India: Member of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit has called on the government to cancel an upcoming public hearing over Shree Cement's planned cement plant in the state’s East Jaintia Hills district and thereby halt the project. In addition to this, Basaiawmoit recommended that the Meghalaya government cancel all other new cement and coking plant projects in the East Jaintia Hills.

Basaiawmoit said that parts of the district around Sutunga will become uninhabitable ‘within few years’ given the rate of on-going environmental degradation due to the development of the cement industry.

Tajikistan: President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon has laid the foundation stone for the construction of a new cement plant in Kushanyan district. It will be the fourth cement plant to begin construction in the country over the past two months, amid cement shortages and rising prices, according to local press.

The plant will be built on a territory of 30 hectares in the village of Nurafsho in the settlement of Bustonkala in Kushanyan district by private company Sementi Khatlon. Construction is planned to be completed by 2029. The plant will be able to produce up to 1.2Mt/yr of cement once it begins operation, and will provide employment for more than 700 workers. The new plant will be located near the Kurgontepa limestone deposit in Kushanyan, which will allow the use of local raw materials for cement production.

Earlier, after cement shortages emerged and prices rose, President Rahmon announced in late May 2026 that four new cement plants would be built by 2029. In mid 2026, construction began on two cement plants in the village of Kharangon in Varzob District and in the city of Istaravshan. Their combined production capacity is expected to reach 3.6Mt/yr of cement.

US: A fire reportedly caused the temporary closure of a kiln at Ash Grove's Durkee cement plant in Baker County, Oregon, in early August 2026. Local press has reported that firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze and recorded no chemical release or injuries. The kiln was stopped temporarily while the emergency services responded to the incident but has since returned to full operation.

South Korea: Sampyo Cement is training AI on operating data from experienced workers in order to hand over some of the constant monitoring required by workers, according to Korea Biz Wire. Early applications have already allowed operators to step away briefly from their stations, when previously they even had to take a radio to the toilet. Sampyo has already invested in AI for limestone mining and the firing of raw materials, and is now extending the technology to the final stage of cement production under a project backed by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Together with the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology, the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology and Kangwon National University, the company aims to increase productivity by 2% while cutting electricity consumption by the same amount. Two operators currently oversee six mills as a team – Sampyo’s goal is to have one worker manage all six with the assistance of AI.

“The workplace is physically more comfortable than where the machinery operates, but having to pay attention to everything for eight hours can actually make the job feel more demanding,” plant manager Bae Dong-hwan said.

Workers appear less worried about AI taking their jobs than about whether they can trust it, said Lee Seok-je, a senior member of Sampyo’s process improvement team. However, this question of trust becomes more complicated when AI moves from monitoring machinery to monitoring people, says the newspaper. The company has reportedly considered giving workers wearable devices that would track heart rates, body temperatures and other data in real time to help detect emergencies. However, employees objected on the basis that the technology could be used to track their locations.