India: Coal India plans to supply 4.65Mt/yr of coal to the cement industry via online auctions until 2023. Of this amount 1.14Mt/yr will be despatched by railway and the rest by road, according to a Coal India executive quoted by the Economics Times newspaper. Most of the coal will be supplied by Coal India’s subsidiary South Eastern Coalfields with the rest sourced from Western Coalfields, Mahanadi Coalfields and Eastern Coalfields. Bharat Coking Coal and North Eastern Coalfields are not part of the auction, as they do not offer any coal to the cement sector.

Ethiopia: Ethiopia has failed to meet its cement export target for the 2017 – 2018 financial year that ended on 7 July 2018. It planned to raise US$42m in revenue from cement exports, according to Cement and Related Industry Research Development Technology Director Simegn Degu, who was quoted by the Ethiopian Herald newspaper. However, its exports only rose by 47% year-on-year to US$25m from US$17m. Degu blamed the shortfall on shortages of input materials and a lack of foreign currency.

Nigeria: A group of investors from the US have visited Ibeto Cement’s Nigercem plant in Nkalagu. The visit was part of an assessment to prepare Ibeto Cement for a listing on a stock exchange in the US, according to the This Day newspaper. Cletus Madubugwu Ibeto, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Ibeto Group said that Chinese contractors were due to work on upgrading the plant to a production capacity of 6000t/day with a 45MW waste heat recovery unit. In May 2018 Beta Cement signed an investment deal with US-based private equity firm Milost Global for US$850m.

China/US: China’s Ministry of Commerce has proposed placing retaliatory tariffs on products from the US, including cement. The list covers 5207 items and proposes adding import taxes of up to 25% on them. It includes clinker, white cement, limestone, quicklime, slaked lime, gypsum, refractory products and cement packaging machinery. The ministry said that the new tariffs will take effect at a date to be announced later on.