Cuba: The government has allocated over US$26m to upgrade three of the country’s cement plants. Pavel Cansino Ávila, deputy director of the Cement Business Group, told the Cuban News Agency that the Santiago de Cuba plant, also known as the José Mercerón plant, will be replaced with a new plant. The new unit is scheduled to be built by 2021 and it will have a production capacity of 1.2Mt/yr. The Siguaney plant and the Nuevitas plant will also be upgraded in 2018.
In 2017 the six local cement plants were unable to meet a government order of 1.57Mt of cement. Failures occurred due to lack of maintenance budget for the plants, issues due to a lack of packaging materials and logistics issues with deliveries.