Global Cement News

Nigeria: Mallam Suleiman Yahyah has resigned as chairman from AshakaCem. Yahyah joined the board of directors of the subsidiary of LafargeHolcim in 2010 and became its chairman in 2015.

China: Chong Cha Hwa has resigned as a non-executive director from China Shanshui Cement due to physical trauma suffered during the ‘illegal’ occupation of the Jinan properties of its Shandong Shanshui in early April 2017. Chong said that the occupation had impeded him from carrying out his duties.

Ukraine: The supervisory board of Podilsky Cement has appointed Leonard Barry as its supervisory board chairperson. Previously, he was the director of CRH in the country, according to the Ukrainian News Agency. Barry, aged 52 years, is an Irish national. He joined Irish Cement in 1989 as a process engineer before becoming its managing director in 2011. He trained as a chemical engineer at University College Dublin and holds an MBA from the University of Limerick.

Other personnel changes include the appointment of Declan Maguire, CRH’s chief operational director for Eastern Europe, as deputy supervisory board chairperson. Alan Connolly has also been appointed as secretary of the supervisory board.

The Philippines has been messing up the balance sheets of cement producers so far in 2017. Over the last week Holcim Philippines, CRH and Cemex have each reported lacklustre first quarter results dragged down by poor performance in the country. CRH’s chief executive officer Albert Manifold seemed to receive the worst kicking when analysts in a conference call refused to let it pass that the company’s sales had dropped by 12% year-on-year in Asia. Although to be fair to him the group’s Asian division only represented 2% of global sales at Euro0.5bn…

CRH’s quarterly financial reports tend to be in the form of sparse trading updates. So this lack of detail and CRH’s plans to invest over Euro300m in the market may have prompted Manifold’s grilling. According to the Irish Times he blamed the situation on cheap imports from south-east Asia pulling down the price. He then defended the investment on the grounds that local producers would have an advantage as they increase production capacity due to constant production and ‘guaranteed’ regulation and certification.

CRH isn’t the only organisation that has been burned by the Philippines. Before Christmas this column was praising the local industry for being in a boom. Cement sales had risen by 10.1% year-on-year to 20.1Mt according to CEMAP data in the first nine months of 2016 and the Duterte Infrastructure Plan was starting to target hundreds of billions of US dollars towards infrastructure spending. In the end cement sales rose by 6.6% to 26Mt for the full year in 2016 and this was a solid performance despite being brought down by the fourth quarter.

From the cement producers mentioned above, Cemex reported that its Ordinary Portland Cement sales volumes fell by 9% in the first quarter. It blamed the fall on bad weather and a tough quarter to compare against in 2015. Holcim Philippines said that its net sales fell by 12% to US$176m and it attributed it to lower public infrastructure spending, tighter industry competition and higher production expenses. Eagle Cement meanwhile, the fourth of the country’s major producers, is preparing to float on the local stock market in May 2017 to fund an expansion drive. The poor results of the other three cement producers may dent its proceeds from the initial public offering (IPO).

The words CRH’s Albert Manifold used in his defence were that, “Brand matters over there.” Funnily enough the other big Philippines cement industry news story that has been rumbling away for the last few months is an investigation by the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) into the conduct of the Cement Manufacturers Association of the Philippines (CEMAP) and some of the leading cement producers. Naturally this includes CRH’s joint venture Republic Cement. The enquiry was prompted in mid-2016 by the accusation of anti-competitive agreements by a former trade official. He also made direct allegations against Ernesto Ordonez, the head of CEMAP. The investigation is on-going and perhaps it will find out exactly how much ‘brand matters’ in the Philippines.

Germany: Klaus Paul has been appointed as the Technical Managing Director of Schade Lagertechnik. His appointment is in response to the impending retirement of Karl-Heinz Fiegenbaum on 30 June 2017. Fiegenbaum has been Managing Director of the company since July 2011. He will be replaced by Christoph Seifert, who moves across to this position after having started with Schade as Technical Managing Director in February 2015.

Paul started his career in 1977 with Friedrich Uhde where he started working as a draughtsman at the age of 16. Following the competition of an engineering degree he stayed with the company, which eventually became part of ThyssenKrupp Group. From 2012, he was with Uhde OOO, a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp in Russia, first as Director of Project and Site Management, and later as one of the Managing Directors of Uhde / OOO ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions Russia.