Displaying items by tag: Anhui Conch

An acquisition in Uzbekistan by Russia-based Akkerman Cement this week highlights resurgence in the local market.

The subsidiary of USM has just purchased a majority stake in Akhangarancement with the help of financing from Gazprombank. No value for the acquisition has been disclosed. However, the move follows the sale of Russia-based Eurocement to Smikom in early 2021. Then in June 2021 Eurocement sold off its majority stake in Akhangarancement to Cyprus-based Lamanka Enterprises for US$53m. Now, as part of the sale to Akkerman Cement, the start of a new 2.5Mt/yr dry process production line at Akhangarancement in 2021 has also been highlighted. As for Akkerman Cement’s interest in become a multinational cement producer, it said that, “The investment in Akhangarancement, like all USM investments in Uzbekistan, is primarily aimed at the development of this country, the small homeland of Alisher Usmanov, the main shareholder of USM.”

Aside from any potential sentimental yearnings from a billionaire, the Akhangarancement deal follows a few developments in the Uzbek market in recent months. At the start of January 2022 the state assets management agency UzAssets agreed to sell the government’s majority stake in Qizilqumcement for US$174m to United Cement Group (UCG). This was a significant move locally given the size of UCG in the Central Asian states. UCG operates two integrated plants and one grinding unit in Uzbekistan. The acquisition of Qizilqumcement’s 3.4Mt/yr plant now makes UCG the largest cement company by production capacity in the country. It has also been building a new production line, like Akhangarancement, with commissioning last reported as scheduled as sometime in 2022.

Finally, the other recent development in Uzbekistan occurred in December 2021 when China-based Anhui Conch announced that it had started building a new 2.5Mt/yr cement plant in the Akhangaran district in Tashkent. The project has a price tag of US$200m.

Graph 1: Cement production in Uzbekistan, 2016 – 2020. Source: State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Statistics.

In early 2021 the government suspended tariffs on cement imports and this was then later extended into late 2022. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev says he signed the decree to keep house prices low. Subsequently, imports grew by 26% year-on-year to 2.2Mt in the first nine months of 2021. The main importers were Kazakhstan (44%), Tajikistan (25%) and Kyrgyzstan (25%). Graph 1 above shows recent annual production trends over the last five years. So far in 2021, to September 2021, overall domestic cement production rose by 17% to 9.08Mt. In 2020 annual production was about the same as the country’s production capacity of 10.3Mt/yr.

The mixture of Russian and Chinese companies involved with the recent plant acquisitions and new projects chimes with the general position of the Uzbek economy and its geographical position between the larger economies of Russia and China. For example, January 2022 data from the Uzbek State Statistics Committee showed that bilateral trade with Russia overtook that with China in 2021 for the first time since 2014. The two countries have had similar trade turnover with Uzbekistan over this period. Since the mid-2010s the national economy has liberalised and investment by foreign companies into industries like cement reflects this. The sale of Qizilqumcement also shows the further movement of state assets into private ownership. With apparent production utilisation closing to 100% and the government encouraging imports, it’s a good time to be a cement producer in Uzbekistan. Accordingly, foreign cement companies are investing.

Uzbekistan: China-based Anhui Conch has started building a 2.5Mt/yr cement plant in Akhangaran district in Tashkent. It will invest US$200m in the upcoming plant, of which it has already spent US$16.7m on imported equipment, according to the Podrobno news agency. The plant will occupy a 183ha site.

Holcim has announced today that it has concluded the sale of its 75% stake of its Zambian business to Huaxin Cement. Meanwhile, in Tanzania last week, Huaxin Cement officially commissioned a cement grinding line at its Tanzanian Maweni Limestone plant. China produces about half the world’s cement and some its producers are expanding overseas as domestic growth dwindles. These actions and others place increased scrutiny on sustainability issues for Chinese cement producers. Readers therefore may be interested to note the publication last week of a list of the 100 largest Chinese corporate emitters of CO₂ in 2020.

The Chinese Cement Association (CCA) website carries some highlights on the work by from the cement sector’s perspective. China Venture Carbon and Caixin compiled the list of publicly listed companies using a mixture of freely available data such as sustainability reports, by adjusting public data or by making estimates. The companies covered released 4.42Bnt of CO₂ in 2020 or 45% of the Chinese total. The 15 cement firms in the top 100 were responsible for 893Mt of CO₂ or around 9% of the national total. This ratio is in keeping with the usual 5 – 10% share of global CO₂ emissions attributed to cement production.

Graph 1: Global gross CO₂ emissions by large cement companies in 2020. Source: China Venture Carbon/ Caixin, corporate sustainability reports. Note: Includes all reported direct and indirect emissions for all company business lines.

Many of the Chinese cement companies already release sustainability data each year so this data isn’t exactly new. Yet seeing it all in one place like this is illuminating. Unsurprisingly, on the cement side the ranking is a list of producers ordered roughly by production capacity. The world’s biggest cement producer CNBM is also the cement company that emits the most CO₂. It released 255Mt of CO₂ in 2020. If it were a country, for example, it would be around the 20th largest emitter in the world with a similar output to France or Thailand. In China CNBM is then followed by Anhui Conch, BBMG, Tangshan Jidong Cement and China Resources Cement (CRC).

Graph 1 above also includes the total gross CO₂ emissions for other large cement producers outside of China in 2020 for comparison. These figures are estimates compiled from company sustainability reports and they attempt to cover all direct and indirect emissions across all business lines not just cement. Similar to the Chinese list, generally, the less CO₂ a cement company emits on this graph the less cement it produces. It is also worth noting that 2020 was an unusual year given the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Generally this reduced global manufacturing output but there was wide regional variation.

The other interesting point to note from the China Venture Carbon-Caixin project is that they re-ranked their list by carbon emission intensity, measured as emissions as a proportion of revenue. This totally changes the ordering. Where before the 15 cement companies were fairly evenly spaced out amongst power generators, coal producers and petrochemical companies, now all of them are in the top 50. As the CCA notes in its commentary, “The emission intensity of electricity and cement is much higher than that of other industries. The top 30 companies in terms of carbon emission intensity are almost all power and cement companies.” Whilst most of these companies are probably safe for the time being, given their size, what this might mean for smaller Chinese cement companies with high emission intensity in light of the Chinese government’s energy efficiency drives might be seen as worrying.

Promoting gross CO₂ emissions by cement producers is generally avoided by cement producers because it makes them look bad! It prompts an argument with the environmental lobby and doesn’t recognise the essential nature of cementitious building products to society. However, to their credit producers are publishing the data. The preferred metric for the non-Chinese multinationals is specific emissions per tonne of cement as this better shows the hard-work made to reduce emissions. However, this risks a credibility gap from the outside world, if specific emissions go down but total emissions keep rising each year. In the meantime though the more data the better from China and everywhere else.

China: Anhui Conch has appointed Li Qunfeng as its general manager. He succeeds Wu Bin who has resigned from the post but who intends to remain working as the company’s executive director. Li Qunfeng is a trained engineer who has worked for the company since 1994. Notably, he first worked for subsidiary Anhui Tongling Conch Cement in a number of production roles before attaining more senior postings within the group.

China: Anhui Conch has signed a CO₂ trading agreement with Shanghai Environmental Energy Exchange (SEEE). The deal takes place within the context of Shanghai’s CO₂ trading pilot scheme. Anhui Conch says that it will not only facilitate the promotion of carbon allowance asset scheduling and carbon asset market transactions, but also provide accreditation and CO₂ management system certification. It says that SEEE will help it to better assume the role of a leading enterprise in the ‘dual-carbon’ field of the cement industry.

Anhui Conch says that it is focusing on developing a full-process carbon footprint monitoring system. It has begun researching the utilisation possibilities of captured carbon with academic partners.

China: Anhui Conch’s operating revenue grew by 8.7% year-on-year to US$12.5bn in the first half of 2021 from US$11.5bn in the same period in 2020. However, its net profit fell by 7% to US$2.32bn from US$2.49bn. The group blamed this on rising raw material prices and ‘fierce’ competition. Anhui Conch reported that its production and sales volumes of cement and clinker increased by 11.5% to 208Mt. By region, sales grew in east, central and south China but fell in the west.

The group said that one clinker production line and two cement grinding units for Hunan Yunfeng Cement had been commissioned during the first half of 2021. Construction work on two grinding projects based in Haimen and Ganzhou also started. Outside of China, work on the group’s Qarshi project in Uzbekistan progressed to the installation of equipment.

It’s time for a macroscopic view of the Chinese cement sector this week with the release of the half-year financial results by some of the larger Chinese cement producers. On the national level the picture so far in 2021 has been one of continued recovery from the coronavirus lockdowns at the start of the year and then a slowing market as state controls on real estate speculation started to take effect. However, poor weather in the spring and mounting raw material prices appear to have compounded the effects of the real estate regulations, leading to price falls.

Cement output data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in Graph 1 shows that local production took a knock in the first quarter of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and this strongly recovered in the same period in 2021. The market recovered fast in mid-2020 and so the year-on-year growth for the second quarter was less in 2021. Output on a monthly basis remained ahead year-on-year from April 2020 and stayed ahead until May 2021. However, output in June 2021 was behind the figure in June 2020 and the figure for July 2021 was behind both July 2020 and July 2019.

Graph 1: Cement output by quarter in China, 2019 – mid-2021. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China.

The Chinese Cement Association (CCA) was lamenting falling cement prices at the start of July 2021. It blamed the situation on slowing infrastructure development in some regions, increasing government restrictions on real estate development, especially poor mid-year weather and higher input prices such as for steel. China Resources Cement (CRC) expanded upon the point about increasing real estate regulations in its financial results for the first half of 2021 explaining that the Chinese government has been promoting a policy that aims to ensure that “residential properties are not for speculation” including controls on the financing of real estate. Later in mid-August 2021 the CCA reported that prices were recovering in east and central-southern regions although the situation remained poor in Guizhou province with shipments down to 60% of normal levels. Production control measures are expected to be implemented to stabilise the situation.

Graph 2: Sales revenue of large Chinese cement producers in first half of year, 2019 – 2021. Source: Company reports.

On the corporate side the sales revenue from some of the large Chinese cement producers mostly show the usual gap-tooth pattern that coronavirus has created everywhere as the market recovered. Notably Anhui Conch managed to avoid falling sales year-on-year in the first half of 2020. However, the CCA’s observation above about rising input costs is visible in the falling profits of some (but not all) of the companies covered here. For example, Anhui Conch’s net profit fell by 7% year-on-year to US$2.32bn in the first half of 2021. It blamed this on a significant rise in the price of raw coal. CRC also reported falling profits attributable to increased production costs.

CNBM reported an increase to cement and clinker sales volumes of 7.6% to 177Mt and concrete sales volumes by 13.4% to 52Mm³. It noted that, “In the first half of 2021, the national cement market showed the characteristics of high price level fluctuation adjustment.” From January to April 2021 local fiscal policy boosted demand for cement but from May 2021 continuous heavy rainfall and increasing bulk commodity prices slowed infrastructure project development. Anhui Conch’s cement and clinker sales volumes for both production and trading grew by 11.5% to 208Mt. It reported stable market demand in eastern, central and southern regions but noted falling prices in the west.

Looking ahead, two issues, among many, to consider are carbon trading and imports. The former has been coming for a while and was launched formally online nationally in mid-July 2021 for the power generation industry. The carbon price was nearly Euro7/t in late July 2021 in China compared to around Euro53/t in the European Union. Cement and steel are expected to join the Chinese national scheme in the next phase although analysts believe that issues such as data gathering, permit allocation rules, accounting standards, sector reduction targets and related financial support all need to be improved before this can happen. Imports are a connected issue and it has been interesting in recent months to hear financial analysts point out the risks, for example, of major exporting nations such as Vietnam relying on China so much. The CCA reckons that China imported 33.4Mt of clinker in 2020, an increase of 47% year-on-year, with 60% of this derived from Vietnam. With the Chinese government trying to tackle cement production overcapacity and meet growing environmental targets, imports look set to become a ‘hot ticket’ issue. In this context it is telling to see talk from the CCA of ensuring standards for imports such as verified carbon emissions. Naturally, the imports that could be trusted the most will probably be the ones from plants that Chinese cement producers have built themselves overseas. As waste importers into China found out previously, relying heavily on one market with strong state controls carries considerable risks. Cement exporters in South-East Asia take note.

The latest piece of China-based Huaxin Cement’s global ambitions slotted into place this week with the news that it is preparing to buy plants in Zambia and Malawi. Its board of directors has approved plans to spend US$150m towards acquiring a 75% stake in Lafarge Zambia and US$10m on a 100% stake in Lafarge Cement Malawi. The move will gain it two integrated plants with a combined production capacity of 1.5Mt/yr in Zambia, and a 0.25Mt/yr grinding plant in Malawi.

This latest proposed acquisition represents the next step for Huaxin Cement in Africa following its purchase of African Tanzanian Maweni Limestone from ARM Cement in mid-2020. The company has also been busy along the more traditional Belt and Road Initiative land routes in Asia. It started up the kiln at its new 2Mt/yr Jizzakh cement plant in mid-2020. Elsewhere in Central Asia it runs two plants in Tajikistan and one plant in Kyrgyzstan via various indirectly-owned subsidiaries. While in South Asia it runs a plant in Nepal and in South-East Asia it runs one in Cambodia. If the plans in Zambia and Malawi pay off then it will give the Chinese producer a growing presence in East Africa, with plants in three countries.

The China Cement Association ranked Huaxin Cement as the country’s fifth largest clinker producer in 2021 with an integrated capacity base of just under 63Mt/yr. Domestically, the company operates 57 cement plants and most of these are based in the Yangtze River Economic Belt region. In 2020 it reported cement and clinker sales of 76Mt, a small decrease from 2019. Its operating income fell by 6.6% year-on-year to US$4.58bn and profit dropped by 12% to US$1.2bn. This performance was blamed on the emergence of Covid-19 at the start of 2020 and then floods later in the year.

Compared to the other larger Chinese cement producers, Huaxin Cement roughly appears to be holding rank with its overseas expansions. The leaders, CNBM and Anhui Conch, hold subsidiaries with plants in South-East and Central Asia and CNBM’s engineering wing, Sinoma, has a far bigger reach, building plants all over the place. Information has been scarce since mid-2020 on the long heralded 7Mt/yr plant in Tanzania due to be built by Sinoma and local subsidiary Hengya Cement. At that time local residents in Mtimbwani, Mkinga District were reportedly being compensated for their land. Other than this, one of the other big players internationally is Taiwan Cement. In 2018 it invested around US$1.1bn for a 40% stake in Turkey-based Oyak Cement. As well as a presence in Turkey this also gave it a share of plants in Portugal in 2019 when Oyak completed its acquisition of Cimpor.

Elsewhere this week, carrying some of the themes above with expansion in Central Asia, two new integrated cement plant projects were announced in Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan respectively. Meanwhile, Italcementi said it will invest Euro5.0m to restart clinker production at its Trentino cement plant in Sarche di Madruzzo, Italy. The unit has been operating as a grinding plant since 2015. This might be viewed as an unexpected decision considering the high local CO2 price but it shows some level of confidence in the local market by Italcementi and its parent company, HeidelbergCement. The next step will be when or if a European producer decides to build a brand new integrated plant in Italy or elsewhere.

China: Gao Dengbang has resigned as the chairman and an executive director of Anhui Conch. The company has proposed appointing Wang Cheng as an executive director subject to shareholder approval at the next annual general meeting.

Wang, aged 55 years, holds a postgraduate degree in economic management from the Central Party School. In March 2021 he joined Conch Holdings. He is currently the party secretary and chairman of Conch Holdings.

He started his career in 1983. Since 2003, he has held key senior positions in a number of provincial cities including deputy mayor and a member of the standing committee of the municipal committee of Huainan city, deputy secretary of the municipal committee and mayor of the municipal government of Bengbu city. Wang is currently a representative of the 13th National People’s Congress.

China: Anhui Conch’s consolidated net profit rose by 20% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020 to US$917m from US$763m. Its total operating income rose by 48% to US$5.31bn from US$3.58bn. The group attributed the rise in operating income to the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.