India: KT Rama Rao, the Industries and IT Minister, has lobbied the central government to help reopen the Cement Corporation of India (CCI) plant at Adilabad in Telangana. In a letter sent to Mahendra Nath Pandey, the Minister of Heavy Industries, Rao noted that several previous attempts had been made to reopen the unit, according to the Hindu newspaper. He added that the plant continues to hold a mining lease for 48Mt of limestone locally, has a dedicated electricity supply and has water resources. The 4Mt/yr integrated plant was originally built in 1984. Operations stopped in 1996 due to a lack of funds and the site was formerly closed in 2008.

Germany: Claudius Peters has reported strong order intake for the first half of 2021. Parent company Langley Holdings said that, “if the forecast to year end is met, [it] will be the highest since 2008.” It added that Claudius Peters’ France-based subsidiary was reorganised during the reporting period. Langley Holdings’ revenue fell by 2% year-on-year to Euro363m in the first half of 2021 from Euro370m in the same period in 2020. However, its operating profit increased significantly and it has forecast revenue growth of 15% for the year as a whole.

Colombia: Cement production grew by 33% to 6.50Mt in the first half of 2021 from 4.89Mt in the same period in 2020. Data from DANE, the Colombian statistics authority, shows that local despatches rose by 34% to 6.20Mt from 4.61Mt.

Thailand: Siam City Cement says that coronavirus-related public health measures reduced demand for cement towards the end of the second quarter of 2021. The group noted that the domestic market for cement ‘softened’ despite strong sales overseas in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Its overall net sales fell by 3.6% year-on-year to US$616m in the first half of 2021 from US$639m in the same period in 2020. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 4.4% to US$142m from US$149m. It also reported reduced sales from its ready-mixed concrete and aggregate business lines due to the pandemic’s effects on construction markets and the related closures of construction worker camps.

Australia: Sumitomo Osaka Cement has started operating a cement terminal at Port Kembla in New South Wales. The Japan-based cement producer owns a 30% share in the company running the unit, which operates as Falcon CP. The terminal has a silo capacity of 36,000t. Sumitomo Osaka Cement says it plans to use the terminal as a means to increase its activity in the local market. It runs its regional headquarters in Sydney trading as SOC Oceania.

Cameroon: A subsidiary of Ivory Coast-based Atlantic Group has signed an agreement with the Cameroon Investment Promotion Agency giving it tax incentives towards building a new cement plant. It plans to build a 1Mt/yr cement plant in the Port of Kribi, according to Business in Cameroon. Construction work on the plant is scheduled to start in 2021 with completion by 2024 at the latest. The project has an investment of around US$70m. Atlantic Group inaugurated the 1.5Mt/yr Société Ciment Côte d'Ivoire (SCCI) near Abidjan, Ivory Coast in January 2021.

Australia/UK: InterGroup Mining has secured just under Euro60m from Luxembourg-based investment group GEM Global Yield as part of a share subscription facility. The Australia-based mining company says it will use the funds primarily for the ongoing development and commercialisation of its Brilliant Brumby kaolin and gold project in Queensland. The company hopes to sell the kaolin for use in cement and concrete production or as a feedstock for high purity alumina (HPA). It says it will be able to drawdown the funds over a 36-month term following a public listing of its common stock.

Neil Miller, the chairman of InterGroup said, “The GEM facility provides a major accelerator for InterGroup as we continue to prove up the scale of our Brilliant Brumby project and the optimal development path for the co-mining opportunity of kaolin and gold. It likewise enables us to continue our important research and development work into the new carbon reduction markets of potential scale that our minerals serve and which complement their existing known end markets.” InterGroup is currently working towards a potential stock market flotation in the second half of 2021.

The story so far for the first half of 2021 has been one of recovery following the coronavirus-related lockdowns in the same period in 2020. Market restrictions ended, production curbs were rescinded and revenue and sales volumes grew.

Many of the larger multinational cement producers have released their financial results and sales revenues show a gap-tooth pattern for the first halves of 2019, 2020 and 2021. Sales for LafargeHolcim, HeidelbergCement and Cemex all took a knock of around 10% from 2019 to 2020. Generally, sales have increased from 2019 to 2021 for the more regional-based companies such as Cemex or Buzzi Unicem. The larger multinational producers like Holcim and HeidelbergCement bounced back from the dip in 2020 but comparisons with the first half of 2019 are less favourable. Like-for-like comparisons between 2019 and 2021 are not available but both companies have been refocusing their portfolios in recent years making it hard to gain a sense of exactly what’s going on. These trends are still ongoing with more speculation in the press this week about which companies are bidding for LafargeHolcim Brasil for example. However, both Holcim and HeidelbergCement did report record earnings or operating incomes in the first half of 2021 suggesting that all the cost cutting in 2020 has paid off. The general market picture was continuing demand in North America, recovery in Europe and Latin America, growth in Africa and the Middle East and growth in Asia despite renewed coronavirus-related uncertainty.

Figure 1: Sales of selected major multinational cement producers in first half of 2021. Source: Company financial reports.

Figure 2: Cement sales volumes of selected major multinational cement producers in first half of 2021. Source: Company financial reports.

Cemex and Buzzi Unicem benefitted from their strong market presences in the Americas and Europe. Cemex was also helped by a particular recovery in Mexico and Latin America. The latter region benefited from the relaxation of strong lockdown measures in many countries implemented in the first half of 2020. Cemex’s investors update event at the end of June 2021 summed up its situation with earnings growth and leverage levels about to hit desired targets, selective investments and divestments on the way, new production capacity round the corner and sustainability goals turning up earlier than expected.

In Africa, Dangote Cement witnessed a switch from growth outside of Nigeria to a spurt of domestic demand for cement from mid-2020 onwards. This temporarily caused the company problems earlier in 2021 when it was forced to suspend its newly started export operations to Cameroon from its Onne and Apapa terminals. The reactivation of its previously mothballed 4.5Mt/yr Gboko plant in Benue State and an upcoming 3Mt/yr plant at Okpella in Edo state seem to have soothed the demand rush for now. Clinker exports have been resumed.

India meanwhile faced a second wave of its coronavirus epidemic in the spring of 2021. UltraTech Cement acknowledged this in its latest financial results, for the quarter to 30 June 2021. It reported that this had ‘marginally’ impacted cement demand but that the company was still monitoring the impact of the health situation upon its operations. Despite this, revenue and sales volumes of cement still grew significantly year-on-year in both the quarter and the first half of 2021. UltraTech Cement’s wariness about the health situation chimed with recent comments by Roongrote Rangsiyopash, the head of Siam Cement Group (SCG), who told local press in Thailand that current coronavirus restrictions in the country had reduced cement demand by 20%.

Finally, Semen Indonesia reported growing revenue, sales volumes of cement and earnings in the first half of 2021. Its financial results had little to say about the local coronavirus situation other than that it had reduced domestic demand growth and worsened production overcapacity. National cement production reached 115Mt in 2020 but local demand was only 62.7Mt. Unsurprisingly, exports reached their highest level ever, at 9.3Mt, in 2020.

As ever this is a very selective view of cement producer financial results. Larger multinationals like CRH or Votorantim are yet to release their results and likewise for the big Chinese producers. Recovery and growth seems to be the likely outcome for most of them though. However, the effects of recent coronavirus outbreaks in Asia have shown up in some of the results covered above. This suggests that the second half of 2021 for building materials manufacturers may be characterised by which countries are better able to suppress coronavirus either through mass vaccination or other public health measures. Buzzi Unicem summed it up it in its half year results: “The rapid progress of vaccination campaigns was matched by a clear recovery in economic activity.”

India: The National Council for Cement and Building Materials (NCB) has elected KC Jhanwar as its chairman for the year 2021 – 2022. Shri Neeraj Akhoury was elected as the vice-chairman.

KC Jhanwar is currently the managing director of UltraTech Cement and the president of the Cement Manufacturers Association (CMA). He originally joined Aditya Birla Group in 1981 as a management trainee in the cement business. Since then he has worked across finance, operations and general management roles in the cement and chemical sectors. Jhanwar is a chartered accountant by qualification.

Neeraj Akhoury is currently the managing director and chief executive officer of Ambuja Cement and the vice-president of the CMA. He holds over 25 years of experience in the cement and steel sectors. He began his career with Tata Steel in 1993 and later joined the predecessor company to Holcim Group in 1999. Akhoury holds a degree in economics and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Liverpool in the UK. He is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School in the US and had studied general management at XLRI business school at Jamshedpur.

Australia: Ryan Stokes has been appointed as the chairman of Boral. The appointment follows Seven Group’s acquisition of a majority shareholding in Boral in late July 2021. Kathryn Fagg, the former chair, has retired from Boral. Richard Richards, a Seven Group nomination, has also been appointed as a director. Stokes is the managing director and chief executive officer of Seven Group, an Australian-based conglomerate that operates in the industrial services, oil and gas and media sectors.