Demand for heavy building materials in the UK dropped in the first quarter of 2025, with ready-mix concrete sales reaching a new 60-year low.1 In an update last week, the UK’s Mineral Products Association (MPA) attributed the decline to existing economic headwinds, compounded by global trade disruptions, reduced investor confidence and renewed inflationary pressures.
Major infrastructure projects – including the HS2 high-speed railway in the English Midlands, the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset and the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk – failed to offset delays and cancellations by cash-strapped local councils to roadwork projects. Residential construction, meanwhile, is ‘slowly but steadily’ recovering from historical lows, amid continuing high mortgage rates since late 2024.
The most interesting part of the MPA’s market appraisal was its warning of ‘new risks emerging in the global economy.’ These concern the new tariffs raised by the US against its import partners. The possible consequences, the MPA says, imperil the UK’s supply chains, construction sector and growth.
Of particular immediacy is the threat of imports into the UK from countries that previously focussed on the US market. The MPA said that the industry ‘cannot compete’ against increased low-cost, CO2-intensive imports. It named Türkiye, which sends around 6.9Mt/yr of cement and clinker to the US, as a key threat. Türkiye became subject to the blanket 10% ‘baseline’ tariff on 2 April 2025.
The MPA probably didn’t have a particular company in mind when it said this. However, it bears noting that Turkish interests gained a share of UK cement capacity in October 2024, when Çimsa acquired 95% of Northern Ireland-based Mannok. Besides the Derrylin cement plant (situated on the border between Fermanagh, UK, and Cavan, Ireland), Mannok operates the Rochester cement storage and distribution facility in Kent, 50km from London. The facility currently supplies cement from Derrylin to Southern England and the Midlands. It could easily serve as a base of operations for processing and distributing imported cement and clinker from further afield.
Meanwhile in South West England, Portugal-based Cimpor is building a €20 – 25m cement import terminal in the Port of Bristol. The company is subject to 20% tariffs on shipments to the US from its home country. Its parent company, Taiwan Cement Corporation, is subject to 32% US tariffs from Taiwan.
But the plot thickens… On 8 May 2025, the UK became the first country to conclude a trade agreement with the US after the erection of the new tariff regime, under which the US$73bn/yr-worth of British goods sold in the US became subject to a 10% tariff.2 The latest agreement brought partial relief for an allied sector of UK cement: steel. 180,000t flowed into the US from the UK in 2024.3 In 2024, the UK exported 7120t of cement and clinker to the US, up by a factor of 10 decade-on-decade from just 714t in 2014, all of it into two US customs districts, Philadelphia and New York City.4
In what may be one of the first true ‘Brexit benefits,’ UK cement exporters now ‘enjoy’ a US tariff rate half that of their EU competitors, notably those in Greece. Like the UK’s more modest volumes, Greece’s 1.82Mt/yr-worth of cement and clinker exports stateside also enter via the US’ eastern seaports, at New York City, Tampa and Norfolk. Given the overlaps in ownership between the Greek and UK cement sectors, it is conceivable that optimisation of cement export flows across Europe may already be under discussion.
On 6 May 2025, the UK and Indian governments announced a trade deal that will lift customs duties on almost all current Indian exports to the UK. UK MPs are still seeking clarifications as to whether this will include industrial products that might be dumped.5 Theoretically, the threat from an oversupplied and fast-growing cement industry like India’s could be existential to the UK cement industry.
As the UK invests heavily in its future, including with the HyNet Consortium, imports pose a major threat. Given enough time, the UK could develop a leading position in the decarbonisation space. Will it have enough time? Existential threats certainly add a sense of jeopardy.
References
1. Mineral Products Association, ‘Weak start to 2025 for building materials sales amid growing economic headwinds,’ 6 May 2025, www.mineralproducts.org/News/2025/release16.aspx
2. HM Government, ‘UK overseas trade in goods statistics November 2024,’ 16 January 2025, www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-overseas-trade-in-goods-statistics-november-2024/uk-overseas-trade-in-goods-statistics-november-2024-commentary
3. UK Steel, ‘US 25% tariffs on UK steel imports come into effect,’ 12 March 2025, www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2025/us-25-tariffs-on-uk-steel-imports-come-into-effect
4. United States Geological Survey, ‘Cement in December 2024,’ January 2025, https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/media/files/mis-202412-cemen.pdf
5. Welsh Liberal Democrats, ‘UK-Indian Trade Deal: Government Refuses to Answer Whether it Has Conceded on Cheap Indian Steel Imports,’ 6 May 2025, www.libdems.wales/news/article/uk-indian-trade-deal-government-refuses-to-answer-whether-it-has-conceded-on-cheap-indian-steel-imports
