Global Cement News

Kenya: Bamburi Cement has posted a 15% drop in pretax profit to US$83.3m in 2012. The figure was hit by lower gains on its foreign currency holdings the Kenyan based Lafarge subsidiary reported to Reuters. Turnover rose by 4% to US$437m, but higher costs drove operating profit down by 14%.

"The group anticipates underlying cement demand to continue growing in the region despite a slow start in Kenya influenced by the election period, supported by improved political stability in the inland Africa export markets," said Bamburi in a statement.

The Kenyan Shilling was stable against the US Dollar during 2012, having weakened sharply in the previous period, thus accounting for the lower gains on foreign exchange holdings by the firm.

China: German cement industry supplier Loesche GmbH has signed a contract to provide five mills to Shanxi Biological Cement Co. in China. The Shanghai division of Loesche has taken an order for two raw material mills and three clinker mills with complete mill key parts, housings and frames. The components are scheduled for delivery in 2013 with commissioning planned for mid-2013.

Shanxi Biological Cement is the daughter company of Shanxi Coal and Chemical Industry Group Co. It has merged two local cement companies with just under 1Mt/yr cement production capacity. It is building two 4500t/day clinker production lines in FuPing and a 1.8Mt/yr ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) production line in Gaoling. Another 1Mt/yr clinker grinding station plant in HuangLing is being planned. Following all of this production, Shanxi Biological Cement Co intends to become the top cement producer in Western China with a capacity of 10Mt/yr.

Australia: Struggling cement and construction materials giant Boral has announced that it will merge its construction materials and cement divisions. The building materials group recently axed 700 jobs but a spokeswoman for Boral said that the only worker to lose their job out of the merger would be the current, long-serving construction materials manager Murray Read, who has been made redundant. Joseph Goss, a senior executive in the cement division of Lafarge North America, has been appointed to manage the newly merged division.

A week after announcing the 700 job cuts in January 2013, Boral upgraded its underlying first-half profit forecast to US$53.2m from US$35.8m. However after restructuring costs, the company suffered a first half net loss of US$25.9m. It said that it expected conditions to remain challenging in the building products market. The result was dragged down by US$78.8m worth of significant items, including impairment charges relating to the suspension of clinker production at Waurn Ponds in Victoria and first half restructuring and redundancy costs.

Saudi Arabia: Tabuk Cement Company has registered an increase in net profit to US$50.4m in 2012, up from US$36.5m in 2011. This represents a year-on-year increase of 38%. Tabuk Cement attributed the rise to higher sales prices coupled with increased production efficiency.

Spain: On 4 March 2013 Cemex España, the Spanish subsidiary of Mexican cement group Cemex, reached an agreement with Spanish trade unions to reduce the number of employees who will be affected by the planned downsizing plan. The staff reduction measure now will affect 127 people instead of the initially planned 156 people.