The cement sector in China may have turned a corner in 2025. Cement output and revenue from some of the largest producers continued to fall. However, profits at some of them rose in 2025. The signs from the start of 2026 suggest that national production may have recovered from the levels seen early in 2025.

Graph 1: Cement output in China, 2020 to 2025. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China continues to show the declining trend in production since 2020. Output fell by just under 8.5% year-on-year to 1.67Bnt in 2025 from 1.83Bnt in 2024. The China Cement Association (CCA) noted that real estate investment fell by 17% to US$120bn in 2025. Yet, as mentioned above, the picture has started to look more positive in 2026. Cement production grew by 7% year-on-year to 178Mt in January and February. Whether this trend will continue in 2026 remains to be seen.

Graph 2: Sales revenue from selected Chinese cement producers. Source: Company financial reports.

Graph 3: Sales volumes of cement and clinker from selected Chinese cement producers. Source: Company financial reports.

Looking at the major cement producers in China, CNBM’s sales revenue and profit fell in 2025. This was mainly due to the declining price of heavy building materials, including cement, and a decrease in sales volumes. Total sales of cement and clinker, for example, fell by 11.5% to 217Mt in 2025 from 245Mt in 2024. CNBM also noted an impairment provision of around US$400m for “the exit of capacity in respect of certain cement and clinker production lines in the course of production capacity replacement and other factors…” As Graph 1 shows above, cement production in China has been shrinking and companies like CNBM are paying for this by retiring their production lines.

In comparison, Anhui Conch’s revenue fell but its profit rose in 2025. It increased its profit by improving its efficiency and cutting costs. It also managed to keep its drop in cement and clinker sales volumes lower than the industry average by increasing overseas and export sales. The group was also keen to point out that its installed capacity of wind, photovoltaic power generation and energy storage reached 1377MW by the end of 2025.

BBMG had a tougher time of it in 2025 with revenue down significantly and profit much reduced. However, this was caused by a major decrease in revenue from the group’s property development business. Sales volumes of cement and clinker fell by 1% to 83Mt in 2025 but booked gross-floor area from the property development business plummeted by 52% to 532,000m². Building materials made up 70% of group revenue in 2024. In 2025 they made up 86%.

As has been usual in recent years, Huaxin Cement performed best out of the larger cement producers featured here. Its revenue and profits grew in 2025. This was due to its growing overseas business that reached 20Mt in 2025, up by 25%. Domestically, cement and clinker sales volumes fell slightly. Notably, operating revenue from the overseas part of the business surpassed that of the Central China Region, becoming the group’s largest division. The company completed its acquisition of Nigeria-based Lafarge Africa in 2025. It also achieved the successful maiden voyage of its first self-owned international cargo vessel, to Mozambique.

Finally, China Resources Building Materials Technology (CRBMT) reported falling turnover but rising profit. Cement sales volumes were down but concrete and aggregate volumes were up. The group noted that average prices for cement, concrete and aggregates all fell in 2025. The profits appear to have risen due to cutting costs in a variety of ways.

The financial results above are just a snapshot from some of the larger cement companies in China. However, the picture is starting to look better than it has in previous years. Some commentators are even starting to predict modest profit rises in 2026 with price rises reported in Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jilin and other provinces in March 2026. The domestic profits reported at the cement companies covered here mostly appeared to be related to cost cutting. It’s a start though for a sector that has been adjusting downwards over the last five years. The next step will be to stabilise sales volumes of cement. One hurdle in 2026 will be how local cement companies and the wider Chinese economy deal with the energy shock from the Iran war. China is reportedly better prepared for higher oil prices compared to many of its Asian neighbours but there may be many unforeseen consequences.

Votorantim and Huaxin Cement were both linked to the impending divestment of Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional’s (CSN) cement division this week. Bloomberg reported that Morgan Stanley is assisting with the process and that the sale price could be up to US$3bn. Other buyers are also being considered. Discussions are still at an early stage, but CSN hopes to wrap up the deal by the autumn.

CSN announced a debt reduction plan of up to about US$3.5bn in January 2026. In its fourth quarter results for 2025 released in early March 2026 it said that it remained “...
pressured by the high cost of debt and the progress of growth projects.” During this quarter its net debt to earnings before interest taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) ratio over the last 12 months rose to 3.47. It said that this was the first increase in leverage after three quarters of decline and that the result reflected a reduction in cash availability due to paying off debts and increased spending. In late 2025 it transferred its minority stake in rail freight company MRS Logística to its mining subsidiary CSN Mineração (CMIN) for about US$645m. CMIN was designated in January 2026 as the group’s “main growth avenue” generating 33% of group revenue and 57% of earnings in the third quarter of 2025. The group stake in CSN Cimentos was confirmed for divestment at the same time. This division generated 11% of both revenue and earnings. Notably, in a notice to the market in January 2026, the group described its plan for the cement division as a ‘sale of control’ rather than an outright divestment. Of the group’s other subsidiaries, CSN Infra was set for a sale of a ‘significant’ equity stake in 2026, CSN Steel is being assessed for “strategic alternatives and partnerships aimed at maximising short-term cash generation” and CSN Energy is being retained.

Readers may recall that CSN Cimentos expanded in 2022 through the acquisition of Holcim’s business in Brazil. The company started as a steel producer and this remains the source of half of its revenue, although its earnings were just 18% in the third quarter of 2025. It entered the cement business in 2009 and bought Cimento Elizabeth in 2021. The Holcim deal made it the third largest cement producer in Brazil with an integrated production capacity of 12.6Mt/yr from seven clinker producing plants. The company placed its total cement production capacity in early 2026, including grinding plants, at 17Mt/yr. It paid US$220m for Cimento Elizabeth and then US$1.03bn for Holcim Brazil. This covered six of its seven integrated plants. If the US$3bn price tag for the whole cement business is realistic, this would amount to a significant increase in value for clinker capacity in four years. One other point to note is CNS’s focus on its mining business. This is reminiscent of FLSmidth’s pivot to mining also and the divestment of its cement division. The latter company is, of course, a supplier of industrial equipment not a cement producer.

Graph 1: Cement sales in Brazil, 2016 - 2025. Source: Sindicato Nacional da Indústria do Cimento (SNIC).

As can be seen above in Graph 1 data from Sindicato Nacional da Indústria do Cimento (SNIC) shows that cement sales in Brazil peaked in 2021, then dipped a little before recovering in 2024 and 2025. Cement sales were just under 67Mt in 2025, an increase of 3.7% year-on-year from 2024. SNIC attributed this growth to the Minha Casa, Minha Vida (MCMV) housing programme in the residential sector and the promotion of concrete road building by the Ministry of Transport in the infrastructure sector. SNIC expressed concern about national interest rates in 2026 but has forecast growth in cement sales.

CSN’s decision to sell its cement division means that two of the three largest cement producers in Brazil are potentially for sale. InterCement is reportedly under the control of its creditors in Brazil. Its subsidiary in Argentina, Loma Negra, has been taken over by a consortium led by businessman Marcelo Mindlin. Back in 2024 CSN was signing exclusivity agreements with InterCement to buy its operations in Brazil and Argentina! Debt appears to be the theme here for both CSN and InterCement to varying degrees. It will be revealing to see which companies emerge with the appetite to take on either of these cement companies in the coming months.

Amrize launched its 'Product of Canada' label last week. This follows a few other recent news stories in the sector that touch upon a nationalistic approach to cement marketing. What’s been going on?

The US-based cement company has its headquarters in Chicago, Illinois in the US. However, it was keen to release its ‘Product of Canada’ cement label on 17 March 2026 to offer “builders the assurance of Canadian-made manufacturing and quality, supporting local jobs and communities.” The marking is intended to signify that everything to do with the product is made in Canada from raw materials, to processing to manufacturing and on to conforming to local standards. The company operates five cement plants in Canada. The new label will be rolled out, starting with the Exshaw cement plant in Alberta and the Bath cement plant in Ontario. Amrize’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 5.5% year-on-year to US$3.01bn in 2025 from US$3.18bn in 2024. Overall revenues rose slightly, but they fell slightly in Canada.

A similar approach was advocated by UK-based Breedon Group earlier in March 2026 with the launch of its British Cement Advocacy campaign. Breedon is calling for government intervention to support the sector. Its view is that government aims to build new homes and that infrastructure cannot happen without cement. It has asked to establish a carbon border adjustment mechanism, address wider competitiveness challenges, accelerate support for carbon capture technologies and promote domestically produced cement for public procurement. It noted it runs over 300 sites in the UK and that around a quarter of British Members of Parliament have a Breedon operation in their constituencies. Breedon Group’s profit fell by 13% year-on-year to €97m in 2025 from €111m, in 2024.

Meanwhile, the narrative over the branding of cement took a twist in Uganda. Earlier in March 2026 residents of the Karamoja sub-region complained to local press after cement being produced at the new (and local) Moroto integrated plant started being branded as Yaobai Cement. The locals had previously been annoyed that cement made by Tororo Cement used Tororo branding despite the raw materials being sourced in Karamoja. However, the new plant at Moroto has been built by China-based West International Holding. They invested US$300m in the project. Understandably, perhaps, West International Holding may have felt that given the scale of their investment they might be able to use the name of their well-established international cement subsidiary, Yaobai International Holding. It produces cement and gypsum-wallboard products in countries including Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, the Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Uzbekistan.

The examples above demonstrate that people can take where their cement is from pretty seriously. In the Amrize case, one should note the backlash in Canada against US products in response to US tariffs in 2025. The BBC reported at the start of 2026, for example, that Canadians were buying more local products. Amrize said in its annual report for 2025 that “We see increasingly domestic-focused agendas both in the US and Canada. Each country is prioritising national investments and domestic materials…” In the UK the construction materials market is currently in a slump. The Mineral Products Association (MPA) said in February 2026 that demand for "core construction materials remained stuck at “alarmingly weak levels.” Breedon Group’s advocacy makes sense in opposition to competition from imports and impending carbon tax rules. Finally, the situation in Uganda shows that people care about local manufacturing regardless of where the money comes from. Hopefully this is merely a public relations issue and both parties can jointly get behind products from the new factory.

Cement company shares prices in India fell this week due to energy supply concerns in the wake of the US-Israeli-led war with Iran. The situation appears similar, so far at least, to the energy shock that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. We will look at the available news on the situation so far and reflect on what happened in 2022.

The decision by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards this week to ‘close’ the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation to US and Israeli air strikes is the key challenge to energy intensive industries outside of the region. Today’s news reports of commercial ships being damaged in the area further heightens tensions. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that 20% of the world’s seaborne oil trade transits through the waterway. The markets reflected this with a jump in oil prices this week as well as a dip in the share prices of industries likely to be adversely affected, such as the cement sector.

At the end of last week, trade analysts Kpler released an assessment of how the start of the war had affected bulk commodity trade. It noted that Qatar’s decision to declare force majeure on gas exports was contributing to the increase in the price of gas and has major implications for the economics of switching between gas and coal not seen since 2022. Demand from Europe for seaborne coal might rise consequently. It also identified that petcoke exports from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman to China and India were particularly vulnerable to disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. It said that, “Indian cement producers, reliant on fuel-grade petcoke, face the sharpest supply risk and would be forced to source US petcoke at a premium or switch to coal.”

Sure enough the stock market in India reacted at the start of this week. As the Business Standard newspaper noted, for example, the stock price for Ramco Cement fell by 7%. It linked this to the vulnerability of cement production to energy prices, particularly those of petcoke and coal. Oil price increases can also increase logistics costs of moving input and output materials around, and raise the cost of electricity. It placed the volume of petcoke going through the Strait of Hormuz at 0.4 - 0.6Mt/month with India “...absorbing the majority of this.” The country imports half of its requirements of petcoke, signalling that prices are likely to rise. The brokers quoted predicted that these costs would be passed straight on to consumers.

In Pakistan the Iran war has prompted calls for development of the Thar coalfield to be exploited faster to reduce reliance on imports. This is a long-term project but recent events may hasten it. The Dawn newspaper reported that imported coal prices increased by 22% year-on-year in recent weeks to around US$110/t FOB. The local cement sector in Pakistan uses 5Mt/yr of coal and it plans to use up to 20% coal from Thar. Meanwhile, the local press in Bangladesh has been keenly interested in which ships had made it through the strait before the war. Shipments of liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas that had transited in time were noted. As too were vessels carrying clinker, gypsum and limestone from the Gulf. The first of those is of particular interest in Bangladesh given its relative lack of domestic clinker production. However, alternative sources should be easy enough to find in a world making too much clinker.  

The energy market consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 were a spike in energy prices in the short term. In March 2022, for example, the head of Türkçimento warned that a jump in the price of Newcastle Coal posed a serious threat to the sector and that the cost of cement from a plant using imported coal might rise by around US$15/t. In the medium term, Russian gas and coal exports shifted away from European markets to Asian ones. For example, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that Europe and Türkiye received 32% of Russia’s coal exports in 2020. By 2024 this had fallen to 13%, with Türkiye accepting the vast majority. Natural gas exports fell from around two-thirds in 2020 to over one-third in 2024. Major multinational cement producers reported a mixed response to energy costs in 2022. Reasons for this included regional variation within operations, the hedging of energy costs and the use of alternative fuels. Cemex, for example, noted that it had been subject to “uncertain energy supply availability” as a result of the war in Ukraine. Heidelberg Materials said that the “...2022 financial year was characterised by a significant increase in production costs, especially in relation to energy, fuels, and raw materials, which we countered with price adjustments.”

Finally, there is no information readily available of the effects on the war upon the cement industry in the Gulf countries and Iran. Industrial sites such as refineries or desalination plants have reportedly been damaged in the Gulf countries. There is little to no information on the situation inside Iran. If readers have any information on the situation locally they should get in touch.

So far the war in Iran has shown the reliance that cement production in India has on petcoke from the Gulf. Stronger repercussions are likely the longer that the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked. Energy users may start to switch fuel types as the cost of previously favoured fuels escalate. Cement producers are likely to be hedged against this to an extent but there will be considerable regional variation. All of these price rises are expected to be passed to end consumers and inflation rates could rise. This, in turn, may slow construction rates. One positive to end on is that rising alternative fuels utilisation rates may protect cement producers somewhat. Expect more impetus for thermal substitution rates to carry on rising.