China: Sichuan Yadong Cement’s plant in Sichuan has restarted production following a suspension of electricity to industrial users due to a heat wave. The local authorities stopped supplying industrial plants in late August 2022. The subsidiary of Taiwan-based Asia Cement Corporation also reduced staff levels at the plant to cope with the extreme weather event.

Mexico: Cooperativa la Cruz Azul’s Tula cement plant in Hidalgo has agreed with the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) that electricity supplies will restored no later than 7 September 2022. Federico Sarabia, cooperative chair and leader of a dissident group claiming to own the plant, said that the plant has made losses of over US$15m due to the outage, according to the El Sol de la Laguna newspaper. The electricity supply to the site was reportedly cut in mid-August 2022 at the request of Víctor Manuel Velázquez, the head of the board of directors of the group.

State police intervened during a confrontation between rival groups for control of the Tula cement plant in late July 2022. The plant is the sole remaining Cruz Azul unit still reportedly controlled by former company director Guillermo ‘Billy’ Álvarez and his associates. The rest of the company is under the command of Cruz Azul’s directors José Antonio Marín and Víctor Manuel Velázquez. This group started asserting legal control of the cooperative’s cement plants in Puebla and Aguascalientes from mid-2020.

Australia: BGC has cancelled its latest attempt to sell the company, blaming the decision on labour shortages and supply chain disruption. It said it had received “very strong interest from a range of parties” but had made the decision based on poor market conditions, according to the West Australian newspaper. A shortage of skilled tradespersons in West Australia is negatively affecting the local home construction sector and reducing BGC’s value consequently. A second attempt to sell the company started in April 2022 with Macquarie Capital appointed to run the process. The company plans resume its sale in 2023 when market conditions have improved.

Cameroon: The Minister of Trade, Luc-Magloire Mbarga Atangana, has announced cuts to the price cement. He attributed this to a substantial increase in the production capacity of Mira SA’s plant to 1.5Mt/yr from 0.5Mt/yr, according to the Cameroon Tribune newspaper. Prices of some products have reportedly fallen by up to 12%.