Displaying items by tag: Thailand

Cambodia: Thai Boon Rong’s 0.9Mt/yr integrated cement plant in Kampot province was commissioned on 14 November 2019, marking the end of a US$110m construction project on its 678 hectare site in Dangtong District.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen said that the plant, Cambodia’s fifth, would help meet rapidly growing domestic demand.

Thailand: Siam Cement Group (SCG) has announced its involvement in the establishment of an innovation hub at the National Science and Development Agency in Pathum Thai. The Bangkok Post has reported that the development will cost US$14.3m. SCG’s partner for the project is the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a 100-site, 70,000-member body established under the Chinese Government’s Belt and Road foreign investment Initiative. When operational, it will market new products, initially consisting of petrochemicals, energy storage and batteries and smart cities.

High-value-added products and services made up 39% of SCG’s total sales in 2018 of US$15.7bn (US$6.11). It spent US$0.15bn on research and innovation over the period, around 1.0% of total revenue.

Thailand: Siam Cement Group (SCG) recorded a net profit after tax of US$200m in the three months to the 30 September 2019, down by 48% year-on-year from US$388m. It revenue over the period stood at US$3.65bn, down by 9.9% from US$4.06bn in the corresponding period of 2018. SCS’s cement-building materials section fell less dramatically, with nine-month profit attributable to owners down by 6.3% year-on-year to US$0.16m from US$0.15m, and a decrease in sales of 1.7% to US$4.54m from US$4.62m in the corresponding period of 2018.

SCG, Thailand’s largest industrial conglomerate, is planning an initial public offering (IPO) for its packaging subsidiary SCG Packaging. Reuters has reported that proceeds deriving from the listing would ‘be used for domestic and international business expansion.’ The company will remain the major shareholder at 70%.

Vietnam: SCG Cement – Building Materials Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology have signed a memorandum of understanding for a three-year collaboration on innovation including research, development and human development. The agreement follows work between the two organisations over the last year, according to The Vietnam Investment Review newspaper. They will now form a collaborative expert group to carry out research projects in line with the needs of SCG, to improve product quality, increase labour productivity and accelerate the application of new technologies in production and construction.

Thailand: Siam City cement has appointed Benjamin Birks to its board of directors. The appointment will take effect on 1 October 2019. Birks will also assume membership of the company’s Nomination and Compensation Committee (NCC).

Thailand: Germany’s Schmersal has founded Schmersal Thailand to serve the machine safety and systems solutions needs of Thailand’s growing industries, including its 42.4Mt/yr cement industry. It will further support Schmersal’s sale partners throughout the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region.

The publication of CNBM’s financial results presents a good opportunity to take stock of the Chinese cement industry in the first half of 2019. Looking at the big picture first, cement sales rose by 5% year-on-year to 1.03Bnt in the first half of 2019 from 0.98Bnt in the same period in 2018. Graph 1 below shows the sales over the last five years since 2014. Generally, sales are decreasing each year but there has been some variation in the half-year periods.

Graph 1: Cement sales in China, 2014 – 2019. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China.

As the China Cement Association (CCA) pointed out in its summary for the first half of 2019, the cement industry ‘swelled in volume and price’ as industry efficiency grew but that the growth rate dropped ‘significantly’ compared in 2018. By region, as Graph 2 shows, variation can be seen between the south-east of the country where growth was slow or even fell compared to stronger performance elsewhere. Cement production increased by above 20% in Jilin, Shanxi, Shandong, Tibet and Heilongjiang and by over 10% in Hebei, Gansu, Tianjin, and Liaoning. However, it fell in Hainan, Beijing, Qinghai, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hunan, Guangdong and Ningxia. Most of these changes were attributed to either rising or falling demand for cement, except for Jilin where reduced imports from neighbouring provinces pushed up its demand. In most of these latter regions it attribute the decline to falling demand for cement.

Graph 2: Cement production growth by province in first half of 2019. Source: China Cement Association.

Other points of note from the CCA include the surge in imports to China. Imports of cement and clinker rose by 149% year-on-year to 8.97Mt in the five months from January to May 2019. Vietnam supplied 68% of this followed by 11% from Thailand. On the production side, 10 new production lines with a total capacity of 15.5Mt/yr were commissioned in the period. These were fairly scattered across nine provinces, in Shanxi, Anhui, Hubei, Fujian, Guangxi, Hunan, Guizhou, Gansu and Yunnan respectively.

Sales and profits were supported by growing demand and prices on the corporate side. CNBM’s operating income for its cement businesses grew by 16% to US$8.14bn from US$7.04bn. Its adjusted profit increased by 40% to US$2.76bn from US$1.98bn. Anhui Conch’s sales rose by 17.9% to US$2.15bn from US$2.11bn. It blamed poorer profits in the south of the country on adverse weather leading to weakened demand.

The weaker sales in the south could be seen in China Resources Cement’s (CRC) results with its turnover down by 6% to US$2.22bn from US$2.36bn. Likewise, its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 8.5% to US$820m from US$896m. The majority of its cement plants are based in Guangxi, Guangdong and Fujian. Jidong Cement was also reported as having received US$30m in subsidies from the government during the first half of 2019 in relation to its ‘daily activities.’

As is usual for these kinds of roundups the dynamic in China is between government industrial policies, like peak shifting and pollution mitigation, and local demand and price trends. One of the latest spins on peak shifting, for example, is a rating system that is being considered to decide which companies should be subject to production limits and for how long. General cement sales are slowly falling each year but the rise of imports into the word’s biggest cement producing nation (!) mark an interesting trend. Also, it may not be connected, but lots of those provinces with falling demand so far in 2019 are those on the south coast facing the heavy clinker exporting nations of South-East Asia. Given the decisiveness with which the Chinese government dispensed with imports of waste materials under its National Sword initiative since 2017, those countries importing cement to China should beware. It could change very quickly. The Chinese cement market is never dull.

Predictably, the recent investigation by the Tariff Commission in the Philippines on whether to maintain duties on imported cement recommended that the safeguard duty be kept. It even suggested raising the rate to nearly US$6/t from US$4/t at present. The report has been passed to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), which will make the final decision on the matter.

Graph 1: Market share of the Philippines cement industry between local producers and traders, 2013 - 2018. Source: Tariff Commission of the Philippines.

As the commission built its argument it released a great snapshot of the local cement industry and it’s well worth a read for anyone who is interested. One key graph here was the speed at which the market share of cement sold by local producers fell compared to importers from 2013 to 2018. As Graph 1 shows above, traders imported 0.29Mt in 2015 and this rose to 4.66Mt 2018. Imports by local producers also grew during this time but at a far slower rate. They were 0.45Mt in 2015, grew to a high of 1.65Mt in 2016 and then stabilised at around 1Mt/yr since then. Seven of the top 10 cement exporters were Vietnamese companies followed by two from China and one from Thailand. However, the local producers were importing clinker on a far larger scale during this period. 16.8Mt of clinker was imported from 2013 to 2018 led by Holcim Philippines with 5.54Mt or a 33% share. In Holcim’s case this was coming from China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Elsewhere, the report established the various production capacity upgrades the local cement producers had invested in or were planning to in the near future. Taiheiyo Cement Philippines, for example, was reported as planning an expansion to its Cebu plant production line from 2022 to 2025. It then looked at kiln capacity utilisation rates, prices and how profits have changed amongst much else. It concluded that the import surge from 2015 to 2018 had depressed prices and decreased the profitability of the local producers. This fitted its definition of ‘serious injury’ as one reason to impose a safeguard duty on imports.

Importers presented a different scenario to the commission during its investigation and afterwards. Phinma, for example, told local press that the commission’s comparison calculation of the costs behind local and imported cement didn’t take into all the costs the importers endured such as a local distribution and handling once in the country. The Philippines Cement Importers Association reiterated the view of its members that they were simply meeting market demand, that local producers had caused their own problems through overcapacity and that profits varied considerably amongst local producers, amongst other arguments. This has been borne out by some of the half-year results amongst the local producers. Eagle Cement, for example, saw its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grow by 21% year-on-year to US$80.6m.

With the publication of the commission’s report the DTI has been handed the impetus to hold up or even raise the duty on imported cement. Based on its actions in recent years the ministry seems likely to do so. This presents a contrast to Trinidad & Tobago where importer Rock Hard Cement won a legal battle earlier in August 2019 against competitor and Cemex-subsidiary Trinidad Cement over the classification of imported cement products. These kinds of trade conflicts are likely to proliferate whilst global production capacity outstrips demand but the outcomes may vary.

Thailand: Siam Cement Group (SCG) is promoting a blockchain electronic accounting method for procurement and payment with its suppliers and partners to improve efficiency. Its Procure to Pay platform was started in 2018 and it has 240 suppliers using it at present, according to the Bangkok Post newspaper. The company aims to reach 2400 suppliers by 2020.

Thammasak Sethaudom, vice-president for finance and investment at SCG, said that the system had helped suppliers reduce processing times by 50% from 70 minutes to 35 minutes per purchase order. The platform speeds up the time required to issue invoices. The system also helps SCG’s partners to track transactions in real time.

Procure to Pay was developed with Digital Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Siam Commercial Bank. SCG has invested over US$0.3m on the project so far. Expansion to SCG’s subsidiaries in Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam is being considered.

Thailand: SCG’s sales from its cement business rose by 3% year-on-year to US$3.04bn in the first half of 2019 from US$2.94bn in the same period in 2018. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 7% to US$410m from US$382m. Cement sales in the second quarter of 2019 were driven by the non-government sector. Overall the group’s sales and earnings fell due to poor performance from its chemicals division, which it blamed on the on-going US-China trade war.