August 2025

Chad: Morocco’s Ciments de l’Afrique (CIMAF) has launched commercial operations at its new 0.5Mt/yr grinding plant at Lamadji. CIMAF regional director Hatim Kahttabi said that the production capcity of the unit is expandable to 1Mt/yr, according to Alwihda. The project had an investment of Euro35m and it has created 200 jobs.

Tanzania: The State Mining Corporation (Stamico) has assured cement producers that it holds sufficient coal supplies. It said that 18,600t/month of coal is being produced every month at its mine at Kabuko in Songwe, according to the Citizen newspaper. It intends to increase production to 45,000t/month when demand is ‘high’ and then to later raise production to 60,000t/month when it fixes infrastructure bottlenecks.

In August 2018 cement producers reported that they faced coal shortages. Subsequently, cement prices rose.

Kyrgyzstan: Member of parliament Karamat Orozova has proposed setting up a commission to examine building a new cement plant in the Batken region. She has proposed allocating land and loans for local businesses to build a new unit, according to the Central Asia News Service. The politician has criticised the decision to place the South-Kyrgyz Cement (SKC) plant in the Osh region of the country given the neighbouring problems in Batken. The 1Mt/yr SKC plant was built in 2010 with Italcementi.

Cyprus: Vassiliko Cement has presented a new low hydration heat cement product, Portland Pozzolana Cement CEM II/A-P 42,5N-LH, to local clients. The new product will be launched in early October 2018. It will be targeted at larger construction projects, such as footing or dams, where the company says it will prevent the formation of micro-cracks in concrete.

Spain: FYM-HeidelbergCement has reached a record two years without an accident at its Malaga cement plant. The milestone also includes no accidents for subcontractors working at the site. The company has operated a ‘Zero Accident’ program since 2000 that has focused on improving the safety culture for all staff.

Egypt: The UK’s Vortex Global Limited has appointed Alriad International Agencies & Trading as its new agent in Egypt. Alriad operates in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, chemical, commodities, fast-moving consumer goods and textile industries.

Alriad’s existing product portfolio includes a wide range of goods including: fine mesh separation technology, vibratory sieves, separators, ultrasonic mesh deblending systems and liquid filters from Russell Finex; packaging equipment from Webb Automation (GWA); industrial milling and crushing equipment. Grinding plants, industrial mills, pre-grinding plants, crushers, homogenisers and separators (compact- and industrial-scale); and metal detectors, metal separators, x-ray inspection systems from Mesutronic. With the addition of Vortex Global product portfolio, Alriad will offer slide gates, diverter valves, loading solutions, and engineered solutions for the dry solids handling industries.

The Federación Interamericana del Cemento (FICEM) held its 2018 technical congress in Panama City last week and was attended by Global Cement. We’ll run a full write-up of the event in the October 2018 issue of Global Cement Magazine. The short version is that the conference was technically good but, from our perspective, it could have done with more regional analysis. Given that the event is for the local industry this is not a big issue as most of the delegates will know their own markets inside out and many were happy to discuss just this when asked. Likewise, FICEM’s in-house publication also included plenty of local data.

The nearest the presentations came to this was a global overview of the cement industry by Arnaud Pinatel of On Field Investment Research ahead of a market report the analysts are about to release. Although it covered the global cement industry the key local news was that the Latin American sector’s production capacity had grown by 3% from 2010 to 2018 but that prices had fallen in this time. The forecast suggested that cement sales volumes were expected to grow by 3% in 2019 - supported by Brazil, Peru and Bolivia - but that prices were also expected to fall by 1%, mainly due to issues in Argentina.

That last point is especially interesting over the last week because the Argentine cement body, the Asociación de Fabricantes de Cemento Portland (AFCP), released its figures last week to reveal that cement despatches rose by 4.2% year-on-year for the first eight months of 2018. However, at the same time the general news broke that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was providing an emergency loan to support the country’s economy. The government was keen to shore up confidence in the economy and attributed the growth in the cement sector to the ‘most ambitious infrastructure plan in history.’

Only last year in 2017 the industry was riding a construction boom with cement shortages, new production capacity announced and the initial public offering of Loma Negra. Bailouts from the IMF don’t fit this picture of the poster boy for the South American construction industry. And, if a financial correction is pending, the new capacity that has been ordered may arrive at a bad time. This is a pretty worrying situation.

Meanwhile, across the Uruguay River into Brazil something long expected and hopefully more encouraging has occurred: the acquisition of cement plants. Italy’s Buzzi Unicem revealed that it had struck a deal to buy a 50% stake in the Brazilian company BCPAR from Grupo Ricardo Brennand for Euro150m. The arrangements cover two integrated plants: one 2.4Mt/yr unit at Sete Lagoas in Minas Gerais and a 1.7Mt/yr unit at Pitimbu in Paraíba. Buzzi has also added an option to buy the other half of the business until 2025.

It’s hard to place a value on the sale, but it looks as if Buzzi has picked up the capacity for just under US$100/t, subject to future variation on how well the company does. At that price though this a low figure and a bargain for Buzzi. Given the pain the Brazilian cement industry had been through in recent years some form of traction is welcome. Unfortunately, Grupo Ricardo Brennand has surely lost money on the deal given that the two plants were commissioned in 2011 and 2015 respectively. The complexity of the financial arrangements suggest that Ricardo Brennand is fighting to stay in the game if and when the recovery comes. If Buzzi has moved in then this suggests that it thinks it will make their money back and that it reckons that the bottom of the construction industry trough has been reached. A Brazilian take on this situation would be fascinating.

With these kinds of events happening the same week as the FICEM technical congress it really shows how vibrant and varied the region’s cement industry is. Next year’s conference will surely be even more interesting as market events in Brazil, Argentina and other countries develop.

Spain: Votorantim Group has appointed Alan Svaiter as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Votorantim Cimentos España. He succeeds Jorge Wagner, who has been promoted to the role of CEO of Votorantim Cimentos Europe, Asia and Africa. In his new position Svaiter heads a subsidiary running four cement plants, two mills, 29 concrete plants, eight aggregate operations and one mortar plant. He also directs a team of more than 500 people.

Svaiter, a Brazilian national, joined Votorantim Group in 2008. After leading the logistics of its cement division for two years he was appointed the director of Engemix, the company’s concrete business in Brazil. In 2014 he became director of the supply chain of the cement group for the entire Brazilian market.

Svaiter, a production engineer trained at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, holds a master's degree from the INSEAD business school. He started his professional career working for the Ambev brewery before joining the mining company Vale.

Paraguay: The government has appointed Javier María Rodríguez as the president of Industria Nacional del Cemento’s (INC). He succeeds César Bogado, who was the interim president of the state-owned cement producer, according to the La Nación newspaper. Julio Ullón, the head of the civil cabinet, welcomed Rodríguez to the role and urged the new administration to, ‘continue to win national demand.’

UK: Peter Cornell will join the Board of Breedon Group as an independent non-executive director on 1 October 2018. He is a Partner in Metric Capital, a Special Situations Fund targeting mid-sized companies throughout Europe with approximately Euro2bn of assets currently under management.

Prior to founding Metric Capital with his two partners in 2011, Peter was a Managing Director at Terra Firma, one of Europe's leading private equity firms. He formerly spent more than 20 years with international law firm Clifford Chance, latterly as Global Managing Partner.

Peter is currently non-executive Chairman of Grant Thornton and Lexington Consultants, a professional service firm consultancy. He is also a non-executive director of Schroders Limited, F&C Commercial Property Holdings Limited and IE Business School in Madrid.