Displaying items by tag: Investment

India: The Adani Group has announced plans to invest US$1.13bn in Andhra Pradesh over the coming decade, including on developments in cement, data centres, energy and advanced manufacturing. The announcement was made by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) Managing Director Karan Adani at the Andhra Pradesh Investor Summit, where he announced plans for the Vizag Tech Park, a major data centre investment alongside Google.

"We see Andhra Pradesh not as a destination for investment, but as a launchpad for India's next decade of transformation,” said Adani. “The flagship of our commitment is the Vizag Tech Park. This is not just another tech park, it is the foundation of India's digital sovereignty. We are building one of the world's largest hyperscale data-centre ecosystems, in partnership with Google, and powered by green energy.”

US: Amrize has launched a 'Made in America' label for its cement to offer builders ‘the guarantee of American manufacturing and quality, while supporting American jobs and local communities.’ The label signifies that all aspects of the cement are made in the US, including all of its raw materials.

Roll-out of the label will begin at Amrize's flagship cement plants at Ste. Genevieve, (Missouri), Midlothian (Texas), Devil's Slide (Utah), Holly Hill (South Carolina) and Portland (Colorado). The company, already the largest in the US by installed capacity, is investing US$700m in its cement plants during 2025.

“Our new 'Made in America' label offers our customers the confidence that their product complies with US standards for quality, performance and reliability, with local-to-local service,” said Jaime Hill, President of Amrize Building Materials. “We are proud of the role our solutions play in building America and are committed to advancing the US building industry, supporting American jobs and serving as the partner of choice for the professional builders of America.”

Egypt: Titan Egypt, a subsidiary of Greece-based Titan Group, plans to invest US$63.5m over the next two years to expand production capacity and increase the use of alternative fuels to reduce costs, according to CEO Amr Reda.

The company operates two cement plants in Beni Suef and Alexandria with a combined capacity of 4.5Mt/yr, which will rise to 5.5Mt/yr following the planned expansions. Titan Egypt currently exports 30% of its production. Exports were 550,000t in 2024, with targets of 850,000t by the end of 2025 and 1Mt in 2026. Key export markets include Libya, Syria, Europe, the US and West Africa, alongside reconstruction projects in Gaza and Sudan.

UK: N+P Group announced that investment has been approved for its new 5t/hr research and development pilot line at its Hartlepool site. The installation will separate biogenic fractions from hard-to-process waste, including municipal solid waste and material from materials recovery facilities and other processing sites. The output will be a cleaned, high-biogenic alternative fuel, with biogenic content expected to exceed 70%. N+P aims to deliver the first volumes from its facility in the first quarter of 2026.

India: Aditya Birla Group subsidiary UltraTech Cement will invest US$1.23bn to grow its cement production capacity by 10% to 241Mt/yr. The company’s board has approved new plant projects and expansions amounting to 22.8Mt/yr of additional capacity, scheduled to begin coming online from the start of the 2028 financial year on 1 April 2027.

Chair Kumar Mangalam Birla said “The latest capacity expansion follows US$5.69bn invested in the past five years. The investment reflects the company’s confidence in the Indian economy and the scale of its infrastructure ambitions. When capital is deployed strategically, it energises ecosystems, deepens industrial linkages and creates durable employment. As India enters a transformative era of infrastructure and economic development, UltraTech is well-positioned to meet the rising demand for cement.”

Syria: The Ministry of Economy and Industry has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Iraq’s Vertex Investment Group to rehabilitate and expand the Hama Cement plant. The agreement covers the rehabilitation and operation of the plant’s third line, increasing capacity from 3300t/day to 5000t/day of clinker within 13 months. It also includes the construction of a new 6000t/day line, which will raise the plant’s total production capacity to around 11,000t/day over the next five years. The MoU also provides for worker training, application of international quality standards, and compliance with environmental and occupational safety requirements.

Rwanda: Cement producer Cimerwa will invest about US$190m in a new clinker plant, aiming to reduce its dependence on imports and save an estimated US$2.88bn in foreign exchange over the next 25 years. CEO Mangesh Kumar Verma said the plant, which will be built in Musanze, is expected to begin operations within two years with a capacity of 0.72Mt/yr of clinker. The plant will meet the company’s local demand of 0.54Mt/yr, with the surplus exported. Verma said that if limestone reserves prove larger than expected, there is provision to add another line. The investment follows rising costs from importing clinker, which currently amount to around 0.36Mt/yr at a cost of US$3.7m–4.0m. Verma added that clinker makes up about 70% of cement production costs, rising to 95% when imported.

Cimerwa’s unaudited financial results for the nine months ending 30 June 2025 showed that revenues were up by 50% year-on-year to US$75m, driven largely by its July 2024 acquisition of Prime Cement. However, profit before tax dropped by 23% to US$7.7m, reportedly due to input cost increases and continued depreciation of the Rwandan Franc. The company said that the Musanze clinker plant will stabilise production costs and position Rwanda as a net exporter, supporting large-scale infrastructure projects such as the New International Airport in Bugesera.

India: Dalmia Bharat, through its subsidiaries, has announced a strategic investment of approximately US$397m in Maharashtra and Karnataka. The company will set up a 3.6Mt/yr clinker unit and a 3Mt/yr grinding unit at its existing Belgaum plant in Karnataka, alongside a new greenfield split grinding unit of 3Mt/yr in Pune, Maharashtra. The projects, funded through a mix of debt and internal accruals, are expected to be commissioned by the fourth quarter of the 2027 financial year. Following completion, and factoring in ongoing 2.9Mt/yr expansions in Assam and Bihar, Dalmia Bharat’s installed capacity will rise to 55.5Mt/yr.

The Belgaum expansion will strengthen supply in southern Maharashtra and deepen the company’s reach in Karnataka, while the Pune plant will focus on the untapped western Maharashtra markets.

Puneet Dalmia, managing director and CEO of Dalmia Bharat, said “This investment is a significant step in our Phase II expansion strategy, bringing us closer to strengthening our position as a pan-India player and to reach our intermittent goal of 75Mt/yr capacity by the 2028 financial year. The increase in our production capacity is primarily to meet the growing infrastructure demand in Western India.”

Zimbabwe: Khayah Cement has secured a US$60m rescue package from East African producer Hima Cement after creditors and shareholders unanimously approved a corporate recovery plan. The agreement will allow for debt settlement, refurbishment of the Harare plant and a return to sustainable operations, according to The Sunday Mail.

Corporate rescue practitioner Balisa Mbano said the approval marked a major turning point for the company, which has struggled with debt and operational inefficiencies. “The positive is that all creditors will be paid down in a compromise amount and settled immediately. This gives the company immediate relief and the breathing space to focus on growth rather than liabilities,” he said.

In the short term, Khayah Cement will stop clinker imports and instead produce locally, securing supply reliability. The phased investment will cover both working capital and capital expenditure. The full implementation of the recovery plan is targeted within six months, with completion targeted for March 2026. Khayah Cement operates a 450,000t/yr plant in Harare, and has faced foreign currency shortages, high operational costs and equipment breakdowns in recent years, leading to its placement under corporate rescue in 2022.

The second quarter of 2025 saw Russian GDP growth slow to 1.1% year-on-year, with a revised full-year growth forecast of 0.9%.¹ An economy bulked up on injections of military spending (budgeted at 33% of GDP in 2025)² since the invasion of Ukraine may slowly be keeling over. Faced with this eventuality, the Russian cement industry will likely be reviewing strategies not to be dragged down with the rest of the economy.

Prior to the release of the latest economic data, Russian construction had been forecast to grow at a CAGR of 2.5% in 2026 – 2029. Drivers included anticipated investments in oil and gas, transport, airports and renewable energy.

Purely in cement terms, the data no longer appear to corroborate this outlook. Market leader Cemros expects total domestic demand to drop from 67Mt in 2024, by 10 – 15% year-on-year, to 57 – 60.3Mt in 2025. In the first half of the year, Russia consumed 28.4Mt of cement, just 4% above production volumes of 27.2Mt in the same period. Cemros cited ‘declining cement consumption’ to account for its upcoming instigation of a four-day working week at its plants across Russia from October 2025.

On 12 August 2025, Cemros spoke out about a threat to the interests of the domestic industry: increased imports from Belarus. It said that Belarus’ three-plant industry is supplying Russia with cement at a rate equivalent to the combined production volumes of two-to-three cement plants. Time to cap them, it told the government, suggesting a ceiling of 1.5Mt/yr.
The producer may have received a shock on 18 August 2025, when Belarus-based Krasnoselskstroymaterialy announced an upcoming US$100m upgrade to its 700,000t/yr Vaŭkavysk cement plant in Grobno Oblast, Belarus.

By that time, the Russian cement association, Soyuzcement, had already called for an anti-dumping investigation into all cement imports. It expects that import volumes of 3.74Mt in 2024 may rise to 5Mt/yr ‘in the near-term future.’

Lingering behind these discussions is the fact of high operating costs, partly precipitated by Russia’s continuing burden of international sanctions.

Here, the cement sector’s hopes are riding on a very particular marketing campaign: that of President Vladimir Putin on the global diplomatic circuit. He must sell his war (or peace on his terms) in a way that fends off increased international sanctions or support for Ukraine. Existing sanctions were on show at the Alaska Summit in Anchorage, US, on 15 August 2025, where the Russian leader made his pitch to US President Donald Trump – including a request for de-sanctioning, alongside various proposed punishment measures against Ukraine. Before travelling back to Moscow, the Russian delegation reportedly had to offer to pay cash for aeroplane fuel.³

Though President Trump did not secure a ceasefire, he nonetheless held back from making good on threatened new sanctions, and rated the Alaska Summit ‘10/10.’⁴ Putin might be equally pleased with the inconclusive outcome as precisely the goal of all his obfuscations. For Russia’s cement producers, costs won’t suddenly rise, but nor will they come down any time soon.

Far from sitting idly by, the industry is seeking new ways to actualise the value of its product. On 20 August 2025, Soyuzcement hosted a meeting of nine producers and four retail chains to strategise ways to increase sales of bagged cement. It will be subject to mandatory digital labelling from 1 October 2025. Discussions included the possibility of batch labelling of bags on the pallet for ease of scanning at retail outlets.

For now, producers’ online media spaces give the impression of work continuing as usual. On 18 August 2025, Cemros announced a US$186,000 renovation of buildings at its Mikhailovsk building materials plant in Volgograd Oblast.

The cement business in Russia is big, established and diffuse. Transformation has been its defining feature in the 33 years since the fall of the USSR, including in the relatively stable latter decades of that period. Should macroeconomic or geopolitical events overtake it once again, we can expect some shapeshifting – but also survival.

References

1. Reuters, ‘Russia's GDP growth slows to 1.1% in Q2, says Rosstat,’ 13 August 2025, www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russias-gdp-growth-slows-11-q2-says-rosstat-2025-08-13/

2. Global Data, ‘Russia Construction Market Size,’ 30 June 2025, www.globaldata.com/store/report/russia-construction-market-analysis/

3. Spiegel, ‘Russen boten Rubio zufolge Barzahlung für Betankung ihrer Flugzeuge an,’ 18 August 2025, www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/trump-putin-gipfel-russen-boten-offensichtlich-barzahlung-fuer-betankung-ihrer-flugzeuge-an-a-fdd9303c-546a-43aa-89dd-4f746b8e9df3

4. Focus, ‘Jäger deutlich: "Putin verkauft Trump eine Illusion - und hat ihn jetzt in der Hand",’ 16 August 2025, www.focus.de/politik/ausland/jaeger-putin-braucht-trump-nicht-zu-fuerchten-er-hat-trump-jetzt-in-der-hand_67785013-a14b-485c-9a4a-51755ec483fa.html