Global Cement News

India: Ravi Kirpalani will join ThyssenKrupp India on the 14 March 2016 and take charge as the CEO of the Regional Headquarters of ThyssenKrupp India effective from 1 July 2016.

Indian-born, Kirpalani's last role was the Managing Director of Castrol India. Prior to joining ThyssenKrupp, he spent over 16 years at BP where he held a number of roles in India and in the UK. He will provide on-going support for the strategic development of all ThyssenKrupp’s business in India. He succeeds Michael Thiemann, who has been responsible for the region since 1 May 2013 and previously held various management functions at ThyssenKrupp Uhde GmbH over a period of more than 35 years, including member of the Management Board and CEO.

India is currently the third most important market in Asia for ThyssenKrupp. In the 2014 - 15 financial year the group generated sales of around Euro560m in the country and employed almost 6000 people at local companies.

Small print can cause large consequences. Billion US Dollar consequences. Take the 2015 amendment to India’s Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) (MMDR) Act from 1957. Ambiguous wording in the legislation may have held up two prominent cement industry acquisitions in 2015. It also hangs over the recently announced purchase by UltraTech Cement of Jaiprakash Associates’ cement plants.

The MMDR was amended in January 2015. As the Times of India explained in mid-2015, a clause in the amendment said, “The transfer of mineral concessions shall be allowed only for concessions which are granted through auction.” However, it was unclear whether this meant historically allocated mines given via nominations or only newly allocated ones. Given the reliance of clinker plants on reliable mineral reserves this caused havoc. Cue confusion and large legal budgets.

LafargeHolcim’s divestment of two cement plants to Birla Corporation was one casualty. As a condition of the merger between Lafarge and Holcim the Competition Commission of India (CCI) required that the Jojobera and Sonadih cement plants in Eastern India be sold in 2015. Together the plants have a combined cement production capacity of 5.1Mt/yr. However the ambiguity over the 2015 MMDR Act clause on transfer of mining rights held the deal up. By February 2016 Birla Corporation had endured enough. It publicly complained about Lafarge India’s ‘inability’ to complete the deal and threatened legal action. LafargeHolcim retorted by asking the CCI if it could sell all of Lafarge India instead. It received the revised clearance and a new buyer is yet to be announced.

Another victim was UltraTech Cement in a previous attempt to buy Jaiprakash Associates’ cement assets. That time it was down to buy two integrated cement plants in Madhya Pradesh with a combined clinker production capacity of 5.2Mt/yr with associated mineral rights. The deal was agreed in December 2014 and then reported delayed in mid-2015. Finally, on 28 February 2016 the Bombay High Court rejected the deal, citing the MMDR Act as the prime cause.

Luckily for UltraTech Cement the story has a happy ending (so far) as it then announced that it was purchasing the majority of Jaiprakash Associates’ 22.4Mt/yr cement portfolio instead for US$2.4bn. It is hoped that the deal will be finalised by June 2017 but this partly depends on the MMDR Act being amended. Although UltraTech Cement have said they are looking at alternative routes to the deal in case the act isn’t amended.

Poor legal wording kiboshed at least two cement industry deals for over 10Mt/yr production capacity. Roughly, at the price UltraTech Cement is paying for its latest deal, that’s over US$1bn worth of Indian cement assets. Given the hard time the Indian cement industry had in 2015 the question should be asked regarding how much damage the MMDR Act amendment has done. One option for the beleaguered industry is to consolidate and cut its costs. This was massively delayed in 2015.

The proposed 2016 amendment to the MMDR Act reads as follows:

“Provided that where a mining lease has been granted otherwise than through auction and where mineral from such mining lease is being used for captive purpose, such mining lease will be permitted to be transferred subject to compliance with the terms and conditions as prescribed by the Central Government in this behalf.”

Let’s hope it does the trick this time.

Paraguay: Matias Cardarelli has been appointed the director of Yguazu Cementos, a joint-venture between Intercement and Concret Mix. Yguazu Cementos has a 0.4Mt/yr cement grinding plant with in Villa Hayes. Previously, Cardarelli worked for Ford Motors and Zurich Financial Services. He joined Intercement in Argentina in 2008.

India: Shailendra Chouksey, a director of JK Lakshmi Cement, has been appointed as the new president of the Cement Manufacturers' Association (CMA) for a two year term. He replaces OP Puranmalka, the managing director of Ultratech Cement. Previously Chouksey was the vice-president of the association.

"As the newly elected president of the CMA, my priority is to device methods to work with different stakeholders, including the government of India to spur the cement demand," said Chouksey.

Chouksey holds a PhD in managerial economics, an MBA in marketing from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi and a post-graduate degree in physics. He has worked in the cement industry for nearly 40 years.

The Saudi Cement Company has been complaining in recent weeks about market conditions in Saudi Arabia. Following a meeting of its board of directors in early February 2016, it decided to temporally a 3500t/day production line and halt further upgrades. At the meeting it blamed the local market and the country’s export ban.

In January 2016, the cement producer reported that its net profit had fallen by 35% year-on-year to US$49m in the fourth quarter of 2015 from US$76m in the same period in 2014. The trend for the year as a whole was less pronounced but still downward. Its net profit fell by 14% to US$257m.

Saudi Cement’s experience may be indicative if one looks at wider figures for the industry. Cement output is high, inventory is piling up and government infrastructure spending is falling. If the country’s industry isn’t feeling the pain right now surely it must be wondering what might happen next.

Figure 1 – Saudi Arabian cement production and inventory, 2011 – 2015

As Figure 1 shows data from Yamama Cement for the industry as a whole. Cement output has been steadily growing over the last five years since 2011 to the current declared level of 61.5Mt. However, in the background, cement inventory has also been growing. The particular jump appears to be between 2012 and 2014 when the stock grew from 6.4Mt to 21.5Mt. In mid-2013 King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud issued an urgent command ordering 10Mt of cement to cope with a local shortage at that time. Subsequently cement producers were asked to build a 'strategic' reserve of two months inventory at each plant. It looks like they took that message to heart.

Alongside this the Saudi Ministry of Finance slashed its Infrastructure and Transportation budget down to more than half to US$6.37bn in 2016 from US$16.8bn in 2015. Local media reported that value of new contracts won by the Saudi contractor Abdullah A M Al Khodari & Sons in 2015 fell by nearly 50% in the lead-up to the 2016 budget announcement in December 2015. Previously, Al Khodari had typically earned about 95% of its revenue from government-related contracts.

It should be noted that Saudi Cement is based in the east of the country and some regional variation is possible here. The country’s other major cement producers - Yamama Cement, Yanbu Cement and Southern Province Cement have all reported that their net profits rose in 2015. Yet the inventory keeps piling up.

The other reason than Saudi Cement pointed out for its woes was the country’s cement export ban. The government introduced an export ban on cement exports in February 2012. Since then local cement producers have asked on several occasions to have the ban repealed. Most recently the chairman of Saudi Arabia's Cement Association asked in March 2015 to lift the ban so that his producers could supply Egypt with 6Mt of cement. At the time, as now, the chairman would have been well aware of all the cement lying around.

Local press reported in late November 2015 that government bodies were considering cutting the ban on cement exports. The ban was originally introduced in Saudi Arabia to keep prices down and production flowing for large infrastructure projects built using oil revenue. These same projects were designed to wean the economy off its reliance oil revenue. With investment falling as the price of oil stays low the cement industry is in a tight spot. The government and cement producers will need to think very carefully what the consequences are of opening the gates for Saudi cement exports.