Displaying items by tag: Pakistan

Pakistan: Gharibwal Cement has blamed reduced exports due to tensions on the Pakistan-Indian border and rising input costs for a reduction in its sales. Its net sales fell by 3% year-on-year to US$72.3m in the year to 30 June 2019 from US$74.5m in the same period in 2018. Its cement dispatches fell by 11.4% to 1.68Mt from 1.89Mt. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 6.5% to US$18.7m from US$20m.

The cement producer said that work on a new 0.15Mt clinker silo is in progress and this is expected to be completed by June 2020. It is also building a rainwater reservoir to capture precipitation for use in the production process. The company operates a 2.1Mt/yr integrated plant at Ismailwal in Punjab Province.

Pakistan: Pioneer Cement’s sales fell by 4% year-on-year to US$62m in the year to 30 June 2019 from US$64.5m in the same period in 2018. Its costs and expenses grew by 7% to US$3.4m from US$3.2m. Its profit after taxation halved to US$5m from US$10.5m. The cement producer operates a 2Mt/yr integrated plant at Chenki in Punjab Province.

Pakistan: Thatta Cement has appointed Naheed Memon as the chairperson of its board of directors. She succeeds Khawaja Muhammad Salman Younis, who left the role on 23 September 2019.

Pakistan: Thatta Cement has blamed a fall in profit on rising input costs and negative currency effects. Its profit dropped by 40% year-on-year to US$1.36m in the financial year to 30 June 2019 from US$2.27m in the same period in 2018. Sales and distribution costs more than tripled to US$1.4m. Its net sales grew by 22% to US$22m from US$18m. Total cement and clinker despatches increased by 34% to 0.56Mt from 0.42Mt.

South Africa: South Africa imported 0.1Mt of cement in July 2019, 293% more than in July 2018. The Algeria Press Service has reported the value of July 2019’s imports as US$4.85m. This represents a decrease from the June 2019 figure of US$6.73 of 28%. Vietnam continues to be the main contributor to the June and Julyimport figures, with Pakistan notably absent in both months. In the record seven months to 31 July 2019, South Africa imported 0.6Mt of cement at a total cost of US$29.6m.

Njobo Lekula, managing director of PPC, has stated that cement prices are ‘critically’ low for domestic producers, whose 18Mt/yr capacity faces a domestic demand of 13Mt/yr. In August 2019, South Africa’s major cement producers applied to South Africa’s International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC) for a tightening of cement standards, which may take the form of a blanket tariff on imports.

Iraq: Pakistan’s Attock Cement has begun commercial operation of its Basra grinding plant. The 0.9Mt/yr unit was commissioned in April 2019.

Pakistan: Fauji Cement has installed a 12.5MW solar power plant at its Jhang Bahtar plant, near Islamabad. Business Recorder reports that Fauji’s is the world’s largest solar power station devoted to a cement plant, with 37,905 panels delivering an estimated annual total of 19,750MWh of energy.

Fauji has additionally installed two waste heat recovery plants of 12 and 9MW and two large reservoirs for water recycling and rainwater harvesting. Fauji is leading Pakistans’s Clean and Green initiative, having planted 25,000 trees and donated a further 40,000 plants to local government and nearby villages.

Pakistan: Power Cement has shutdown the older production lines at its integrated Nooriabad plant due to falling demand and prices. Chairman Nasim Beg said that the old lines were shut because they were ‘inefficient’ and not competitive under present conditions, according to Bloomberg. The plant had a production capacity of around 3150t/day from its older lines. In July 2019 it completed the installation of a new 2.46Mt/yr clinker line supplied by Denmark’s FLSmidth.

South Africa: The South African cement industry is calling on the International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC) to probe a flood of imports into the country. South Africa, which has six cement producers and more than 30% over-capacity, has become a net importer of cement. Imports have increased by 139% since 2016, according to The Concrete Institute’s (ITC) managing director Brian Perrie.

Perrie said in an interview that TCI, representing AfriSam, Dangote Cement South Africa, Lafarge Industries South Africa, Natal Portland Cement and PPC were approaching ITAC to investigate whether the industry required protection from an 18-month surge in imports.

He said that imported cement was undercutting South African prices by as much as 45%, while local producers also had to meet the requirements of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), meet black empowerment and other social requirements and, at the same time, protect thousands of jobs in the domestic industry. Also, the recent carbon tax translated into a 2% increase in selling prices, putting the local industry at a further price disadvantage. “Trade remedy protection is required," said Perrie, pointing out that producers did not want a ‘ban’ on imports, rather some form of protection to ‘level the playing field.’

South Africa instituted anti-dumping duties of 17 – 70% against importers from Pakistan in 2015. Imports duly fell in 2016 but rose again in 2017 and 2018, mainly from Vietnam and China. Perrie said that 350,441t of cement arrived in the second quarter of 2019 alone, the most since the third quarter of 2015. Most came in through Durban (260,909t), an 85% increase on the first quarter.

Pakistan: Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics shows that cement exports fell by 2.5% year-on-year to 1.16Mt in the second quarter of 2019 from 1.22Mt in the same period in 2018. After a strong first quarter exports remained high in April 2019 before starting to decline in May and June. Overall, exports rose by 22.8% year-on-year to 2.7Mt in the first half of 2019.