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It’s been a sobering week for the cement sector in South Korea with the release of sales data for the first half of 2025.

Data from the Korea Cement Association (KCA) shows that local shipments of cement fell by 17% year-on-year to 18.8Mt in the first half of the year. The last time half-year output was reported to be below 20Mt was in 1992. The association noted that a ‘severe’ construction recession had continued from 2024. An uptick in demand for building materials is anticipated in the second half of 2025 due to postponed construction work but it is expected to be limited by a forthcoming government budget. The association said that output for the whole of 2025 is forecast to be “significantly below 40Mt unless effective construction stimulus measures are available.”

Graph 1: Cement shipments in South Korea, 2019 - 2025. Source: Korea Cement Association.

20Mt of cement output marks a dividing line in the South Korea-based market in recent decades. Previous economic low points over the last 30 years include the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s and the 2008 financial crash triggered by the subprime market in the US. However, on neither occasion did half-year cement output in South Korea fall below 20Mt. The current situation is likely to be reflected in the financial results of the local manufacturers, when they are released later in August 2025, following poor first-quarter figures.

The general construction sector is facing a tough time, with construction companies facing a liquidity crunch as lending rules have been tightened. At the same time prices and labour costs are both reportedly up by 30% in the past three years. One reaction to this in Autumn 2024 was plans suggested by construction companies to import cement from China. This gained some support from the government, which said it was looking at ways to reduce costs, but then faced opposition in the National Assembly. It is unclear what has happened since then, although KCA figures show that imports of cement grew by 40% year-on-year to 384,000t in the second half of 2024.

The cement producers have reacted by shutting down production lines in some cases. In April 2025 local press reported that eight of the country’s 35 production lines had been shut down. Hanil Cement’s Danyang plant had reportedly suspended two of its six production lines. One additional kiln at Asia Cement’s Jecheon plant was preparing to be closed at this time, with the manager citing the difficulty of coping with a 70% capacity utilisation rate. This would have brought the site’s number of active lines down to two of four. Another unmentioned kiln also reportedly preparing to suspend operations would bring the total of inactive kilns up to 10.

As might be expected in this kind of business environment, mergers and acquisitions activity has started. Hanil Cement announced in mid-July 2025 that it was preparing to buy its subsidiary Hanil Hyundai Cement. The transaction is expected to cut costs of the newly combined company and yield other synergy effects.

With its high cement consumption per capita, the cement market in South Korea remains atypical compared to peer economies in East Asia and Europe. Consumption dropped after a peak in the 1990s but it remained high by international standards. Hence the outcry about a half-year cement output bigger than most European countries can manage in a year. The IMF predicts a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 0.8% in 2025 in South Korea, with a faster pickup of 1.8% in 2026. Construction levels are expected to remain sluggish into autumn and start recovering in 2026. General market trends in developed countries suggest that cement consumption will fall further in South Korea in coming decades, especially as sustainability trends embed. Cement sales in Japan, for example, have gradually been dwindling since the late 1990s. One question here is whether the cement market in South Korea can continue to hold its high level of consumption per capita. It remains to be seen.

Cement consumption data for the first half of 2025 from Russia has been released this week and it is down from 2024. Added to this, Cemros announced earlier in July 2025 that it is preparing to suspend production at its Belgorod cement plant. What can these and other news stories tell us about the state of the Russian cement sector at present?

Graph 1: Cement consumption in Russia, 2019 - H1 2025. Source: Soyuzcement.

Figures from Soyuzcement, the Union of Cement Producers, in the local press reports that consumption fell by 8.6% year-on-year to 27.2Mt in the first half of 2025 from 28.4Mt in the same period in 2024. By region the largest declines were noted in the south (-14%), the Urals (-13%) and in Siberia (-11%). Producer Sibcem released some production data for the first half, also this week, and this reflected the national picture, with a 9% fall.

The national situation has been blamed on a suspension of infrastructure projects, a fall in the domestic building sector and mounting imports. Imports rose by 5.8% to 1.9Mt. Notably those trade flows have been coming in from other countries with restricted access to international markets such as Belarus and Iran. A China-based company Jinyu Jidong Cement in the far-eastern Heilongjiang Province also started exporting cement to Russia in July 2025. Unusually though, for these kinds of stories, exports from Russia have also risen. They grew by 9% to 0.5Mt, mainly to Kazakhstan. The general picture fits with Soyuzcement’s updated forecast for the local market from 2025 to 2027. It expects a decline of 6 - 12% in 2025 as a whole, followed by a change of -6% to +1% in 2026 and then the start of a recovery in 2027 under most scenarios.

One reaction to the shrinking market became apparent earlier in July 2025 when Cemros said it was preparing to suspend production at its Belgorod cement plant. The company plans to use the stoppage to assess the market, reduce its operating costs and consider market diversification options. It blamed the decision on a decrease in demand in the domestic market in Russia along with lower profits and higher imports. Back in May 2025, Cemros, the leading Russia-based cement producer, said that it had 18 plants, a total production capacity of 33Mt/yr and a 31% share of the local market. It also reported that it had two mothballed plants: the Savinsky cement plant in Arkhangelsk and the Zhigulovskiye plant in the Samara region. Although, to be fair to Cemros, up until fairly recently it had been spending money on its plants. It resumed clinker production in mid-2024 when it restarted one production line at its Ulyanovsk plant in mid-2024. Then in May 2025 it said it was getting ready to restart the second line at the site too as part of a €8m renovation project. Once back online the unit will have a total production capacity of 0.8Mt/yr. Another recent plant project by Cemros was the upgrade of a kiln at Katavsky Cement that was completed in June 2025. Elsewhere, Kavkazcement was reportedly planning to invest US$224m on equipment upgrades in April 2025 in response to a large rise in production costs in 2024.

The larger problem facing the Russian construction industry and the building material producers that supply it is the ongoing economic fallout from the war in Ukraine. The head of the country’s national bank said at the start of July 2025 that the nation had broadly adapted to economic sanctions and that inflation was slowing down. Growing cement demand since 2021 broadly supports this view. Yet, governor Elvira Nabiullina warned of further market turmoil ahead due to a slowing economy and high labour costs. This spells uncertainty for the cement sector as underlined by Soyuzcement’s gloomy forecasts for 2025 and 2026. In this kind of environment market mergers and acquisitions seem likely but international sanctions may limit the options. One general remedy the government has been advocating for has been the formation of a common commodities exchange for the Eurasian Economic Union that was suggested in late 2024. However, Soyuzcement has been lobbying against the proposal on the grounds of price volatility, increased competition and a reluctance by producers to join it. The cement sector in Russia faces challenging times ahead.

It’s not every week that a ‘new’ cement producer gains hold of nearly 30Mt/yr of production capacity.¹ Back in 2022, a few readers studying the North America pages of the year’s Global Cement Directory probably wondered “Where’s Lafarge gone?” following the dissolution of the France-based producer’s corporate identity into Holcim in June 2021. Now, in the upcoming Global Cement Directory 2026, readers will be able to search in vain for another name among the cement maps of Canada and the US – that of Holcim itself. A decade on from the completion of the Lafarge/Holcim merger, the combination of the two in North America has precipitated something entirely new: Amrize.

On 23 June 2025, Amrize assumed the entire business of Canada and US market leader Holcim North America, following its successful spin-off from Switzerland-based Holcim. Amrize occupies its predecessor’s operational headquarters in Chicago, US, with registered offices in Zug, Switzerland, and is dual-listed in the US and Switzerland.² For those interested in finance, shares in Amrize debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in the US at US$50. Meanwhile on the SIX Swiss Exchange, they dropped by 13% from reference price, to US$49.30, while those in its erstwhile parent rose by 14%.

Table 1 (below) gives the relative size of the entities, based on their latest published figures and the Global Cement Directory 2025. Amrize and Holcims’ respective percentages of the former Holcim total are given in brackets:

Metric                                     Amrize                        Rump Holcim            TOTAL

Integrated cement plants     18 (17%)                     88 (83%)                     106

Capacity                                 28.7Mt/yr (11%)          224.9Mt/yr (89%)        253.6Mt/yr

Employees                             19,000 (29%)              46,000 (71%)              65,000                        

Revenues                               US$7.85bn (24%)       US$24.95 (76%)         US$32.8bn

Amrize chair and CEO Jan Jenisch stated the company’s aims in a post to LinkedIn: to be partner of choice for the US$2tn/yr North American construction sector, to deliver ‘advanced’ materials ‘from foundation to rooftop’ and to serve customers in every province and state.³ This paraphrases Amrize’s Five Strategic Drivers: 100% North America focus; unparalleled footprint and resources; value creation; unlocking growth and driving shareholder value. The menu on the company website offers not ‘products,’ but ‘solutions,’ categorised by type of construction. For cement, users can navigate to Our Businesses > Building Materials > Cement.⁴ Behind this new messaging, the Canadians and Americans who rely on Amrize’s cement business might like to know what exact role cement will play.

Holcim’s global cement revenues first fell below 50% of group sales in 2024, at US$16.4bn (49%). In North America, its recent acquisitions include both those within the cement value chain (British-Columbia based Langley Concrete Group in June 2025) and outside it (OX Engineered Products in November 2024).

Amrize is organised into Building Materials (cement, concrete, aggregates and asphalt) and Building Envelope (insulation, roofing, sealants and weatherproofing). It operates in five regions: Central (Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and inland US west of the Mississippi, from Missouri to Nevada northward), Great Lakes (Ontario and the US Midwest), Northeast (Quebec, Nova Scotia and the eastern US from Maryland northward), Pacific (British Columbia, California, Oregon and Washington) and South (southern US, west to Arizona, and Ohio).

Setting aside its extensive grinding and logistics infrastructure, the geographical footprint of North America’s largest cement producer breaks down as follows:

Region            Integrated cement plants     Capacity

Central           4                                              9.8

South              5                                              7.6

Northeast       5                                              5.5

Great Lakes   3                                              4.7

Pacific            1                                              1.1

TOTAL            18                                            28.7

Four of these geographies – all except South – are transnational. This at a time when Canada and the US are diverging in industrial policy and engaged in a trade war… Supposedly, regional directors will be juggling ambitious projects like Amrize’s on-going Bath, Ontario, and Richmond, British Columbia, carbon capture projects in Canada with a complement of lower-cost strategies in the US.

Just as important for the future of the company is the team in charge. Leadership is structured similarly to Holcim, with some names even reprising the same role. Chair and CEO Jan Jenisch previously chaired Holcim from May 2023, and was its CEO between September 2023 and April 2024. Jenisch first joined Holcim from Switzerland-based Sika, where he had been CEO, in 2017. He obtained his Master’s of Business Administration degree from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, though Jenisch is in fact a German national.

Ian Johnston steps into the Amrize chief financial officer (CFO) position. A long-time Lafarge and Holcim mover in North America, he holds an accountancy degree from the University of Ottawa in Canada. Building Materials division president Jaime Hill came up through the Holcim corporate structure in the group’s Latin America region, including stints as CEO of Holcim Colombia in 2015 – 2019 and Holcim Mexico in 2019 – 2024, before entering the North American region as regional head in September 2024. However, his familiarity with the region goes back to his completion of a bachelor’s in Business Administration, Management and Marketing at Georgetown University in Washington, US.

Nollaig Forrest was Holcim’s chief sustainability officer (CSO) in September 2023 – June 2025; Amrize doesn’t have one. Instead, Forrest moves across to the chief marketing and corporate affairs officer spot. It’s possible that her intended role had a larger sustainability component during planning in 2024, that might have been struck off after US President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the Paris Accords and suspended, then withdrew, new decarbonisation funding. If this is correct, then Amrize may be giving strategic primacy to the larger US over Canada. Whatever the case, its enormous undertakings towards reaching net zero in Canada do not appear to have a dedicated champion on the leadership team. Forrest is another European, and brings leadership experience at chemicals companies Firmenich, Dow and Dupont and the World Economic Forum, grounded in a master’s in International Relations from the Geneva Graduate Institute in her home country of Switzerland.

Also of interest is Patrick Cleary, who steps up as senior vice president commercial cement for the US, and previously worked with Holcim US and LafargeHolcim US in Chicago. Only cement has a dedicated commercial director at this level, and then only in the US. Meanwhile, Samuel Poletti will serve as chief strategy and mergers and acquisitions. He was previously Holcim’s head of mergers and acquisitions since July 2018, before which time he was high up in the group’s South Asia subregion, including serving as Ambuja Cements’ head of strategy and commercial development in India. Poletti, presumably, will be responsible for sustaining the inorganic growth of the Holcim North America era. The flip side of this strategy for Holcim was flash market exits, including from Brazil, Zimbabwe and India in 2022. Insofar as there is a pattern to Holcim’s geographical realignment, it may be towards growth in ‘mature markets’ – a description to which all of Amrize’s regions conform. Ultimately, Amrize is a whole different company to Holcim. Whatever strategy the team is going in with, there is likely to be a transition phase and time needed to feel things out.

Overall, the Amrize leadership displays a thorough grounding in the Holcim way of doing things and a record of responsibility in a variety of its markets. Above them sits the board, with Nicholas Gangestad beside chair Jan Jenisch as lead independent director. Amrize’s 10-seat board includes four (40%) women: Theresa Drew, Holli Ladhani, Katja Roth Pellanda and Maria Cristina Wilbur.

Amrize has arisen. What makes the spin-off so interesting, besides its unprecedented scale, is the strangeness of the market into which it emerges. Spin-off plans went public in January 2024, at a time when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) were set to unleash over US$1.9tn in additional public spending into the medium-term future. This is not now going to happen. Yet Amrize’s new website proclaims that “The US and Canada are modernising their infrastructure” for ‘greater efficiency and resilience.’ Of course, building materials consumption will continue in other forms, but the level of visibility is less than ideal. One of Holcim’s partner start-ups, Sublime Systems, appeared on a government list on 30 May 2025 and lost US$87m funding at a stroke.

As for Holcim, it enters the second half of the 2020s in a different shape to that in which it began the decade. Only the geographical signature of its North and West African and Latin American subsidiaries (as well as in Bangladesh and the Philippines) confirm this European producer as having once been the closest thing ever to a global cement hegemon. Holcim’s Latin American holdings look distinctly peripheral without the multi-megatonne bookends of Holcim Brazil and, now, Holcim US.

Amrize inherits an environmental, social and governance (ESG) apparatus from Holcim that suits Canada but is now inappropriate for the US. It has chosen to strip out sustainability from its corporate structure, messaging and Strategic Drivers. The wisdom of this decision can only be measured in the longer term. On the other hand, Amrize’s efforts to mitigate its impacts may continue quietly, in a kind of reverse greenwashing – ‘brownwashing’? – until political conditions are suitable to emphasise them once again.

References

1. Global Cement Directory 2025, www.globalcement.com/directory

2. Amrize, ‘Contact Us,’ accessed 25 June 2025, www.amrize.com/us/en/contact-us.html

3. Jan Jenisch, post to LinkedIn, 23 June 2025, www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7342995000399421440/

4. Amrize, ‘Our Cement,’ accessed 25 June 2025, www.amrize.com/us/en/our-businesses/building-materials/cement.html

UK: Heidelberg Materials UK has opened a railway line connecting its Horton limestone quarry in North Yorkshire to the rail network. The move reinstates the movement of materials by rail, following a transition to road transport upon the original closure of the railway line in 1965. Heidelberg Materials UK expects to supply 1650t/yr of stone for use as aggregates in the construction industry in North West England.

US: Ozinga has broken ground on a 1Mt/yr alternative cement grinding plant in East Chicago, Indiana. The plant is equipped with a Gebr. Pfeiffer MVR5300-C6 vertical roller mill. It will produce ASTM C989-compliant slag cement and other blended cements. When operational in 2026, it will be the largest of its kind in North America, and avoid 700,000t/yr of CO₂ emissions from conventional cement production. Its location offers strategic rail, road and shipping access to large markets in the US and Canada.

East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland welcomed an anticipated 150 new jobs resulting from construction and subsequent operations at the plant.

India: ACC Chair Karan Adani says that he expects the cement industry to benefit from the an anticipated US$2.2tn in new public infrastructure spending between 2025 and 2030.

Press Trust of India News has reported that Adani said "ACC crossed the 100Mt/yr cement capacity milestone in April 2025, propelling us closer to our ambitious 140Mt/yr target by the 2028 financial year." The company’s capacity corresponds to 15% of an all-India installed capacity of 686Mt/yr.

Peru: Grupo Gloria plans to invest US$100m in an upcoming lime plant in Lima. OneStone Consulting has reported that the plant will supply lime for Lima’s construction, agriculture and mining sectors.

Grupo Gloria subsidiary Cal & Cemento Sur already operates a five-kiln lime plant in Puno Region with five kilns, comprising three Maerz Parallel Flow Regeneration (PFR) vertical kilns and two horizontal kilns.

India: During the fourth quarter of the 2025 financial year (which ended on 31 March 2025), premium products constituted 16% of Shree Cement’s sales mix, up from 12% one year previously. During the period, the company further diversified its offering with the launch of two new premium cements, Bangur Marble Portland slag cement and Extra White Portland slag cement, in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. Both products are designed for maximum brightness and smoothness within their category of CEM-II Portland slag cements. The company says that its growing portfolio helped it to increase its full-year financial realisation per tonne by 5% year-on-year.

Business Today News has reported that managing director Neeraj Akhoury said "In the 2025 financial year, 74% of our cement output was blended, avoiding over 7.2Mt of CO₂ emissions."

Shree Cement crossed 60% consumption of energy from renewable sources in May 2025, Construction World News has reported. It has 582MW of installed renewable power capacity and is currently in the process of building a 1MW battery storage system at one of its cement plants in India.

Vietnam: Siam Cement Group Vietnam (SCG Vietnam) recorded sales of US$301m in the first quarter of 2025, 43% of group regional sales outside of Thailand.

SCG Vietnam hosted Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at its US$5.5bn Long Son petrochemicals complex earlier in 2025, when it announced that currently planned investments will target the petrochemicals division, as opposed to cement. It acquired the Sông Gianh cement plant in Quảng Bình for US$156m in 2017.

Poland: The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) has launched an investigation into Cement Ożarów, Cemex Polska, Dyckerhoff Polska, Góradżdże Cement, Górażdże Beton and Holcim Polska over potential cement cartelisation. The office has not stated the exact triggers of such an investigation at this time.

ISB News has reported that UOKiK previously discovered an 11-year-long conspiracy to divide the market and fix prices between seven companies in 2009.

UOKiK President Tomasz Chróstny said "The return of a cartel would be particularly outrageous, considering that cement is one of the basic construction materials, necessary for the development of housing, road infrastructure and the entire economy."

If found to have been party to any agreement restricting competition, companies can expect penalties as high as 10% of turnover.