Polysius launched ThyssenKrupp Polysius Solutions this week. It has described the new company as a dedicated lifecycle solutions provider. By doing so, it joins a number of other traditional cement equipment manufacturers that have also pivoted into services and retrofits over the last decade or so.
Parent company ThyssenKrupp previously tried to sell its cement plant engineering division in the late 2010s as part of a major restructuring. It didn’t manage to divest that part but it did sell its mining division to FLSmidth along the way. This had implications as the Denmark-based FLSmidth gradually turned into a mining company and eventually sold its cement engineering division to private equity. ThyssenKrupp’s cement business kept going and it later launched its sustainable process technologies as ThyssenKrupp Calvion in May 2026. That subsidiary’s intention is to specialise in sustainable process technologies for the cement, lime and other energy‑intensive industries. The rest of ThyssenKrupp Polysius said it was sharpening “its profile as a provider of single‑machine solutions, modernisations, spare parts and field services.”
Now at the start of October 2026 ThyssenKrupp Polysius has carved off a section of itself as ThyssenKrupp Polysius Solutions. Its stated aim is to help customers maximise the value of their equipment and to support them throughout the lifecycle of their plants with consultation, upgrades, retrofit equipment, digital products, spare parts and services. Around 180 employees will transfer from Polysius to the new company. The remainder of ThyssenKrupp Polysius will continue to operate in parallel to complete ongoing projects and existing contractual obligations.
Other cement equipment manufacturers have been on similar journeys in recent years, focusing less on delivering whole new production lines and more on retrofits and service. This has also tied in with the trend for sustainability and increasing digital products such as predictive maintenance. Some industry commentators have also blamed this on Chinese companies undercutting their competitors and capturing the full production line market. For example, Fuller Technologies said it was going to work on a portfolio of capital products, digital and service offerings when it was purchased (as FLSmidth Cement) by Pacific Avenue Capital Partners in late 2025. Before this, companies including KHD, Fives, Gebr. Pfeiffer and Loesche have all switched in some fashion or another to supplying parts of cement production lines and/or ongoing services, often with a focus on sustainability, efficiency and/or digital along the way.
Sinoma International Engineering summed it up in its annual report for 2025 by saying that the full-line EPC market is concentrated in ‘Belt and Road’ countries in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, while the market for technical upgrades is concentrated in the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and Asia. It cited research by Zheng Lue Consulting that placed the value of the market for cement engineering outside of China at US$4.8bn/yr from 2026 to 2030 and just under US$1bn/yr domestically in China. With cement production having peaked in China in the 2010s, the country is now very much in the upgrade and services market. CNBM said in its 2025 annual report that its engineering and services segment, including Sinoma International Engineering, had 74 cement production lines under operation and maintenance service contracts and 326 mines.
ThyssenKrupp Polysius has followed the prevailing trends for the cement equipment market by splitting itself into a sustainability equipment company and a services-retrofit company. The next option might be to launch a digital wing, but this is probably built into both of the other sections already. It is notable that Calvion started with 40 employees but Solutions started with 180 employees. It’s a crude measure but it suggests that more money lies in servicing and retrofitting than sustainability at present. Fives confirmed some of this in its 2026 annual report when it blamed falling order intake in the cement sector, “…where efforts to reduce carbon footprint have taken a back seat in Europe (for budget reasons) and the US (for political reasons).” Building new cement production lines will become rarer in the future so keeping existing ones running is increasingly where the action is.
