Displaying items by tag: Russia

Russia: Cemros has proposed limiting Belarusian cement imports to 1.5Mt/yr, citing rising import volumes from Belarus, Iran and Kazakhstan, despite a stagnant market. The company said current imports are equal to the annual output of 2-3 cement plants, while underutilised Russian producers are reducing working hours and halting production.

The Cemros press service said “In the short term, a fair solution would be to fix cement import volumes at the levels seen before the introduction of preferential mortgages, namely a ceiling of 1.5Mt/yr of cement products.”

This comes after Cemros announcing on 8 August 2025 the implementation of a four-day working week from 1 October 2025, due to falling demand and increasing imports. On the same day, industry association Soyuzcement proposed introducing five-year anti-dumping measures, noting Belarus accounts for 69% of imports, Iran 20% and Kazakhstan 9%.

Cemros forecasts that 2025 cement consumption could fall by 10–15% year-on-year in 2025 to 57–60.3Mt. In January–June 2025, Russia produced 27.2Mt of cement and consumed 28.4Mt, including 1.83Mt of imports. Soyuzcement predicts that imports could reach up to 5Mt/yr in the medium term, up from 3.74Mt in 2024.

Russia: Cemros will transition to a four-day work week across its plants from 1 October 2025 in response to declining cement consumption and rising imports. The producer said the part-time regime aims to preserve jobs and will retain the ‘full social package’, according to the local Construction Business News Agency. It will reverse the measure if the construction industry improves.

Cemros said the change is a “forced, but balanced measure aimed at long-term preservation of stability and social balance during a period of instability.” The producer previously suspended operations at its Belgorod cement plant due to lower profitability and increased imports.

Poland: The Internal Affairs Ministry has announced sanctions on the Belarusian Cement Company (BCC). The Belarus-based company has been added to the List of Persons and Enterprises Subject to Sanctions, according to Interfax. The authorities will freeze funds connected to the company and exclude it from public procurement or tenders amongst other measures.

The government has taken this action as it believes that funds generated by BCC indirectly support serious human rights violations, repression against civil society and the democratic opposition, and its activities pose a serious threat to democracy or the rule of law in Belarus. It has also associated the company with actions that destabilise or undermine the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.

The ministry said that BCC was a ‘significant’ supplier of cement to Poland in 2021 – 2022 but that these exports decreased significantly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, it noted that that activities by the company outside of Belarus have grown since 2023 with the opening of a new subsidiary in Russia, BCK-Union Trading House, and mounting exports.

BCC has also been on the US sanctions list since late 2023. The EU imposed sanctions against cement industry as a whole in Belarus in mid-2022.

Cement consumption data for the first half of 2025 from Russia has been released this week and it is down from 2024. Added to this, Cemros announced earlier in July 2025 that it is preparing to suspend production at its Belgorod cement plant. What can these and other news stories tell us about the state of the Russian cement sector at present?

Graph 1: Cement consumption in Russia, 2019 - H1 2025. Source: Soyuzcement.

Figures from Soyuzcement, the Union of Cement Producers, in the local press reports that consumption fell by 8.6% year-on-year to 27.2Mt in the first half of 2025 from 28.4Mt in the same period in 2024. By region the largest declines were noted in the south (-14%), the Urals (-13%) and in Siberia (-11%). Producer Sibcem released some production data for the first half, also this week, and this reflected the national picture, with a 9% fall.

The national situation has been blamed on a suspension of infrastructure projects, a fall in the domestic building sector and mounting imports. Imports rose by 5.8% to 1.9Mt. Notably those trade flows have been coming in from other countries with restricted access to international markets such as Belarus and Iran. A China-based company Jinyu Jidong Cement in the far-eastern Heilongjiang Province also started exporting cement to Russia in July 2025. Unusually though, for these kinds of stories, exports from Russia have also risen. They grew by 9% to 0.5Mt, mainly to Kazakhstan. The general picture fits with Soyuzcement’s updated forecast for the local market from 2025 to 2027. It expects a decline of 6 - 12% in 2025 as a whole, followed by a change of -6% to +1% in 2026 and then the start of a recovery in 2027 under most scenarios.

One reaction to the shrinking market became apparent earlier in July 2025 when Cemros said it was preparing to suspend production at its Belgorod cement plant. The company plans to use the stoppage to assess the market, reduce its operating costs and consider market diversification options. It blamed the decision on a decrease in demand in the domestic market in Russia along with lower profits and higher imports. Back in May 2025, Cemros, the leading Russia-based cement producer, said that it had 18 plants, a total production capacity of 33Mt/yr and a 31% share of the local market. It also reported that it had two mothballed plants: the Savinsky cement plant in Arkhangelsk and the Zhigulovskiye plant in the Samara region. Although, to be fair to Cemros, up until fairly recently it had been spending money on its plants. It resumed clinker production in mid-2024 when it restarted one production line at its Ulyanovsk plant in mid-2024. Then in May 2025 it said it was getting ready to restart the second line at the site too as part of a €8m renovation project. Once back online the unit will have a total production capacity of 0.8Mt/yr. Another recent plant project by Cemros was the upgrade of a kiln at Katavsky Cement that was completed in June 2025. Elsewhere, Kavkazcement was reportedly planning to invest US$224m on equipment upgrades in April 2025 in response to a large rise in production costs in 2024.

The larger problem facing the Russian construction industry and the building material producers that supply it is the ongoing economic fallout from the war in Ukraine. The head of the country’s national bank said at the start of July 2025 that the nation had broadly adapted to economic sanctions and that inflation was slowing down. Growing cement demand since 2021 broadly supports this view. Yet, governor Elvira Nabiullina warned of further market turmoil ahead due to a slowing economy and high labour costs. This spells uncertainty for the cement sector as underlined by Soyuzcement’s gloomy forecasts for 2025 and 2026. In this kind of environment market mergers and acquisitions seem likely but international sanctions may limit the options. One general remedy the government has been advocating for has been the formation of a common commodities exchange for the Eurasian Economic Union that was suggested in late 2024. However, Soyuzcement has been lobbying against the proposal on the grounds of price volatility, increased competition and a reluctance by producers to join it. The cement sector in Russia faces challenging times ahead.

Russia: Sibcem’s five cement plants produced 2.2Mt of cement in the first half of 2025, down by 9% year-on-year.

Topkinsky Plant’s output dropped by 12% to 0.89Mt, Iskitimcement’s fell by 15% to 0.53Mt, Krasnoyarsk Cement’s fell by 5% to 0.3Mt and TimlyuiCement’s fell by 7% to 0.18Mt. Angarskcement grew production by 3% to 0.33Mt.

First vice president of Sibcem Gennady Rasskazov said “According to our calculations, in January – June of 2025, the volume of cement consumption in Siberia (within its previous borders – taking into account Buryatia and Transbaikalia) amounted to 2.8Mt, which is 10% lower than the level of the first six months of 2024. At the same time, the situation in different regions is different. For example, in Buryatia, demand increased by 8% in the first half of the year, while in Khakassia it decreased by 28%. A significant decline was also recorded in one of the most 'capacious' markets of the Siberian Federal District: cement consumption in the Novosibirsk Region decreased by 15%.”

He added “In the future, negative trends will intensify: so far, we do not see any prerequisites that allow us to talk about an imminent recovery in demand.”

Russia: Cemros has suspended cement production at its Belgorod cement plant due to market deterioration, reduced profitability and a rising share of imports on the domestic market. The company said that the forced downtime will be used for equipment repairs, with operations expected to resume within a few months.

Cement consumption in Russia fell by 9% in the first half of 2025, and by 10.5% in the second quarter. Consumption in the Central Federal District, including the Belgorod region, dropped by 12% in June 2025, and by 8% in the Belgorod region itself. Cemros expects the decline to reach 13-15% by the end of 2025. The producer attributed the decline to high interest rates, the end of preferential mortgage programmes and a slowdown in construction projects. Cemros said that imports in 2025 have increased year-on-year, with the majority coming from Belarus. Imports from Iran have also increased by 25% since 2024. The producer said that the total volume of imported cement will be around 4Mt by the end of 2025.

Cemros said that all employees will remain on staff with pay and benefits, and some will be relocated to other plants.

China/Russia: Jinyu Jidong Cement has despatched its first batch of cement products to Russia, following final quality inspection and packaging. The company, part of the Jinyu Group, aims to strengthen Sino-Russian Far East cooperation and expand into international markets. According to local press, it has passed the Russian GOST certification audit, becoming one of the first cement producers in Heilongjiang Province to be approved for the export of building materials to Russia.

Russia: The Union of Cement Producers (SOYUZCEMENT) and National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) have signed a cooperation agreement to strengthen ties. The partnership will focus on cement engineering, including reverse engineering, development of technological equipment, and solutions to enhance the cement sector’s ‘technological sovereignty’ and environmental safety, according to RBC News.

The two parties will also work together on a cement project. Executive director of SOYUZCEMENT Daria Martynkina said “SOYUZCEMENT, together with Tomsk Polytechnic University, is implementing a project to create a standard line for the production of dry cement with a capacity of 1Mt/yr, consisting entirely of Russian and Belarusian equipment. Colleagues from TPU have already joined this process, and I am sure that the agreement will help to intensify cooperation.”

Russia: Katavsky Cement has modernised rotary kiln No. 4, raising clinker production capacity by 15% from 888,000t/yr to 927,000t/yr. According to Cemros, the project formed part of a corporate programme of improvements to increase production efficiency, valued at around US$760,000. Specialists reportedly encountered the problem of clinker defects when increasing the feed of raw meal due to insufficient heat exchange in the kiln system. To eliminate the problem, the plant updated the cyclone heat exchanger, stabilised the air supply and combustion of additional fuel, and improved the clinker cooling system.

General director Vyacheslav Lyubimtsev said “Modernisation of kiln No. 4 is a consistent step in the development of the plant. In 2024, similar work was carried out to increase the productivity of furnace No. 3 by 30%. The new result confirms the effectiveness of the chosen strategy.”

Ukraine: The Interdepartmental Commission on International Trade has extended anti-dumping duties on cement from Russia, Belarus and Moldova until 2030, according to Ukrainian News. The duties stand at 115% for Russian cement, 94% for Moldovan cement and 57% for Belarusian cement, following a review of measures first imposed in 2019.