Displaying items by tag: data

Kyrgyzstan: Cement production in Kyrgyzstan totalled 1.01Mt from January to May 2024, a decline of 5.7% year-on-year from 1.08Mt, according to data from the country’s National Statistics Committee. May 2024 saw production of 0.36Mt of cement, a rise of 10.5% year-on-year from May 2023.

Spain: Cement consumption in Spain fell by 3.3% in the first half of 2024 to 7.27Mt, a decrease of 0.25Mt from the same period in 2023, according to Oficemen's latest statistics. June 2024 saw a year-on-year decline of 4.2%, with consumption dropping to 1.25Mt. Cement exports also decreased significantly in the first half of 2024, representing a decline of 20.2% year-on-year.

Oficemen's general manager, Aniceto Zaragoza, said "Our forecasts point to a change in trend towards more positive data in the second half of the year. In fact, the figures for average daily consumption, which only consider working days in the comparison, show growth of 5.3%."

Türkiye: The value of Türkiye's cement exports to Russia has fallen by 15.5% to US$40m in the first half of 2024, compared to the same period in 2023, according to Türkiye's Trade Ministry. In June 2024, cement exports to Russia totalled US$7.2m, down by 5.5% from June 2023.

Additionally, Türkiye's total cement exports from January to June 2024 decreased by 9.4%, amounting to US$2.1bn. June 2024 saw a significant reduction, with exports valued at US$336.5m, an 18.3% decline from 2023.

Pakistan: According to brokerage firm AKD Securities, Pakistan's cement industry recorded a 2% year-on-year growth in dispatches, reaching 45.3Mt in the financial year 2024, largely due to increased exports. Domestic sales, however, fell to a seven-year low of 33.2Mt, a 5% decline from 2023. This drop is attributed to a slowdown in construction activities, influenced by high construction costs, rising inflation, and peak interest rates.

Exports grew significantly by 56% year-on-year, amounting to 7.11Mt. This was mainly due to the decreased international coal prices, which improves the viability of exports. Despite the overall increase, June 2024 saw a decline in both local sales and exports. Local sales fell by 12% due to fewer working days during the Eid holidays, and exports declined by 18%, mainly due to reduced clinker sales from the south regions.

Brazil: Despite experiencing a 1.2% year-on-year increase in cement sales in the first half of 2024 to 30.6Mt, the Brazilian cement industry is adjusting to mixed economic signals, according to the National Union of the Cement Industry (SNIC). While June sales rose by 2.1% year-on-year to 5.4Mt, overall growth projections have been downgraded from 2.4% to 1.4% for 2024 due to macroeconomic turbulence and extreme weather conditions.

Vietnam: The Ministry of Construction has proposed resuming cement sector planning to the prime minister, addressing the critical oversupply affecting the industry. Cement planning ceased six years ago, leading to unregulated project approvals. Vietnam now faces a surplus, with 92 production lines and a total capacity exceeding 120Mt/yr, while domestic consumption lags at under 60Mt/yr and exports are only 30Mt/yr. The construction slowdown exacerbates the issue, with redundant clinker production capacity at approximately 50Mt/yr, leading to risk of cement producers going bust, unless suitable measures are introduced. The latest figures from the Vietnam National Cement Association (VNCA) show that cement plants are running at just 70-75% of their designed capacity.

Deputy CEO of Vicem, Nguyen Thanh Tung, said "Several production lines belonging to our system have to temporarily halt operation, incurred by low consumption and dwindling incomes. Despite all this, we commit to not selling products below the production cost."

Uzbekistan: From January to May 2024, Uzbekistan's cement production rose by 35.6% year-on-year, reaching 6.2Mt. In May 2024, companies produced 1.7Mt of cement, according to the latest data by the local Statistics Agency.

The Hillhead Quarrying, Construction and Recycling Show is in full flow this week, taking place near Buxton in Derbyshire. As one delegate marvelled on the panoramic minibus journey down to the quarry, “It’s like a music festival without the music and… other stuff.” Indeed. Of course what one doesn’t find at Glastonbury and the like is a near comprehensive range of suppliers, over 600 of them, to the industry all in one place… in a quarry! Where else can one get up close and see the new hydrogen-powered generators and excavating vehicles that are being piloted? The official attendance figures don’t get released until after the event but on the ground it looks as busy as ever. It’s truly the place to be this week.

The show gives us a reason to take a look at the UK cement sector. Like many other countries around the world it is an election year in the UK, with a General Election scheduled for 4 July 2024. The result of this should determine the next Prime Minister and the ruling party. So, naturally, the MPA, the trade association for the aggregates, asphalt, cement, concrete, dimension stone, lime, mortar and industrial sand industries, is taking the opportunity to remind the political parties what its priorities are. The quick version is: support for decarbonisation; a streamlined planning system; and better delivery of projects. This sounds familiar to priorities in other countries but one British spin on this includes the UK’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).

Graph 1: Domestic cement sales and imports in the UK, 2017 – 2022. Source: MPA.

Edwin Trout’s feature on the UK cement sector in the June 2024 issue of Global Cement Magazine presents a good overview of the last 12 months. The general UK economy has faced shocks in recent years such as Brexit, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. However, this has been further compounded by a downturn and high interest rates since late 2022 when the then Prime Minister Liz Truss caused market turbulence in the wake of a badly received government financial statement. As Trout relates, sales of heavy building materials have been in relative decline since mid-2022 with more of the same expected in 2024. Production of cement in 2023 is currently uncertain given the reporting time lag from the MPA but up until 2022 domestic cement sales fell somewhat but imports grew. This has created a situation where overall cement sales in 2022 were 12Mt, not far behind the annual level in the early 2000s. However, the share of imports has nearly doubled since then. More recent MPA data on mortar and ready-mixed concrete sales throughout the first nine months of 2023 suggest that market activity has decreased and poor weather at the start of 2024 looks set to have made this worse.

Despite the apparent slowdown in building materials sales the cement companies have been conducting smaller-scale maintenance and upgrade projects at their facilities and supply chain schemes such as the cement storage unit for deep sea shipping lines that Aggregate Industries said in February 2024 it was going to build at the Port of Southampton. The news the cement companies want to show off has been a steady stream of information about ongoing decarbonisation projects in the cement sector. C-Capture started a carbon capture trial at Heidelberg Materials’ Ketton cement works in Rutland in May 2024, Capsol Technologies said in March 2024 that it had been selected to conduct a study on its carbon capture technology at Aggregate Industries Cauldon cement plant in Staffordshire, Heidelberg Materials' Ribblesdale cement plant in Lancashire announced in March 2024 that it was taking part in a study to assess the use of ammonia as a hydrogen source for fuelling cement kilns and Heidelberg Materials awarded Japan-based Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) a front end engineering design contract for a carbon capture installation at its Padeswood cement plant in Flintshire in February 2024. Finally, on the divestment front, CRH completed the sale of its UK-based lime business to SigmaRoc for €155m in March 2024. The business operates from sites in Tunstead and Hindlow with five permitted lime kilns.

That’s it for this short recap on the UK for now. For a longer look at the UK cement sector read Edwin Trout’s feature in June 2024 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

Hillhead 2024 runs until 27 June 2024

Pakistan: Cement dispatches in May 2024 reached a nine-month high at 4.3Mt, marking an 8% rise year-on-year and a 45% month-on-month increase from April 2024, driven largely by a surge in exports. Over the first 11 months of the 2024 financial year, total dispatches amounted to 41.7Mt, up 3% from 2023 with exports growing by 66%, according to Pakistan Press International. However, domestic dispatches fell by 4%.

Cemex announced last week that it will stop producing clinker at its Lloseta plant in Mallorca. Grinding activity at the site will continue, along with the shipment of bagged and bulk cement products. The company has framed the closure as part of its decarbonisation plans. The dismantling of the two preheater towers at the plant is scheduled to take place by the end of 2030. Cemex said that it will take this long to allow the cement plant to continue operating, as well as a neighbouring hydrogen unit and other nearby industrial units. The status of the Lloseta plant has been in question before. It was closed in early 2019 due to reduced cement demand and mounting European CO₂ emissions regulations. However, it reopened in 2021.

Readers may recall that Cemex España participated in the Power to Green Hydrogen Mallorca project. Land by the Lloseta cement plant was used to hold solar panels and a solar-powered hydrogen unit. Other partners in the project included energy suppliers Enagás and Redexis and renewable power and infrastructure company Acciona, among others. When the unit was commissioned in early 2022, it said it was the first solar power-to-green hydrogen plant in Spain. The link between Cemex and hydrogen is noteworthy given the cement company’s adoption of hydrogen injection as part of its alternative fuels strategy. Interestingly, Acciona planned to use a blockchain method to certify that hydrogen produced at the site was made using renewable energy sources. Heidelberg Materials also plans to use the same process to verify its evoZero brand of net-zero cement products in 2025. Another recent sustainability sector news story in Spain is the commissioning by Çimsa of a 7.2MW solar plant supporting its Buñol white cement plant in Valencia. The new installation is expected to supply about 18% of the plant’s energy needs.

On the corporate side of things, FCC revealed in mid-May 2024 that it was preparing to spin-off its cement and real estate subsidiaries into a new company called Inmocemento. The cement part of this is Spain-based Cementos Portland Valderrivas. The move is intended to bolster the values of the different parts of the business. The proposal will be put to FCC’s shareholders in late June 2024, with any resulting action taking place by the end of the year. The decision to separate FCC’s cement assets is reminiscent of the financial engineering Holcim has proposed with its US business. However, in this case the driver does not appear to be the disparity between the European and US stock markets.

Graph 1: Domestic consumption and exports of cement in Spain, 2013 - 2023. Source: Oficemen.

Market data was also out this week from Oficemen, the Spanish cement association. Domestic cement consumption grew year-on-year in April 2024 but the year so far is looking weaker with consumption from January to April 2024 down by 4.5% year-on-year to 4.65Mt. This is below Oficemen’s forecast for 2024 where it expected a stagnant situation. However, there are eight more months to go. In 2023 cement consumption fell by 3% to 14.5Mt and exports declined by 7.5% to 5.2Mt. The association blamed continued underinvestment in both the public and private sectors due to economic instability since the Covid-19 pandemic. Graph 1 above shows the wider situation in the Spanish cement market over the last decade. The share of exports has declined and local consumption rebounded after 2020 but has declined since then.

These news stories provide a snapshot of what’s been happening in Spain recently in the cement sector. Oficemen’s prediction for 2024 is gloomy but local consumption has risen over the past 10 years. Exports have fallen but the cement association has started to spin the country’s decarbonsiation drive as a potential positive for the industry’s competitiveness generally. It’s hard to discern right now but there might be an advantage for an export-focused country that conforms to European standards in the future if it can hold onto its capacity. Admittedly, that’s a big if. This thinking along sustainability lines could be seen earlier in May 2024 when Cementos Molins Group rebranded itself as Molins. It described the rebranding as a bid to represent the wider range of construction products it manufactures and sells beyond cement. Oficemen has also pointed out that the local market has room for development given the relatively low cement consumption per capita in Spain compared to its peers. So, whatever happens next, there is likely to be room for improvement in the cement market.