August 2025

Mexico: Elementia’s sales benefitted from its Mexican cement business in 2017. Its net sales rose by 35% year-on-year to US$1.37bn in 2017 from US$1.02bn in 2016. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 24% to US$236m from US$191m.

Highlights of the company’s year included integrating Giant Cement’s assets into the company, the start-up and allocation of additional volume from the cement plant in Tula, Mexico and the expansion of the cement division in Costa Rica through the installation of a grinding plant that is expected to start operations towards the end of the first half of 2018.

Elementia’s Mexican cement division sales rose by 44% to US$236m from US$164m. However, the sales of its US division fell by 7% to US$231m from US$249m. The company blamed this on the year being a ‘transitional’ period where it conducted regular maintenance works that interrupted production.

Peru: UNACEM is considering buying local engineering company ARPL Tecnología Industrial, according to the Gestion newspaper. The plans will be discussed at a forthcoming shareholders meeting in late March 2018. ARPL Tecnología Industrial is an engineering company that specialises in the cement industry. It has operated for over 50 years. It offers consultancy services, and technical assistance, development and project engineering managing services, as well as analysis and physical chemical tests and computer services.

Ethiopia: The Ethiopian Revenues & Customs Authority (ERCA) says that Chinese company Inchini Bedrock Cement owes it US$10m for alleged tax evasion. The cement producer has declared a loss for five of the seven years it has been in operation, according to the Addis Fortune newspaper. However, ERCA’s Large Taxpayers Office (LTO) has refuted these claims and, following an audit, says that Inchini Bedrock had failed to keep records of the raw materials and finished products in stock. The investigation was triggered following the discovery of documents relating to Inchini Bedrock whilst ECRA was looking at another case.

Inchini Bedrock Cement employs 265 employees, including 22 foreign nationals. However, it appears to have no manager or representative at present, except for the head of the expatriate department, according to sources quoted by Addis Fortune. The manager of the company left Ethiopia in late 2017 due to medical reasons. The plant had a cement production capacity of 0.3Mt/yr when it opened in 2012.

Rwanda: Cimerwa plans to upgrade its Bugarama cement plant in Rusizi District of Western Province. The project is intended to increase the plant’s production capacity and to target demand locally and abroad, in particular infrastructure development, according to the New Times newspaper. However, the subsidiary of PPC has not disclosed how much it is spending on the project. Upgrade work will start in March 2018 and end in April 2018.

At present the 0.6Mt/yr plant has a 65% production utilisation rate. The company expects to reach full capacity in mid-2019, although it claimed in 2017 that it would be able to do this by mid-2018. In 2017 the company sold 0.38Mt of cement, with 10% exported to Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. The plant imports most of its coal from Malawi and Tanzania.

Burkina Faso: The Ministry of Mines and Quarries has signed a limestone mining deal with Sahelian Mining, a subsidiary of Diamond Cement Burkina. The deal covers mineral rights for the Sahel region, according to the Sidwaya newspaper. The agreement is intended to diversify the country’s mineral production. Diamond Cement Burkina oprates a cement grinding plant at Ouagadougou.

Thailand: Siam City Cement Group has hired US company Avaya and Thai technology company Loxley to upgrade its communication infrastructure. The project was intended to help the cement producer manage the transformation into a multinational company with operations in Thailand, Sir Lanka, Bangladesh and Vietnam and 1500 workers. Products from Avaya have enabled employees in different regions to connect via a range of devices and channels via varied internet connections in different territories. The project has also enabled employees to use video conferencing to collaborate and to reduce the need for travel.

“With our rapid expansion across the region, we wanted a cost-effective solution that would enable us to meet our sustainable development objectives while driving our digital transformation journey,” said Khun Ittaya Sirivasukarn, chief executive officer (CEO) of Insee Digital, the IT subsidiary of Siam City Cement.

Australia: Adelaide Brighton’s revenue rose by 11.7% to US$1.22bn in 2017 from US$1.09bn. The building materials producer said that the boost, although aided by acquisitions in 2017, was due to ‘strong’ demand in east coast markets, improving demand in South Australia and stabilising demand in Western Australia. However, its net profit after tax fell by 2.2% to US$142m from US$145m. It blamed this on one off provisions, acquisition costs and restructuring expenses.

For its cement business, the company said that cement and clinker sales volume rose by 9% in 2017, assisted by a ‘particularly’ strong second half. Strong volume growth continued in 2017 in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales.
Sales volumes in Western Australia and Northern Territory declined in the first half but stabilised in the second half to be modestly lower for the year. Cement sales in South Australia improved, supported by the ramp-up of major infrastructure projects in the second half.

The cement producer also reported that in April 2017 its Birkenhead plant experienced a temporary issue with the quality of cement that incurred rectification costs of US$2.8m during the first half of the year. The quality issue arose due to lower grade feed making its way into the cement milling process. Fixes to inventory management and quality processes were made to address the issue and production and quality returned to normal shortly after the incident.

Australia: Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) and the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia (ISCA) are working together to encourage the use of low carbon cements in infrastructure projects. This follows ISCA’s Infrastructure Sustainability (IS) rating scheme and the release of the BZE Rethinking Cement report that presents a roadmap on how Australia could develop the world’s first zero carbon cement industry.

ISCA’s Infrastructure Sustainability Rating scheme will introduce two new incentives aligned with BZE’s approach: a new Innovation Challenge will encourage greater use of low-carbon content within Portland cement; and an updated Infrastructure Sustainability Materials Calculator for ISv2.0 will award points for the use of geopolymers. ISCA already rewards projects for replacing a proportion of Portland cement clinker with alternatives such as fly ash. Their analysis indicates that IS rated projects have achieved an average of 21 - 25% Portland replacement.

India: The credit agency ICRA forecasts that cement demand will grow by 4.5% in the 2018 – 2019 financial year due to growth in the housing sector and higher infrastructure spending. Improved rural incomes, higher rural credit and increased allocation for rural, agriculture and allied sectors are also likely to increase the demand for rural housing, according to the Press Trust of India.

Indian cement production rose by 2.7% to 217Mt in the nine months from April to December 2017 from 211Mt in the previous year. However, the first three months of this period, from April to June 2017, saw production drop due to local issues across the country such as a sand shortage, the implementation of Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) Act and a drought. The following quarter then saw a fall in production due to the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), continued sand shortages and inclement weather. ICRA predicts that cement demand will grow by 3% for the remainder of the 2017 – 2018 financial year due to a boost in production in December 2017.

Pakistan: Local residents have protested about air pollution from the Kohat Cement plant. They demanded that the plant install air filters as soon as possible, according to the Dawn newspaper. The protestors also alleged that the company’s employment of local workers had dropped to 5% from 75% following its sale. The cement company says that it has hired a Chinese engineering firm to run a survey of its emissions. In 2016 the Environmental Protection Agency ordered Kohat Cement to stop production as its dust control unit was ‘out of order.’