Displaying items by tag: Raysut Cement

Maldives: Oman-based Raysut Cement has announced its acquisition of a 75% stake in Lafarge Maldives for US$8m. The subsidiary of LafargeHolcim operates the 9000t-capacity Thilafusi cement terminal on the island of Thilafusi, Kaafu Atoll, which it opened in June 2015.

Oman: Raysut Cement has appointed Salim Ahmed Alawi Al-Ibrahim as Acting Deputy Group chief executive officer (CEO). He will support Raysut’s Group CEO Joey Ghose in the role. Salim has been with Raysut Group since 2014 and has been described as ‘contributing significantly’ to the company in the sales department.

Mohammed Ahmed Aideed has also been promoted as the Acting General Manager of Raysut Cement. Mohammed holds over a decade of experience in sales and marketing and has been working with Raysut Cement since 2009. He started his career as a sales representative and subsequently moved up to managerial positions. He has also held senior positions such as Head of Marketing and Business Intelligence, Acting CEO and Head of Business Support.

Oman: Raysut Cement has appointed Jitender Singhvi as its chief financial officer (CFO). He was previously the head of the company’s Internal Audit unit. Singhvi holds over 20 years of experience in audit, assurance and advisory functions.

Oman: Cement producers have reacted positively to anti-dumping measures implemented by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The Oman Observer newspaper has reported that the measures, which consist of quality screening, have, since coming into force on 1 March 2020, been ramped up in construction, with a general restriction of the movement of goods due to the coronavirus. Raysut Cement said, “These measures will enable Raysut Cement and our peers Oman Cement to operate at full capacity. We hope that the authorities will continue to strictly enforce this measure in the interest of fair market competition.”

Raysut Cement said that it is ‘Aggressively pushing ahead’ with its US$30m Port of Duqm grinding plant project, which is due for commission in March 2021. “It is a good time for countries like Oman to become self-sufficient in the domestic availability of a strategic commodity like cement,” it said. On 4 May 2020 Raysut Cement announced plans to lobby the government for a gas or electricity subsidy.

Oman’s cement demand is currently 20-25% below pre-lockdown levels.

Oman: Raysut Cement has announced its receipt of 44,000t of clinker via the port of Sohar, Al Batinah North Governorate. The material will contribute to Raysut Cement’s strategic stockpile to help meet Omani cement demand throughout the coronavirus crisis.

Madagascar: Oman-based Raysut Cement has shared plans for a US$30m, 0.75Mt/yr clinker grinding plant in Toamasina, Madagascar. L’Express de Madagascar newspaper has reported that Raysut Cement will begin construction in June 2020 and enter production at the facility in mid-2022 at the latest. Raysut Cement Indian Ocean regional director Pascal Naud said, “Madagascar’s pre-capita cement consumption is around 22kg/yr, compared to 125kg/yr on average in sub-Saharan countries. It is therefore a market with high potential for this investment.”

On 2 February 2020 Raysut Cement entered into talks with Switzerland-based Cementia for acquisition of the latter’s 75% stake in the latter’s LH Maldives cement terminal. The group said it is currently ‘developing an external growth strategy by investing in several African countries such as Kenya and Uganda.’

Maldives: Oman-based Raysut Cement has announced that it is seeking a 75% stake in a cement terminal in the Maldives, as part of its long-term global expansion strategy.

In a disclosure filed with the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) in Oman, Raysut stated, “Raysut Cement Company wishes to inform that it is in discussions with Cementia AG of Zurich to acquire its 75% shareholding in LH Maldives Ltd, a cement terminal located at Thilafushi Island, Maldives.” Both Cementia and LH Maldives are controlled by LafargeHolcim.

Raysut Cement is also constructing a 1.0Mt/yr cement grinding plant in collaboration with MSG Group in Somaliland, internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. In September 2019 Raysut signed an agreement to set up a 1.0Mt/yr grinding plant in Duqm, Oman and is also setting up a US$200m integrated cement plant in Georgia via its UAE-based subsidiary Pioneer Cement.

Oman: Raysut Cement’s revenue fell by 7.6% year-on-year to US$223m in 2019 from US$241m in 2018. However its profit for the year before tax rose five-fold to US$13.8m and its expenses fell by 12% to US$208m.

The UAE is having a moment. Over the last week Fujairah Natural Resources, a new entrant to cement, said it is going to build a clinker plant at Habbab in Fujairah. It’s also looking likely that Raysut Cement might buy UAE-based Fujairah Cement Company’s shares in Sohar Cement in Oman. Then, Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) Cement announced that it had purchased the Newtech cement plant. What’s happening here?

The last couple of years have been tough ones for Emirati cement producers, which have been fighting falling sales and beleaguered profits. The largest producer, Arkan Building Materials - a group majority controlled by the Abu Dhabi government, reported flat sales growth for the first nine months of 2018. It blamed this on falling sales of clinker due to imports from Iran and a tough pricing environment. Its profits were hit by rising clinker production costs due to its reliance on imported limestone from Oman whilst it resolves problems with its own local quarry. Arkan had closed its Emirates Cement plant in Al Ain following revenue and profit falls in 2016. This story thread reached its end earlier in February 2019 when Arkan sold the closed plant for around US$14m. National Cement reported a similar experience in its nine months results, with growing revenue but sales sapped by mounting costs.

Data from Riyad Capital in early-2018 suggested that the UAE only consumes about half of its own cement production. The rest is exported to the Middle East and North African region, particularly Oman and Egypt, and African countries. The country has 14 integrated cement plants with a production capacity of 31.4Mt/yr and eight grinding plants with a capacity of 10.4Mt/yr. These are owned by a mixture of local companies and multinationals.

The European producers still have a presence through LafargeHolcim’s Lafarge Emirates plant in Fujairah and a grinding plant run by Cemex. Although how long LafargeHolcim will remain seems uncertain given a report by Bloomberg earlier in February 2019 suggesting that the group is seriously looking at exiting the Middle East and Africa. Oman’s Raysut Cement holds a plant too via its Pioneer Cement subsidiary but the majority of the foreign-owned plants are Indian. Their presence has been steadily growing.

Aditya Birla/UltraTech Cement, JK Cement and Shree Cement all run plants in the UAE and JSW Cement said in mid-2018 that it was going to build a 1Mt/yr integrated plant in Fujairah. UltraTech Cement renamed its grinding plant UltraTech Nathdwara Cement in December 2018. This plant was formerly a Binani Cement plant and part of the rancorous bidding war between UltraTech Cement and Dalmia Bharat.

The background to all of this has been a country that is very willing to spend big on infrastructure projects when the need arises. Forbes reckoned, for example, that the UAE had awarded US$20.7bn on infrastructure projects in 2018 in the first nine months of 2018. Impending projects like the Expo 2020 are still generating construction activity and longer ones like Dubai Metro are in progress. However, the country is in a dynamic place geographically between the two-major economic and cement-producing powerhouses of Saudi Arabia and Iran. For the cement industry this explains the prominence of the grinding sector and the growing interest from Indian companies looking to expand overseas. For the new project and acquisition this week it’s looking more like local variation in the market at this stage. In this context though the fourth quarter results from local producers will make interesting reading to see if anything bigger is going on.

UAE: Raysut Cement has appointed Afzaal Qadri as the Plant Manager of its subsidiary Pioneer Cement Industries. Afzaal will report to Raysut’s chief executive officer (CEO) Joey Ghose. Qadri, aged 49 years, holds over 30 years of experience of the Cement Industry. He started his career in the cement industry in 1987 and has worked in various engineering and operational roles in the US, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Pakistan. Most recently he worked by HeidelbergCement in the US.