Displaying items by tag: US

US: The government has imposed a 20% import tax on cement from Vietnam, effective from 1 August 2025, doubling the previous 10% rate, according to the Vietnam Cement Association. It said that the move would have a significant impact on cement exporters, as Vietnam is the second largest cement supplier to the US, after Türkiye. It also said that the higher tariffs would now lead to costs being passed on to consumers, with increasing cement prices in the US expected.

Canada/US: Heidelberg Materials North America has signed a binding purchase agreement to acquire construction materials company Burnco Rock Products’ one rail-served cement terminal and six aggregates sites in Edmonton, Alberta. Chair of the managing board Dominik von Achten said “With our latest acquisition, we are significantly expanding our aggregates business in an attractive market as we continue on our ambitious growth path in North America.”

Chief executive officer of Heidelberg Materials North America Chris Ward said “We look forward to welcoming 200 Burnco employees and their valued customers to Heidelberg Materials.”

The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close by the end of 2025.

Greece: Titan sales remained stable at €1.33bn in the first half of 2025 due to strong sales in Greece and Egypt. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 2% year-on-year to €287m from €281m in the same period in 2024. Sales and earnings fell in the US due to poor weather and a subdued residential market. In Egypt the group noted a ‘construction boom’ connected to foreign investment in tourism-related developments. During the reporting period the company completed the divestment of its stake in Türkiye-based Adocim.

US: CRH has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Eco Material Technologies, a leading supplier of supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) in North America, for a total consideration of US$2.1bn. The business will subsequently operate as Eco Material Technologies, a CRH Company. CRH says that the deal positions it to meet growing demand for cementitious products for the modernisation of North America’s infrastructure and that it secures a long-term supply of critical materials in the region.

Eco Material is headquartered in Utah and operates a national network of fresh and harvested fly ash, pozzolans, synthetic gypsum and ‘green cement’ operations across a network of over 125 stockpiles, production facilities and terminals. The company partners with electric utilities to process and recycle approximately 7Mt/yr of fly ash and 3Mt/yr of synthetic gypsum and other materials, with additional capacity currently under construction.

The proposed transaction is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions and is expected to close in 2025. CRH plans to fund the transaction with cash on hand and does not expect any change in its credit ratings.

US: Eco Material Technologies, a marketer of supplementary cementitious materials and producer of green cement products in North America, has announced the opening of its new Lakeview Plant in southern Oregon. This milestone marks Eco Material’s first sustainably-built manufacturing hub in the Pacific Northwest.

Adjacent to Lake County's freight rail line, the Lakeview Plant can produce up to 0.3Mt/yr of low‑carbon cement replacements. By replacing 25 - 100% of traditional Portland cement in concrete mixes with Eco Material’s advanced supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) and proprietary ‘green cement’ blends, producers can reduce the carbon footprint of the cement portion of their concrete by up to 80%.

The Lakeview plant will create 30 permanent jobs, including skilled manufacturing roles and logistics positions. Approximately 75% of shipments will be distributed by rail using existing infrastructure.

“This facility represents more than just a new plant. It’s a powerful investment in Lake County’s future,” said Mark Albertson, Lake County Commissioner. “By pairing advanced, low-carbon building materials with local job creation and infrastructure development, Eco Material Technologies is bringing both economic vitality and environmental responsibility to our community. We’re proud to welcome this transformative project while creating a great partnership to benefit all of Lake County."

US: Eagle Materials recorded a record revenue of US$635m in the first quarter of the 2026 Fiscal Year (FY2026), a 4% year-on-year rise compared to the first quarter of FY2025. Its net earnings, however, fell by 8% to US$123m.
Commenting on the first quarter results, Michael Haack, president and CEO, said "Eagle had a solid start to FY2026. Against the current backdrop of ongoing macroeconomic and policy uncertainty as well as adverse weather conditions across many of our markets, our portfolio of businesses continued to perform well, and our end markets remained resilient.”

Revenue in the company’s Heavy Materials sector, which includes cement, concrete and aggregates, joint venture and intersegment cement revenues, increased by 5% to US$421m, primarily due to higher cement volumes and the contribution from a recently-acquired aggregates businesses in Western Pennsylvania and Northern Kentucky. Heavy Materials operating earnings decreased by 5% to US$87.3m, primarily due to higher cement production costs.

Cement sector revenue, including joint venture and intersegment revenue, was up 2% to US$348m, while cement sales volumes rose by 2% to 2.0Mt.

France: Vicat’s sales remained stable at €1.89bn on a like-for-like basis in the first half of 2025. This was attributed to negative currency exchange effects in Brazil, Egypt and Türkiye, and a slowdown in activity in the US. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 2% year-on-year to €331m from €353m in the same period in 2024. Cement and concrete sales volumes dropped by 2.5% to 13.7Mt and 3.9% to 4.4Mm³ respectively. Aggregates volumes rose by 5.8% to 11.3Mt. By region sales revenue and earnings fell in France yet rose in the rest of Europe and the Mediterranean. It fell elsewhere.

“The group continues to implement its market plan, with the start-up of Kiln 6 in Senegal, a major driver of the group’s organic growth, development in the construction chemicals business with the merger between VPI and Cermix, and the acquisition of Realmix, which strengthens the group’s vertical integration in Brazil,” said Guy Sidos, Vicat’s chair and CEO.

US: Environmental groups have welcomed the imminent start of work to rehabilitate Heidelberg Materials’ former Permanente cement plant and quarry in California, which ceased operations in 2023. The project, to start on 29 July 2025, will clean up a polluted section of the Permanente Creek, which flows from the Santa Cruz Mountains past the quarry site an into the San Francisco Bay.

The work was required as part of the settlement to a lawsuit filed in 2011 by the Sierra Club against Lehigh Southwest Cement company, which was subsequently acquired by Heidelberg Materials. Under the settlement, the company is required to restore 2.7km of the creek by 2030. The restoration will remove sediment that contains selenium, nickel and other heavy metals that have washed out of the quarry over the years. Workers also will plant native vegetation, build pools for trout, and stabilise slopes. The project's cost is estimated at US$25m, according to Heidelberg Materials’ David Perkins.

Environmental groups have said the work is overdue. "We're relieved that it's finally actually happening," said Katja Irvin, Guadalupe Group chair of the Sierra Club's Loma Prieta Chapter, based in Palo Alto. "There is mining waste in the creek, and concrete barriers in the creek. The slopes have been eroded. All of those problems eventually will be fixed.”

Mexico/US: Grupo Cementos Chihuahua (GCC) reported that sales in the US were up by 8% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2025 (April – June 2025), due to higher ready-mix concrete and cement volumes of 21% and 4% respectively. In Mexico, which represents 25% of consolidated net sales, it recorded a 13% decrease in ready-mix concrete volumes and a 6% decrease in cement volumes, impacted by an industrial slowdown and negative currency exchange effects.

The company recorded a fall in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of 12% to US$118m, while sales rose 1% to US$364m. Net income fell by 18% to US$73.5m from US$89.6m in the second quarter of 2024.

Holcim Mexico has been promoting itself as the lynchpin of the group’s growth in Latin America this week. The move makes sense following the spin-off of Holcim’s North America business in late June 2025. The company says that Mexico has a housing deficit, has the highest profitability margin in Latin America and it is leading the transformation toward circular and low-carbon construction.

The bullseye on Latin America was first planted by Holcim in the group’s NextGen Growth 2030 strategy that was released in March 2025. With the company preparing to separate off its most profitable section in the US, it decided to highlight new reasons for investors to stay interested. The summary was ‘focused investment’ in attractive markets in Latin America, Europe, North Africa and Australia, sustainability-driven growth with demolition materials singled out and an emphasis on the building solutions division. Although the Latin America division supplied the smallest geographical share of new group net sales in 2024 (US$3.9bn, 19%), the profitability metric presented, recurring earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) margin, gave the region the highest result. Or in other words, Holcim is telling investors that it may have divested North America but it still has business south of the Rio Grande… and it looks promising. It then said that it has the ‘best’ geographical coverage and vertical integration in the region and the largest construction materials retail franchise in the form of Disensa.

Understandably, the likes of Cemex, Cementos Argos, Votorantim and others might take exception to some of this. For example, Cemex reported net sales in excess of US$6bn in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Votorantim reported net sales of around US$4.8bn in 2024. Yet, Holcim’s claim of regional spread does carry some weight. It purchased Comacsa and Mixercon in Peru and assets from Cemex in Guatemala in 2024. At the end of the year the group owned integrated cement plants in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. Plus it held grinding plants in the French Antilles and Nicaragua. All of these are majority-owned subsidiaries, often also with aggregate, ready-mixed concrete and building systems businesses. Holcim may have sold up in Brazil in 2022 but it still holds a relatively intact network in Latin America.

Graph 1: Grey cement production in Mexico, 2020 - April 2025, rolling 12 months. Source: National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).

As for the market, Holcim reported modest but growing net sales in Latin America in 2024, despite lower sales volumes plus elections in Mexico, economic issues in Argentina and political instability in Ecuador. Focusing on Mexico, local cement volumes were said to be stable, aided by a recovery in bagged cement in spite of bulk sales falling on the back of fewer infrastructure projects. Holcim Mexico also spent US$55m on building a new grinding unit at its integrated Macuspana plant in Tabasco. Once complete, the update will increase the site’s capacity by 0.5Mt/yr to 1.5Mt/yr.

Cemex, the market leader in Mexico, released more direct information. It saw its sales and operating earnings fall in 2024. This was blamed on a poor second half to the year following the presidential election in June 2024. GCC’s sales fell more sharply in 2024 and this was blamed on “energy infrastructure limitations and permitting delays in Juarez.” So far in 2025, in the first quarter, the pain in Mexico for the construction sector has continued, with both Cemex and GCC noting strong falls in cement volumes and sales due to a slowdown in industrial demand. Holcim has not reported on Mexico directly so far in 2025 only saying that sales have risen in local currencies in Latin America as a whole in the first quarter. Cemex started a cost cutting exercise in February 2025 in response to the situation. Graph 1 above shows Mexican cement production. Although it should be noted that Cemex and GCC still run subsidiaries in the US. Holcim now does not. Rolling 12-month cement production figures in Mexico started falling in September 2024 and continued to do so until April 2025, the date of the latest data provided by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

Despite falling volumes though, the price of cement in Mexico remains high by international standards. At the start of July 2025 the National Association of Independent Businessmen (ANEI) raised the alarm that distributors had warned of an 8% price rise on the way. It’s in this environment that news stories such as Bolivia-based Empresa Pública de Cementos Bolivia (ECEBOL), a producer in a landlocked and mountainous country, preparing to export clinker to Mexico from July 2025 start to sound credible. Sales may have been down in Mexico in 2024 but earnings and margins remain high. In the medium-to-longer term the country looks even more promising, with plenty of scope for development and building products. Ditto the rest of Latin America.

One way a multinational heavy building materials company with a presence in sustainability-obsessed Europe might gain an advantage in the region is by using its knowledge to capture the easier decarbonisation routes first. This is exactly the route Holcim and Holcim Mexico seem to be taking by promoting lower carbon cement and concrete products, and by growing the recycling of demolition materials. Another option, of course, is that Holcim is bolstering its Latin America division ahead of a potential divestment. Either way, Holcim is presenting a plan for growth in its new form, shorn of North America. It’s all to play for.