from an oversupplied and fast-growing cement industry like India’s could be existential to the UK cement industry.

As the UK invests heavily in its future, including with the HyNet Consortium, imports pose a major threat. Given enough time, the UK could develop a leading position in the decarbonisation space. Will it have enough time? Existential threats certainly add a sense of jeopardy.

References
1. Mineral Products Association, ‘Weak start to 2025 for building materials sales amid growing economic headwinds,’ 6 May 2025, www.mineralproducts.org/News/2025/release16.aspx

2. HM Government, ‘UK overseas trade in goods statistics November 2024,’ 16 January 2025, www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-overseas-trade-in-goods-statistics-november-2024/uk-overseas-trade-in-goods-statistics-november-2024-commentary

3. UK Steel, ‘US 25% tariffs on UK steel imports come into effect,’ 12 March 2025, www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2025/us-25-tariffs-on-uk-steel-imports-come-into-effect

4. United States Geological Survey, ‘Cement in December 2024,’ January 2025, https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/media/files/mis-202412-cemen.pdf

5. Welsh Liberal Democrats, ‘UK-Indian Trade Deal: Government Refuses to Answer Whether it Has Conceded on Cheap Indian Steel Imports,’ 6 May 2025, www.libdems.wales/news/article/uk-indian-trade-deal-government-refuses-to-answer-whether-it-has-conceded-on-cheap-indian-steel-imports

Sectoral adjustment continued for the cement industry in China in 2024. Now that the financial results from many of the larger China-based cement producers are out it gives Global Cement Weekly a chance to review the world’s biggest cement market. The decline in national output of cement accelerated in 2024 and the results showed this. CNBM summed up the situation as follows: “In 2024, affected by the reduction of real estate investment and the slowdown of infrastructure projects, the cement industry in China was caught in a situation of insufficient demand and aggravated overcapacity.” Output dropped by just under 10% year-on-year to 1.83Bnt in 2024 according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS). This is the fourth consecutive annual decline and the lowest figure the sector has experienced since around 2010.

Graph 1: Cement output in China, 2018 to 2024. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China.

The China Cement Association’s (CCA) assessment concurred with CNBM. Although it detected a slowing in the decline in the second half of 2024, especially in the fourth quarter. It noted that the country has a production capacity of 1.81Bnt/yr and an estimated clinker utilisation rate of 53% in 2024. Note the large apparent difference this may suggest between the NBS and CCA figures. Data from the NBS for the first quarter of 2025 has shown a slowing of the decline. Output was 331Mt, a fall of just 1.7% year-on-year from the same period in 2023. The CCA’s prediction for 2025 is that cement demand will fall by 5% as the real estate market continues to deflate. However, it expects government-led capacity reduction schemes to start making progress.

Graph 2: Sales revenue from selected Chinese cement producers. Source: Company financial reports.

Graph 3: Sales volumes of cement and clinker from selected Chinese cement producers. Source: Company financial reports.

CNBM’s sales revenue fell by 14% to US$24.8bn in 2024. Sales of its Basic Building Materials segment fell by 23% to US$12.5bn. This was blamed on falling volumes and prices of cement and other heavy building materials. Sales from the group’s two other segments - New Materials and Engineering Technology Services - rose modestly but this wasn’t enough to hold up total group sales. Operating profit from the Basic Building Materials segment decreased by 45% to US$544m. It was a similar picture at Anhui Conch with sales revenue and net profit down by 36% to US$12.4bn and by 25% to US$1.01bn respectively. Notably, CNBM’s sales volumes of cement decreased by 21% to 245Mt in 2024 compared to a decrease of 6.5% to 268Mt by Anhui Conch. This made Anhui Conch the world’s biggest cement company by sales volumes in 2024.

Tangshan Jidong Cement and China Resources Building Materials Technology (CRBMT) both reported a similar situation. Revenue was down and a net loss was reported by the former. Both revenue and net profit were down for the latter. CRBMT said that its cement capacity utilisation rate was 69% in 2024, down from 71% in 2023. This appears to be significantly higher than the national rate mentioned above by the CCA but the company’s regional distribution may be at play here.

Following from recent years, Huaxin Cement bucked the general market trend and its revenue rose modestly to US$4.7bn in 2024. Its net profit still fell by 12.5% to US$330m. Its overseas businesses made the difference. It reported an increase of 37% to 16.2Mt in overseas cement sales with its non-China cement production capacity rising by 8% to 22.5Mt/yr. Milestones include various new or upgraded plant projects in Sub-Saharan Africa capped off by its announcement at the end of 2024 that it was preparing to buy Lafarge Africa. Other cement companies were also keen to promote overseas activity. CNBM said that the first signing of overseas merger and acquisition was achieved in 2024. This is likely to be the purchase of the Djebel El Oust cement plant in Tunisia from Votorantim Cimentos that was completed in late March 2025. Tangshan Jidong Cement acquired the remaining 40% share in South Africa-based Mamba Cement in April 2024.

All of this leaves the cement sector in China still waiting for the market to stabilise. US tariffs seem unlikely to have an effect in any meaningful way unless the general economy is altered. The declining real estate sector and cement production overcapacity are the main drivers at the national level. The CCA expects the real estate market to continue to fall in 2025 although it hopes that government remedy measures will start to show an effect. It is more optimistic about capacity reduction plans. One route towards this is through merger and acquisition activity. In a recent response to investors about industry integration, Huaxin Cement speculated that the sector might consolidate down to 30 companies from around 300 at present. There is clearly still a way to go.