Analysis

A great question was asked at yesterday’s Virtual Global CemTrans Seminar: what impact did the recent blockage of the Suez Canal cause to the cement industry? Luckily, Rahul Sharan from Drewry was on hand discussing freight costs following the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

As most readers will know, the Suez Canal was blocked in late March 2021 when the 200,000dwt Ever Given ran aground, at around six nautical miles from the southern entry of the canal. The ultra large container vessel was subsequently refloated and towed away just under a week later. While this was happening the fate of the ship became a global news story with business analysts totting up the cost of the obstruction. 40 bulk carriers were reported as waiting to transit the waterway the day after the blockage started and some of these were carrying cement. Reporting by the BBC noted that 369 ships were stuck waiting on either side of the blockage on the day before the ship was finally freed. The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) estimated their loss of revenue from the incident at US$14 – 15m/day. Analysts like Allianz placed the cost to the global economy at US$6 - 10bn/day.

In Sharan’s view the blockage of the Suez Canal happened at a potentially risky moment for cement and clinker shipping because there was already congestion in shipping lanes built up on the east coast of South America and around Australia. However, a delay of a week around the canal, followed by the resulting congestion dispersing quickly over the following days, does not seem to have had any major impact so far.

Sharan’s presentation at Global CemTrans also included a summary of cement shipping. The key takeaways were that clinker shipping overtook cement shipping in 2019 with a connected increase in fleets investing in handymax-sized vessels. He also pointed out the key cement and clinker importing countries in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic started causing market disruption. For cement: the US, the Philippines and Singapore. For clinker: China, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Turkey and Vietnam were the biggest exporters for both in that year.

The Ever Given incident has highlighted the continued importance of the Suez Canal for global trade for commodities. Goods still need to be physically moved around, however much stuff we digitise. It also contrasts with the issues that the Egyptian cement sector has faced in recent years such as production overcapacity. While domestic cement plants have struggled to maintain their profits, plenty of cement carriers have been transiting through the Isthmus of Suez. Local producers may well have gazed at them and wondered where they were going.

One of them, Al-Arish Cement Company, took action in this direction this week with its first export shipment of clinker. The Clipper Isadora ship disembarked East Port Said port for Ivory Coast. Future shipments are planned for West Africa, Canada, the US and Europe. Ship tracking reveals that the Clipper Isadora has not taken the Suez Canal on this occasion.

The proceedings pack for the Virtual CemTrans Seminar 2 2021 is available to buy now

Global Cement Weekly celebrates its 500th edition this week. This corresponds to nearly a decade’s worth of news and comment upon the cement industry, since the first edition went out in early June 2011. Time is brief, so the quick version of all of this is as follows: China; production growth; production overcapacity; grinding; corporate mergers; regionalisation; CO₂; digitisation; and coronavirus.

Those looking for the longer version should read Peter Edwards’ review of the 2010s in the December 2019 issue of Global Cement Magazine. Although be warned, few were expecting a global pandemic to rock markets and possibly hasten future trends when that article was written. Those looking for the even longer version should read the last 10 years of the magazine and the website… and then let us know what we missed.

Looking back at the first few editions of Global Cement Weekly brings to mind the LP Hartley quote, “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” It’s all very familiar until one comes across the little things that makes one realise how much has actually changed.

For example, countries were imposing import tariffs on cement, companies were buying each other, national cement associations were lobbying hard for their members and cement plants were investing in alternative fuels equipment. All that stuff has been happening continually over the last decade and right into this week, with Russian media announcing who has won the auction to buy Eurocement and LafargeHolcim closing its deal to buy Firestone Building Products. Yet, Lafarge and Holcim were still separate companies and Italcementi was independent in 2011. On the sustainability side, Norcem and its parent company HeidelbergCement Group, with the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA), had just started a partnership agreement with Aker Clean Carbon (ACC) to study post-combustion CO₂ capture technology at Norcem’s plant in Brevik, Norway. Jump forward nine years and Norcem signed a deal with Aker Solutions in mid-2020 to order a full scale CO₂ capture, liquification and intermediate storage plant at Brevik.

The big numbers from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) show that global cement production grew by 24% to 4.1Bnt in 2020 from 3.3Bnt in 2010. However, the big growth had stopped by around 2013 and production has hovered between 4.0Bnt/yr and 4.2Bnt/yr ever since. Alongside this, Getting the Number Right (GNR) data indicates that net CO₂ emissions for cementitous products fell by 4% to 610kg/t in 2018 from 636kg/t in 2010. The former may show a levelling off of production as the Chinese market stabilised in the 2010s but the latter shows the progress that has been made in reducing cement-related CO₂ emissions and the scale of the challenge that remains ahead.

Graph 1: Embodied energy versus embodied CO₂ of building materials. Source: Hammond & Jones, University of Bath, UK.

Cement industry readers should not lose heart about the future of the industry though, while environmental pressure continues to mount. Graph 1 above shows the embodied CO₂ and energy of common building materials. Cement has been rightly identified as a major emitter of CO₂ but any society that desires to build strong structures cheaply and at scale requires concrete to do so whilst the data above remains unchallenged. The ratios may change, such as the perennial energy-cost influenced tug-of-war between asphalt and concrete roads, but concrete remains the only game in town. For now. At which point cement production becomes all about reducing the CO₂ emissions or capturing them, and determining who exactly pays for this. This then brings us to the present with the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme carbon price of over Euro40/t and other schemes popping up all around the planet. One echo from one of the early editions of Global Cement Weekly was the furore over Australia’s attempt at a carbon tax in the early 2010s. It was repealed in 2014.

One prediction about how the 2020s might be summarised for the cement industry is this: how to get away with pumping out all that CO₂? Let’s see what the next decade will bring.

Financial results for 2020 from the major Chinese cement companies are now out, making it time for a recap. Firstly, information from the China Cement Association (CCA) is worth looking at. The country had a cement production capacity of 1.83Bnt/yr in 2020. For an idea of the current pace of industry growth, 26 new integrated production lines were built in 2020 with a clinker production capacity of just under 40Mt/yr.

This is as one might expect from the world’s biggest cement market. However, the CCA also revealed that the country has over 3400 domestic cement companies, of which two thirds are independent cement grinding companies. Most of these were reportedly created during the late 2000s as dry kilns started to predominate. The CCA is concerned with the quality of the cement some of these companies produce and the lack of order in this part of the market such as regional imbalances. This suggests that the government’s attempts to consolidate the cement industry as a whole had led to the independent companies heading down the supply chain. It also raises the possibility that the government-led consolidation drive may move to grinding next. One news story to remember here is that in February 2021 the CCA called for its industry to respect competition laws following a government investigation. Later in the month it emerged that eight cement companies in Shandong Province had been fined US$35m for price fixing in a sophisticated cartel whereby the perpetrators went as far arranging a formal price management committee to regulate the market.

The CCA described 2020 as a year of sudden decline, rapid recovery and stability. Coronavirus hit cement output in the first quarter of 2020 leading to unprecedented monthly year-on-year declines before it bounced right back in a classic ‘V’ shaped recovery pattern. Despite the pandemic and bad weather later in the year, annual output rose by 2% year-on-year to 2.37Bnt in 2020 from 2.32Bnt in 2019. This has carried on into 2021 with a 61% increase in January and February 2021 to 241Mt from 150Mt in the same period in 2020. That’s not surprising given that China was suffering from the pandemic in these months in 2020 but the growth also suggests that the industry may have gone past stability and is growing beyond simply compensating for lost ground.

Graph 1: Year-on-year change in cement output in China, January 2010 - February 2021. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China. Note that accumulated data is issued for January and February each year so these months show a mean figure.

Chart 2: Annual cement production growth by Province in 2020. Source: China Cement Association.

Chart 2 above shows cement production in 2020 from a provincial perspective. Note the sharp decline, more than 10% year-on-year, in Hubei Province (shown in dark green). Its capital Wuhan is where the first documented outbreak of coronavirus took place followed by a severe lockdown. Zooming further out, China’s clinker imports grew by 47% year-on-year to 33.4Mt in 2020. This is the third consecutive year of import growth, according to the CCA. The leading sources were Vietnam (59%), Indonesia (10%), Thailand (10%) and Japan (8%). China has become the main export destination for South East Asian cement producers and Chinese imports are expected to continue growing in 2021.

Graph 2: Revenue of large Chinese cement producers in 2020 and 2019. Source: Company reports.

Moving to the financial figures from the larger Chinese cement producers, CNBM and Anhui Conch remain the world’s two largest cement producing companies by revenue, beating multinational peers such as CRH, LafargeHolcim and HeidelbergCement. Anhui Conch appeared to be one of the winners in 2020 and Huaxin Cement appeared to be one of the losers. This is misleading from a cement perspective because Anhui Conch’s increased revenue actually arose from its businesses selling materials other than clinker and cement products. Its cement sales and cement trading revenue remained stable. On the other hand, Huaxin Cement was based, as it describes, in the epicentre of the epidemic and it then had to contend with flooding along the Yangtze River later in the year. Under these conditions, it is unsurprising that its revenue fell.

CNBM’s cement sales revenue fell by 3% year-on-year to US$19.5bn in 2020 with sales from its new materials and engineering compensating. Anhui Conch noted falling product prices in 2020 to varying degrees in most of the different regions of China except for the south. CNBM broadly agreed with this assessment in its financial results. Anhui Conch also reported that its export sales volumes and revenue fell by 51% and 45% year-on-year respectively due to the effects of coronavirus in overseas markets. The last point is interesting given that China increasingly appears in lists of major cement and clinker exporters to different countries. This seems to be more through the sheer size of the domestic sector rather than any concerted efforts at targeting exports.

One major story on CNBM over the last 15 months has been its drive to further consolidate its subsidiaries. In early March 2021 it said it was intending to increase its stake in Tianshan Cement to 88% from 46% and other related transactions. This followed the announcement of restructuring plans in mid-2020 whereby subsidiary Tianshan Cement would take control of China United Cement, North Cement, Sinoma Cement, South Cement, Southwest Cement and CNBM Investment. The move was expected to significantly increase operational efficiency of its constituent cement companies as they would be able to start acting in a more coordinated manner and address ‘fundamental’ issues with production overcapacity nationally.

In summary, the Chinese cement market appears to have more than compensated for the shocks it faced in 2020 with growth in January and February 2021 surpassing the depression in early 2020. Market consolidation is continuing, notably with CNBM’s efforts to better control the world’s largest cement producing company. Alongside this the CCA may be starting to suggest that rationalisation efforts previously focused on integrated plants should perhaps be now looking at the more independent grinding sector. The government continues to tighten regulations on new production capacity and is in the process of introducing new rules increasing the ratio of old lines that have to be shut down before new ones can be built. Finally, China introduced its interim national emissions trading scheme in February 2021, which has large implications for the cement sector in the future, even if the current price lags well behind Europe at present.

Two fairly serious investments in Peru made the industry headlines this week. The first was Yura’s plans to upgrade its Arequipa cement plant at a cost of US$200m. The project will involve increasing the plant’s clinker production capacity as well as installing a new mill and a 4.3km conveyor. The second was the latest instalment in Cementos Interoceanicos’ long held ambition to build a plant. It has struck a deal with France-based Satarem to build a 1Mt/yr plant near Puno. The deal also includes Satarem buying a 30% stake in Cementos Interoceanicos and plans to construct two lime units as well.

Graph 1: Local cement sales in Peru, January 2020 to February 2021 compared to January 2019 to February 2020. Source: ASOCEM.

These projects follow a squeeze for the local industry due to coronavirus-related containment measures. Data from the Association of Cement Producers (ASOCEM) shows that cement sales collapsed during the lockdown to just 11,000t in April 2020 before recovering in the autumn. Total annual local sales fell by 17% year-on-year to 9.7Mt from 11.6Mt. Sales have also remained high in January and February 2021.

The experience from the larger cement producers mirror the data from ASOCEM. Cementos Pacasmayo’s sales revenue fell by 7% year-on-year to US$354m in 2020 and its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 21% to US$86.3m. Unión Andina de Cementos’ (UNACEM) income fell by 14% year-on-year to US$467m in 2020. Despite this, UNACEM managed to sign a deal to buy Cementos La Unión Chile for US$23m in December 2020. The purchase consists of a 0.3Mt/yr cement grinding plant and a 0.34Mm³/yr ready-mix concrete business with multiple concrete plants and trucks. UNACEM described Chile as its main clinker export destination and it holds concrete and precast subsidiaries in the country.

Yura’s general manager Ramón Pizá reportedly called his company’s plans a “vote of faith in Peru.” This is not an understatement considering the market shocks caused by coronavirus in 2020. The country implemented public health measures relatively early during the pandemic but still ended up with one of the worst death rates per capita in Latin America so far. As the British Medical Journal (BMJ) pointed out earlier this month, the timing was right but tragically the application of public health measures has been found wanting. Yet, the fundamentals for the Peruvian cement market are strong. Annual sales mounted from 2017 to 2019, and were showing signs of continuing this in early 2020 before the lockdown shut the market down. This growth pattern has continued so far in 2021.

Several of South Africa’s cement and concrete producers joined up in early March 2021 to form an industry association called Cement & Concrete SA (CCSA). The Concrete Institute, Concrete Society of Southern Africa and the Association of Cementitious Material Producers established the organisation to, “take the lead on all matters relating to cement and concrete in South Africa.” Setting up an organisation like this takes time and it fits with the move in recent years of thinking about the whole building materials chain rather than just focusing on one part. The country is also in the first phase of its carbon tax and no doubt producers feel they need to make a renewed effort to fight their corner. Other aspects such as promoting the ‘value creation story’ of the cement and concrete industry in South Africa, research and training also makes sense.

The timing here is compelling due to the ongoing review of anti-dumping measures that were levied by the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC) upon imports by Pakistan-based cement producers. Local media in South Africa reported that ITAC started reviewing the tariffs in December 2020 in a process expected to take up to 18 months in duration. As reported in January 2021 (GCW 489), imports to the country fell after ITAC introduced tariffs in 2015 but they have started to edge up since then, particularly from producers in other countries such as Vietnam and China. Separately, the CCSA may have scored an early victory with the news that its application that government-based infrastructure projects should only use locally-produced cement was working its way through the government.

Looking at the general market, PPC reported ‘muted’ sales of cement in April and May 2020 due to the country’s first coronavirus-related lockdown from late March 2020. Similar to some other countries, construction projects halted and cement plants stopped producing. However, the market bounced back as the restrictions were relaxed with strong sales from June 2020 to September 2020 for the leading producer. It noted that the increase in volumes was mainly due to consumer retail although it noted that government infrastructure cement demand was also starting to be felt. PPC’s cement sales volumes fell by 5 – 10% in South Africa and Botswana from April to June 2020 but then rose by 20 – 25% from July to September 2020. The continuation of this sales momentum was also noted in October and November 2020. Dangote Cement’s operations in the country reported a similar situation, with sales up by 7% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2020 due to a surge in home improvement related demand after the first lockdown ended. Similar to PPC, it reckoned that demand increased by 25 - 30% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2020 as limitations in travel and entertainment led to some people saving money instead.

After the summer sales bounce, producers were soon complaining about rising import levels in the autumn of 2020 with volumes catching up with the amounts recorded in 2019. Hence the ITAC review is a timely reminder of the perils facing local producers.

South Africa’s general coronavirus experience has been an outlier compared to the rest of Africa with higher cases and deaths reported. Yet, it’s still reported lower per capita rates than many comparable countries in Europe and the Americas. Like the UK and Brazil, the country also holds the dubious distinction of having a coronavirus variant named after it. Its cement market appeared to snap back with pent up demand following the lifting of restrictions in common with other countries that implemented tougher public health rules. At which point the importers caught up again a few months later. The effects of South Africa’s second wave of coronavirus led to a lockdown in late December 2020. The effects upon building materials sales are likely to be less drastic than previously because this lockdown has had lighter restrictions compared to March 2020. Surrounded by all of this, the CCSA has sure picked a busy time to start work.