August 2025

Russia: The Commission for Entrepreneurs’ Rights has asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade to change Council for Standardisation, Metrology and Certification (GOST) conformity assessment and cement certification rules requiring production and packaging of cement to be carried out by a single legal entity. The commission says that the restriction, introduced in September 2019, unfairly restrains smaller-scale producers, according to the Kommersant newspaper.

In an open letter to Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov, Commissioner Boris Titov said, “This preferential treatment of full-scale enterprises negatively affects the formation of a competitive environment. The purpose of cement certification is to confirm quality and safety, which clearly do not depend on production and packaging being carried out by a single legal entity.”

Colombia: Cementos Argos Colombia says that it has delivered facemasks and biosafety kits containing thermometers, floor charts and a digital health-monitoring app to 23,000 of its customers across Colombia. The company said that the initiative was undertaken, “In the hope of strengthening the commitment to the continuation of the sector operations in biosafety conditions, and the revitalization of the economy.”

Regional vice president Tomás Restrepo said, “At Argos, we have the firm intention of being the best allies to our customers. In this context it becomes more relevant than ever to work hand-in-hand for the health and wellbeing of our strategic allies and to contribute directly to the safe continuity of the construction, the recovery of the industry and the health of the economy.”

India: Emami Group has completed its divestment of Emami Cement, which is now 100% held by Nuvoco Vistas. Emami Group, which continues activities in the beauty and traditional medicine sectors, received US$731m for the sale of its sole cement industry subsidiary.

China: Anhui Conch and its subsidiaries have responded to increased rainfall and raised water levels in the Yangtze River in Jiangnan Province since June 2020 by building a “solid line of defence against floods.” The Group says that with the help of the Central Committee of the Communist Part of China it has planned and implemented flood monitoring, strategic precautions and local flood control using earth and sandbags. Anhui Conch subsidiary Chizhou Conch mines limestone for cement production in the area. It said, “Chizhou Conch will continue to pay close attention to all the work of flood prevention and flood preparation, ensure the safety of the flood season, and help the company achieve its annual production and operation goals and tasks smoothly.”

China: The Tibet Autonomous Region Department of Economics and Information has awarded Huaxin Cement subsidiary Huaxin Tibet’s Shigatse Company Tibet Company cement plants with regional Green Factory status. The plants are among eight businesses across the autonomous region selected for their dedication to green development. The company says that it attaches “great importance to the protection of plateau ecology, the scientific development of mineral resources and the promotion of mine reclamation and greening.”

The Tibet Company circulates used cooling water from cement production into irrigation systems for mine reclamation. The Shigatse Company “strengthened the greening of mines and plant areas according to local conditions, and insisted on special environmental protection training for front-line employees and middle-level leaders,” improving environmental awareness across its operations, according to Huaxin Tibet.

UK: The British Standards Institution (BSI) has granted LafargeHolcim subsidiary Aggregate Industries the ISO 45001 Standard in Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems for its reduction of workplace risks and support of health and wellbeing at the work. Company health and safety director Mike Belson said, “Achieving this certification gives us a great sense of pride as it further shows our commitment to putting health and safety first in all that we do as an organisation. We are proud to have a strong health and safety culture, whereby our employees are encouraged to take an active role in their own operational health and safety.”

Sweden: UK-based Vortex Global subsidiary Mespo has announced the establishment of a sales office in Sweden in order to “better serve the Nordic region.” While continuing to serve Danish customers from its Denmark branch, Mespo will use the new office to “create customer relationships, arrange site visits and follow up on customer enquiries” in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Data is starting to emerge from South American countries for the first half of 2020 and it’s not necessarily what one might expect. Countries had different trends in play before the coronavirus pandemic established itself and then governments acted in their own ways with mixed results. Here’s a brief summary of the situation in the key territories.

Graph 1: Cement sales in selected South American countries in first half of year, 2018 – 2020. Source: Local cement associations and national statistics offices. Note: Colombian data is for January – May for each year.

Brazil’s cement sector looked set to become the big loser as global events seemed poised to dent the recovery of cement sales since a low in 2018. This didn’t happen. The Brazilian national cement industry union’s (SNIC) preliminary data for the first six months of 2020 shows that sales grew by 3.7% year-on-year to 26.9Mt. This is above the growth rate of 3% originally expected. Indeed, the monthly year-on-year growth rate in June 2020 was 24.5%. SNIC is not wrong in describing this kind of pace as being ‘Chinese.’ All this growth has been attributed to the home improvement market as people used their lockdown time to renovate their homes, renovations and maintenance in commercial buildings during lockdown and growing work on real estate projects. The government’s decision to implement weak lockdown measures clearly helped the sector but this may have cost lives in the process.

SNIC’s president Paulo Camillo Penna pointed out that producing and selling cement could co-exist with fighting coronavirus. However, trends such as a slowing real estate sector, less large construction projects and mounting input costs are all seen as potential risks in the second half of 2020. What SNIC didn’t link to the wider fortunes of the local cement industry was the economic consequences of coronavirus. The World Bank, for example, has forecast an 8% fall in gross domestic product in Brazil in 2020 due to its coronavirus, “mitigation measures, plunging investment and soft global commodity prices.”

Peru, in contrast to Brazil, implemented a strong lockdown early in March 2020. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work as well as hoped possibly due to informal and structural issues such as reliance on markets, the informal economy and residential overcrowding. This means that production and sales of cement are significantly down without any public health benefit. Both production and despatches fell by about 40% to around 2.9Mt in the first half of 2020 with close to total stoppages in April 2020. In terms of coronavirus, Peru is at the time of writing in the top 10 worldwide for both total cases and deaths, behind only Brazil in South America. It should be pointed out though that Peru’s testing rate is reportedly high for the region and this may be making its response look dire in the short term. All of this is particularly sad from an industrial perspective given that Peru was one of the continent’s strongest performers prior to 2020. One consolation though is that the economy is expected to recover more quickly compared to its neighbours.

Argentina started 2020 with a downward trend in its local market. Cement sales had been falling since 2017, roughly following a recession in the wider economy. Throw in a strong lockdown and sales more than halved at its peak in April 2020. So far this has led to a drop of 31% to 3.83Mt for the first half of 2020 compared to 5.51Mt in the same period in 2019. Unfortunately, a recent spike in cases in Buenos Aires has led to renewed lockdowns in the capital. Due to this unwelcome development and the general economic situation Fitch Ratings has forecast an overall decline in cement sales volumes of 25% for 2020 as a whole.

Finally, Colombia’s cement production fell by 24% year-on-year to 3.90Mt in the first five months of 2020 from 5.14Mt in the same period in 2019. April 2020 was the worst month affected. The country’s lockdown ended on 13 April 2020 for infrastructure projects and on 27 April 2020 for cement production and residential and commercial construction. On 5 May 2020 Cementos Argos said that domestic demand was at 50% of pre-lockdown levels. Data from DANE, the Colombian statistics authority, shows that local sales fell by around a third year-on-year to 0.71Mt in May 2020 from 1.06Mt in May 2019.

Most of the countries examined above follow the pattern of reduced cement production and sales in relation to the severity of the lockdown imposed and the resulting intensity of the coronavirus outbreak. Stronger lockdowns suppressed cement production and sales in the region of 20 – 40% in the first half of the year as governments shut down totally and then released industry and commerce incrementally. The exception is Peru, which has suffered the worst of both worlds: a severe lockdown and a severe health crisis. Local trends have continued around this, like the recovery in Brazil in the construction industry and the general recession in Argentina.

SNIC’s president has said that making and selling cement needn’t be exclusive with public health measures. He’s right but Brazil’s surging case load is an outlier compared with most of its continental neighbours and the rest of the world. Cement sectors in countries with growing economies like Peru and Colombia are expected to bounce back quicker than those with stagnant ones like Argentina. The risk for Brazil is what its government health strategy will do to the construction sector in the second half of 2020.

Saudi Arabia: Southern Province Cement has appointed Aqeel Futis Kadasa as its chief executive officer (CEO) following the resignation of Safar Mohammad Dhufayer. Kadasa holds a degree in chemical engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals and has over 25 years of working experience. He started his work at Yamama Cement, then worked in the Saudi Electricity Company in the Department of Engineering Services and later joined Southern Province Cement in 1997.

Saudi Arabia: Yanbu Cement has appointed Fahd Bin Soliman Al Rajhi as its chairman. Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Khuraiji was appointed vice-president of the board of directors and Sharif Bin Abdul Karim Al-Itani was appointed as the secretary.