Global Cement News

India: Dalmia Cement has imported 3830t of fly ash from a National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) power plant in Uttar Pradesh for use at its 0.8Mt/yr-capacity integrated Calcom cement plant in Assam. United News of India has reported that the supplementary cementitious material (SCM) travelled over 1000km.

62.9GW-total capacity NTPC produces 65Mt/yr of fly ash, some of which is used by ACC at its cement plants in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab.

Australia/Indonesia: Semen Indonesia subsidiary Semen Padang says that it has dispatched a 25,000t batch of cement for Australia. Bisnis News Sumatra has reported that company is targeting total shipments of 1.58Mt to the country in 2020.

Senior manager of export sales Fifit Abriyanto said, “We are building connections with new customers. We already exported 35,000t of clinker to Bangladesh in September 2020.”

Argentina: The Instituto del Cemento Portland Argentino (ICPA) has announced that a series of ten talks, entitled Vision 2030 – a Decade of Action, will take place in late October 2020. It says that the presentations, “will provide a space for reflection on 10 key topics on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals agenda.” 

The event is also a celebration of ICPA’s 80th anniversary.

Pakistan: The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP) and the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Pakistan (ICMAP) have named Maple Leaf Cement the winner of Best Corporate Report Award Cement 2020 for its company coverage.

ICAP and ICMAP said, “The objective of corporate reporting is to be easily understood by all the stakeholders as well as showing utmost transparency. Considering these golden rules, Maple Leaf Cement, which has always accepted corporate accountability being its primary goal, is the best in category.”

Lucky Cement won runner up for the award.

There’s no single theme this week, just a few news stories of note that may have wider significance.

Firstly comes the news that Semen Indonesia subsidiary Semen Padang has been exporting 25,000t of cement to Australia. This follows a consignment of 35,000t of clinker to Bangladesh. The company is hoping to hit a cement and clinker export target of 1.58Mt in 2020 in spite of the on-going coronavirus pandemic. It reached 1.09Mt (about 70%) of this by mid-September 2020 through exports to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Philippines, Australia, Sri Lanka and Maldives.

The wider picture here is that local sales in Indonesia fell by 7.7% year-on-year to 27.2Mt in the first half of 2020 from 29.4Mt in the same period in 2019, according to data from the Indonesian Cement Association (ASI). Cement and clinker exports are up by 32.8% to 3.7Mt from 2.8Mt. Semen Indonesia’s revenue is down but it has managed to hold its earnings up so far. During press rounds in late August 2020 its marketing and supply chain director, Adi Munandir, told local press that he expected domestic demand to fall by up to 15% in 2020 due to effects of coronavirus on private construction and government infrastructure plans. Analysts reckon that the worst of the demand slump hit in the second quarter of 2020 when government-related coronavirus restrictions were implemented, so Semen Indonesia’s third quarter results will closely scrutinised.

One of Semen Padang export targets is the Maldives. This chimes with another story this week because Oman-based Raysut Cement has just bought a majority stake in a cement terminal from Lafarge Maldives for US$8m. The 9000t capacity Thilafusi cement terminal is located on the island of Thilafusi, Kaafu and was expanded in 2015. Raysut Cement has tended to stick to markets in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the east coast of Africa, with projects planned in Madagascar and Somaliland. Yet expansion plans in places further away such as India and Georgia have also been mentioned publicly. A greater presence in the Maldives is a solid step towards Raysut heading eastwards. This would also mirror the plans of the country’s gypsum sector to dominate African and Asian markets and a general longer term shift in global markets from west to east.

One place west that has been doing well in cement though is Brazil. National Cement Industry Union (SNIC) data for September 2020 show a 21% year-on-year boom in cement sales to 5.8Mt and a 9.4% year-on-year increase to 44.6Mt for the first nine months of 2020. Earlier in the year the country’s limited coronavirus suppression methods were attributed for letting the recovering cement sector grow. Now, SNIC has directly thanked government support for civil construction. However, Paulo Camillo Penna, the president of SNIC said. “The results are surprising so far, but that doesn't give us security in the long run,” due to a bubble of real estate and commercial activity that already appears to be declining. Given the slump in cement demand from 2015 to 2018 it’s understandable that SNIC is taking the recovery cautiously.

And to finish we have two connected stories about Cemex. Following the release of its resilience strategy in September 2020, the company has now declared that its integrated Rüdersdorf cement plant in Germany will be the centrepiece of its CO2 reduction plans as part of ‘Vision Rüdersdorf.’ Details are light at present but we expect some kind of carbon capture and storage or usage project. An addendum to this – or perhaps it’s the other way round (!) – is that Cemex has also just announced further credit amendments but with sustainability-linked metrics. Cemex’s chief financial officer (CFO) Maher Al-Haffar said, “We are especially proud that this transaction represents one of the largest sustainability-linked loans in the world.” The teeth of this arrangement remain to be seen but the integration of finance and sustainability has serious implications generally.

Watch out for a research and development themed interview with Cemex and Synhelion in the December 2020 issue of Global Cement Magazine