August 2025

India: Sagar Cement’s consolidated production volumes at its integrated 2.4Mt/yr Mattampally, Telangana, and 1.0Mt/yr Tadipatri, Andhra Pradesh, plants in January 2020 were 317,000t, up by 4.7% year-on-year from 303,000t in January 2019. Accord Fintech News has reported that consolidated sales in the period fell by 1.6% year-on-year to 315,000t from 320,000t in January 2019.

On 29 January 2020 the Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change granted environmental clearance to Sagar Cements for and upgrade to all three dry lines of its 2.4Mt/yr Mattampally plant to raise its capacity to 5.0Mt/yr. Its clinker capacity will rise from 2.0Mt/yr to 4.8Mt/yr. The expansion also includes a 36MW coal-fired power plant and a 22MW waste heat recovery (WHR) power plant.

China: The coronavirus outbreak which began in China’s Wuhan province has forced the China Cement Association to postpone its CementTech 2020 cement industry supply conference in Anhui province. The conference was due to take place on 25-27 March 2020 at the International Conference and Exhibition Centre in the province’s capital of Hefei.

There have been rumours in the press this week that LafargeHolcim is weighing up its options in South Africa. Reports in the local press allege that the building materials company has tasked Credit Suisse Group with finding a buyer for its business. This may or may not be true, only time will tell, but South Africa certainly feels like a market where LafargeHolcim should be considering its future.

As a prominent but smaller producer in the country, Lafarge South Africa is behind PPC and AfriSam in terms of clinker production capacity. InterCement’s subsidiary Natal Portland Cement and Dangote’s subsidiary Sephaku Cement have a similar production base with an integrated plant each and one or two grinding plants. Halfway through 2019 LafargeHolcim was describing market conditions as ‘difficult’ in the country with it being the sole Sub-Saharan market holding back regional growth for the group. By the third quarter the situation had reportedly improved but net sales and cement sales volumes were flat for the year to date. A clearer picture should emerge when LafargeHolcim publishes its fourth quarter results at the end of February 2020.

PPC provided its view of the market in its half-year results to 30 September 2019. Its estimate was that the South African cement industry declined by 10 - 15% for the period, creating a competitive environment. It added that the situation had been, ‘exacerbated by imports and blender activity.’ Both its revenue and earnings fell year-on-year, although a 30% rise in fuel costs didn’t help either. Sephaku Cement suffered a similar time of it, with a 19% fall in cement sales volumes during the first half, although it reported improvement in the subsequent quarter. Overall, it blamed falling infrastructure investment for pressurising the market and allowing blending activity to mount. Sephaku Cement was also wary of the local carbon tax that started in June 2019 warning of a potential US$2.8m/yr bill.

PPC noted that cement imports had risen by 5% to 0.85Mt in the year to August 2019. This followed a lobbying effort by The Concrete Institute (TCI) in mid-2019 to implore the International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC) to look into rising imports levels. At the time the TCI’s managing director Brian Perrie expressed incomprehension that a country with six different cement production companies with an over-capacity rate of 30% could be facing this problem. This latest broadside tails South Africa’s previous attempt to fend off imports when it instituted anti-dumping duties of 17 – 70% against importers from Pakistan in 2015. Imports duly fell in 2016 but rose again in 2017 and 2018, mainly from Vietnam and China.

All of this sounds familiar following LafargeHolcim’s departure from the ‘hyper-competitive’ South-East Asian countries in 2019. Those countries also suffered from competition and raging imports. Bloomberg pointed out in a report on the local industry in 2016 that PPC’s, AfriSam’s and LafargeHolcim’s kilns had an average age of 32 years, suggesting that efficiency and maintenance were going to be concerns in the future. Also of note is LargeHolcim’s decision to move its South African operations from one subsidiary, Lafarge Africa, to another, Caricement, in mid-2019.

Some level of market consolidation would certainly help local overcapacity. Plus, surely, LafargeHolcim’s mix of inland integrated capacity and a grinding plant near the coast could prove enticing to some of the Asian companies pumping out all of those imports. The thought on the minds of potential buyers everywhere must be, if LafargeHolcim chief Jan Jenisch was bold enough to sell up in South-East Asia, how can he not in South Africa?!”

Philippines: Samuel O Manlosa has been appointed as the manager of Holcim Philippines’ Davao plant. He succeeded Xavier Arul Kennedy Savarimuthu in the post, who has been reassigned by the LafargeHolcim Group to lead plant operations in Nigeria.

Previously, Manlosa led a project to improve systems and processes to yield efficiency gains for Holcim Philippines' manufacturing operations. He has worked as a process and automation expert for LafargeHolcim's operations in Southeast Asia supporting plants in seven countries. Manlosa has also been sent to Holcim Switzerland for training on advanced process engineering and cement manufacturing. A native of Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte, he is a graduate from the Mindanao State University in Marawi City.

LafargeHolcim signed an agreement with San Miguel Corporation in mid-2019 for the divestment of its entire 85.7% shareholding in Holcim Philippines. The process is still ongoing.

Canada: Tina Larson has been appointed as Vice President, Saskatchewan and Manitoba by Lafarge Canada. She first joined Lafarge in 2010 as General Manager, Pipe in the Greater Calgary Area following a 16-year career with Weyerhaeuser Canada where she held various management positions. In 2015, Tina was promoted to the country level role of Director, Health and Safety for Western Canada. Larson holds an undergraduate and graduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alberta.

Germany: Ralf Dörner has retired as the managing director of Ventilatorenfabrik Oelde following a 50-year career with the company.

Following his apprenticeship as an industrial manager, Dörner took over a vacant position in the commercial administration division. Subsequently, he was given the job of assuring total data management integration within the company. In 1982 he was granted power of attorney and appointed commercial manager of the company. He became managing director in 2000.

Dörner handed over the Commercial Managing Director position to his successor, Nabil Abou Lebdi. The company will now be managed with Thomas Gandt, the Technical Managing Director.

Russia: Eurocement subsidiary Akhangarantsement produced 1.9Mt of cement in 2019, a rise of 16% year-on-year from 1.6Mt in 2018. The company attributed the growth to a programme of ‘modernisation of the equipment at the Akhangarantsement aimed at increasing productivity, energy efficiency and reliability of production,’ without any disruption to supply. Akhangarantsement general director Gennady Kulikov said, “The coordinated work of the entire team allowed us to fulfil the tasks assigned to the plant with honour.”

US: On 4 February 2020, PCA Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Ed Sullivan predicted that US cement demand would rise by 1.7% in 2020 and may rise by as much as 2.7% if residential construction exceeds expectations. Sullivan stated that demand would maintain moderate growth through at least to 2022. “As long as the economy continues to grow and create jobs, the economy will remain on solid ground and continue to support cyclical portions of the cement market,” he said.

US: National Gypsum has launched Permabase WP Waterproof Cement Board, a 1.3cm-thick cement board with a waterproof core, reinforced edge and smoother surface and stronger tile bond than previous Permabase boards for mould and moisture resistance and ease of cutting and installation. National Gypsum product manager for Permabase Tony Fuller said that “National Gypsum is committed to creating innovative products with performance benefits” for construction.

India: Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim has co-located its global digital and business services at a single site in Mumbai. The company says that the Global Hub will enable it to ‘focus on providing modern global platforms and capabilities, accelerating the pace of innovation at a local, regional and global level.’