Displaying items by tag: Sales

Uzbekistan: 80% of local cement sales were made through the Uzbek Commodity Exchange in the first nine months of 2018. Local sales fell by 4.7% year-on-year to 5.6Mt from 5.9Mt, according to the Trend News Agency. 4.5Mt of this total was sold through the commodity exchange. Falling sales have been blamed on rising natural gas and electricity prices. Tariffs for gas and electricity have increased by at least 60% during 2018 for industrial users in the construction industry, including cement producers.

China: Anhui Conch has signed a cement sale and purchase agreement with Jiangsu Conch Building Materials with a value of up to around US$230m. Subsidiaries of Anhui Conch based in east China will sell a total of 3.5Mt of cement products to Jiangsu Conch, a non-wholly owned subsidiary of Anhui Conch. The contract will last until the end of 2018.

The agreement has been setup for a relatively short time period as a pilot scheme to test the market. The intention is to allow the direct Anhui Conch subsidiaries to focus on production and to enable Jiangsu Conch to concentrate on using its ‘centralised sales advantage.’

Pakistan: Overall cement sales in Pakistan fell by 2% year-on-year to 7Mt in the first two months of the current fiscal year, which began on 1 July 2018. Domestic sales dropped by 5.3% to 5.9Mt, while exports increased by 21.5% to 1.1Mt.

A spokesperson from the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) said that the industry had been expecting slower growth at home but had not expected a contraction. He added that in July 2018 overall sales had grown by 5% but they fell by 8% in August 2018.

Argentina: Both the sale and consumption of cement grew by 17% in August 2018 compared to July 2018, according to the national government. With sales of 1.1Mt, August 2018 also grew 0.1% compared to August 2017.

"The August figures are very positive in this economic context, which shows that construction, public and private, continues to advance,” said Guillermo Dietrich, Minister of Transportation. “The sale of cement maintains the same values as in August 2017, setting a historical record. We are facing the most ambitious infrastructure plan in history and that does not stop."

Ukraine: Production of cement in Ukraine fell by 4.7% to 0.96Mt in July 2018 compared to the same month in 2017, according to the State Statistics Service. Production was also 6.1% less than in June 2018.

In the first seven months of 2018, cement production fell by 3.7% to 4.97Mt. Cement production was 9.31Mt for the whole of 2017.

Dominican Republic: Colombia’s Cementos Argos has announced that it recorded positive results in the Dominican Republic during the first half of 2018. In this period, the company saw overall revenues experience a year-on-year increase of 7%, while net profits expanded by 23%. These positive results helped the company to report a good performance in its Caribbean-Central American regional operations, which recorded earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of US$99m and revenues of US$299m in the period under review, marking increases of 3.9% and 2.6%, respectively.

Morocco: Cement consumption in Morocco was higher in July 2018 than for any July since 2012 at 1.3Mt, a 0.1Mt (7.8%) year-on-year increase.

The upturn was reported by local press as having been expected by cement companies, which now hope to finish the year level or even slightly up on 2017, if conditions remain favourable.

According to data provided by the Professional Association of Cement Manufacturers (PCA), 10 out of 12 regions saw consumption increase in July 2018. Increases range from 0.33% for Oriental to 40.55% for Guelmim-Oued Noun.

Casablanca-Settat still has the lion's share of Moroccan cement consumption. The region was able to absorb 282,680t, an increase of 3.8% year-on-year. This zone was followed by Marrakech-Safi, which its volumes sold rise by nearly 21% compared to July 2017, thus accumulating 180,131t.

Colombia: Cement production reached 1.02Mt in Colombia in July 2018, a 5.2% year-on-year fall compared to July 2017, according to DANE, the country’s statistics authority. In July 2018 the country shipped 0.99Mt to the domestic market, a 4.7% year-on-year fall.

So far in 2018, cement production reached 6.98Mt, a decrease of 1.8% compared to the period January - July 2017. In the 12 months to the end of July 2018, cement production reached 12.2Mt, a decrease of 2.2% compared to the period August 2016 to July 2017.

Brazil: SNIC, Brazil's national cement industry union, has announced that sales of cement in Brazil came to 4.6Mt in July 2018. The figure is down by 2.5% in comparison to July 2017. In the comparison for working days, the drop reached 4.6% in July 2018 in the year-on-year comparison, and 9.5% in comparison with June 2018. In the first seven months of 2018 domestic cement sales totalled 30.4Mt, a fall of 1.7%. SNIC forecasts a drop of 1-2% for 2018 compared to 2017.

Colombia: DANE, Colombia's national department for statistics, has announced that sales of grey cement stood at 0.94Mt between January and June 2018, which represented an increase of 3.6% compared to the same period of 2017. A DANE report indicated a gradual recovery of the sector after a sales drop of 10% registered in March 2018. However, the Colombian Association of Concrete Producers (Asocreto) has predicted that consumption would close the year with similar results to those posted in 2017, when sales were lower than in 2015 and 2016.