Displaying items by tag: China

China/Russia: Jinyu Jidong Cement has despatched its first batch of cement products to Russia, following final quality inspection and packaging. The company, part of the Jinyu Group, aims to strengthen Sino-Russian Far East cooperation and expand into international markets. According to local press, it has passed the Russian GOST certification audit, becoming one of the first cement producers in Heilongjiang Province to be approved for the export of building materials to Russia.

China: West China Cement will sell Yili Yaobai Cement, Huocheng County Nangang Xixin Mining Industry and Xinjiang Baihang Environmental Protection Technology to Anhui Conch Cement and Conch (Shaanxi) for US$55m via its subsidiary Yaobai Special Cement Group, according to MT Newswires. It will also divest three additional assets for US$22.5m, US$128m and US$23.7m under separate agreements. The sales remain subject to board approval and other conditions.

China: NovaAlgoma Cement Carriers (NACC) has placed another order for a HeatPower 300 waste heat recovery system from Climeon on a second cement carrier, to be built at Zhejiang Xinle Shipbuilding Co. and delivered in 2027.

The 38,000t vessel will run exclusively on green methanol and is expected to cut CO₂ emissions by over 60% compared to conventional vessels, reportedly avoiding around 180,000t of CO₂ emissions over 10 years. The HeatPower 300 will generate up to 300kW of carbon-free electricity from engine cooling water and exhaust gases.

Najmat Al Samawa Cement (NAS Cement) in Iraq announced this week that its second production line was successfully fired up on 13 May 2025. The new 5500t/day line was formally announced in May 2023. It joins the existing line at the site and should bring the plant’s total production capacity to around 3Mt/yr. The plant is a joint-venture between Pakistan-based Lucky Cement Limited and the Al Shumookh Company in Dubai and its representatives in Iraq.

Global Cement Magazine interviewed Intezar Ahmad, the Director of Operations at NAS Cement, in the November 2024 issue. He explained that China-based TCDRI was the main contractor for both the original and new lines. Equipment for Line 2 was also supplied by Fives Pillard, Loesche and IKN. Commissioning was scheduled for the second quarter of 2025. This, nicely, appears to be spot on. Lucky Cement added in its statement about the new line this week that it is also building a new 0.65Mt/yr cement grinding mill at the plant. This addition is expected to be commissioned during the second half of the 2025 calendar year. Lucky Cement also operates a cement grinding plant, under a joint-venture, in Basra.

The expansion at NAS Cement is by no means the only one as there have been a number of project announcements over the last three months. Germany-based Gebr. Pfeiffer revealed in late-March 2025 that it had won an order to supply a vertical roller mill for the Al Amir cement plant in Najaf. This contract was awarded through the China-based contractor Sinoma Suzhou. Commissioning is planned for the second half of 2026. Then, one month later in April 2025, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani made a statement launching ‘implementation works’ at four cement plants in Al-Muthanna Province. This included the 6000t/day Al-Arabi Cement Plant, the 6000t/day Al-Khairat Al-Muthanna Cement Plant, the 6600t/day Al-Samawa Cement Plant and the 6000t/day Al-Etihad Cement Plant. Al-Sudani also mentioned the start of commercial operations at NAS Cement’s second line. Subsequently, IVI Holding signed a US$240m deal with Sinoma Overseas in mid-May 2025 to build a 6000t/day plant in Al-Muthanna Province. Presumably, this is one of the projects that the government highlighted. Finally, the Kurdistan Region prime minister Masrour Barzani inaugurated the 6300t/day Dabin cement plant at around the same time. This last project was built by PowerChina together with a power station.

The Iraqi economy has been doing well in recent years. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported in May 2025 that the non-oil sector experienced “very strong growth” of 13.8% in 2023. This slowed down to 2.5% in 2024 due to a slowdown in public investment and in the services sector, and a weaker trade balance. However, the IMF noted that the agriculture, manufacturing, and construction sectors had remained resilient. Non-oil sector growth is forecast to remain subdued in 2025 amid a “...challenging global environment and financing constraints.” In its coverage of the new line at NAS Cement, Pakistan Today reported that the country has a notional cement production capacity of around 40Mt/yr but that many of the older plants have suffered from under-investment. Accordingly, the domestic market is around 25Mt/yr supported by state-funded housing projects, oil-field infrastructure schemes and reconstruction in Mosul. 3 - 4Mt of this is supplied via imports from Iran and Türkiye. The newspaper also noted the risk that all these new cement plant projects may face from variable gas supplies from the government. NAS Cement, for example, switched from heavy fuel oil (HFO) to gas in 2022.

Cement sector capacity expansion is coming in Iraq following a revived local economy. Risks abound though due to the country’s economic outlook, its dependence on oil and an geopolitical uncertainty. Yet money is being spent and new projects are starting to be commissioned. Onwards!

China: The China Cement Association has elected Zhou Yuxian as its president following a meeting of its representatives.

Zhou has been the chair of China National Building Materials Group (CNBM) since 2021. Earlier in his career he worked for China Reform Holdings, Sinoma, China National Materials Science and Industry Group, China Non-Metal Research Institute of Synthetic Crystals and the Synthetic Crystals Research Institute. He has held leadership positions at several trade associations, including the China Association of Construction Enterprise Management, and is also a visiting practicing professor at the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Central South Mining and Metallurgy College and a master’s degree of engineering from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Wuhan University of Technology.

Anhui Conch Cement held an event in Wuhu, China, this week showcasing its new artificial intelligence (AI) model for the cement sector. The cement company and Huawei started the project in April 2024 with the support of the China Building Materials Federation. The companies say they have now identified over 200 “promising AI application scenarios across 15 categories” across the entire production process from quarrying to packaging and logistics. Conch has set up an AI training centre using the Huawei Cloud Stack product. It is using Huawei’s Pangu prediction, computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP) models to create an AI operating system that integrates central training, edge inference, cloud-edge synergy, continuous learning and ongoing optimisation.

Thankfully Huawei gave some examples of what this actually meant for operators in the real world. The model is able to give real-time recommendations of key quality features enabling the prediction of three-day and 28-day clinker strength. The predicted strength values closely match test results, with deviations within 1MPa and an accuracy rate exceeding 85%. Other benefits include reducing kiln fuel consumption by 1%, monitoring and managing various components and machines along the production line, staff safety gains and creating a ‘smart digital assistant’ that can answer technical questions from employees.

Little of this seems particularly novel, so far, compared to what other companies are already doing in this field. For example, ABB said in early 2022 that it was using machine learning to predict 28-day strength on the day of sampling and in 2023 that it was doing it using production data provided every two - three hours. Another example is the work that Inform does using AI-based software to support logistics for heavy building materials. Plenty of other western-based companies also offer production optimisation and/or predictive maintenance products.

Conch’s use of an NLP model to create a knowledge base assistant does seem new for the cement sector. Although how specific the software running it might be to one business or industrial area remains to be seen. One could easily imagine this kind of product being sold to lots of different kinds of industries in the manner of current enterprise style software. Along these lines though, Juan Beltrán, digital manager of global sales excellence at Holcim, told McKinsey in an interview about Holcim’s pilot project in Spain testing an AI-enabled copilot customer-ordering assistant via WhatsApp.

Recent events in AI for the cement sector include ABB’s agreement to work with UK-based Carbon Re in late 2024. This collaboration was intended to combine ABB's expertise in automation and process control with Carbon Re's AI and machine learning technologies. It followed a pilot at a cement plant in the Czech Republic. On the producer side, Holcim said in mid-2024 that it was preparing to expand the use of AI-based software to 100 production plants by 2028. It noted that it had installed the system at 45 plants so far at the time of this announcement and that it was using a predictive maintenance solution from software supplier C3 AI. Titan Cement said that it had invested in Spain-based AI software supplier Optimitive in February 2025. Then, Cemex announced this week that it too had invested in Optimitive, via its corporate venture capital arm Cemex Ventures. Molins has also worked with Optimitive.

What isn't being disclosed much are the examples of the mistakes of introducing AI into cement production. These are valuable learning opportunities for any company implementing this kind of software. However, the developers and cement producers are extremely unlikely to admit anything publicly. Global Cement Weekly has heard off-the-record information previously about AI projects at cement plants that have gone wrong but we can’t reveal it either. To his credit though Beltrán mentions an incident, in his interview with McKinsey, where the WhatsApp ordering assistant was tricked during testing into almost placing an order for a truck of gazpacho soup!

We’re still watching how AI is being deployed in heavy industries such as cement. The announcement by Conch is exactly the kind of thing its peers are doing around the world. So far what they’ve done is impressive but not unique. Yet, China’s large but shrinking cement sector and its determination to develop its own AI-based software sector may start to deliver more cutting-edge advances in the future. Companies elsewhere are also pressing ahead to find out how AI products will deliver efficiency gains.

China: According to China Cement Net, Chongqing Tongliang Southwest Cement has inaugurated a 7300t/day (2.25Mt/yr) clinker production line. The company previously operated a 2500t/day (0.75Mt/yr) and a 4800t/day (1.55Mt/yr) clinker line, which will be relocated.

China: The China Building Materials Federation, Conch Group and Huawei have partnered to showcase their AI model for the cement industry. Conch Group and Huawei began constructing the model in April 2024 with federation support. Since then, they have identified over 200 AI application scenarios across 15 categories spanning the entire production process, from mining to shipment. The model can reportedly predict the strength of clinker with an 85% accuracy rate and can allow for a reduction in coal consumption.

Sectoral adjustment continued for the cement industry in China in 2024. Now that the financial results from many of the larger China-based cement producers are out it gives Global Cement Weekly a chance to review the world’s biggest cement market. The decline in national output of cement accelerated in 2024 and the results showed this. CNBM summed up the situation as follows: “In 2024, affected by the reduction of real estate investment and the slowdown of infrastructure projects, the cement industry in China was caught in a situation of insufficient demand and aggravated overcapacity.” Output dropped by just under 10% year-on-year to 1.83Bnt in 2024 according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS). This is the fourth consecutive annual decline and the lowest figure the sector has experienced since around 2010.

Graph 1: Cement output in China, 2018 to 2024. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China.

The China Cement Association’s (CCA) assessment concurred with CNBM. Although it detected a slowing in the decline in the second half of 2024, especially in the fourth quarter. It noted that the country has a production capacity of 1.81Bnt/yr and an estimated clinker utilisation rate of 53% in 2024. Note the large apparent difference this may suggest between the NBS and CCA figures. Data from the NBS for the first quarter of 2025 has shown a slowing of the decline. Output was 331Mt, a fall of just 1.7% year-on-year from the same period in 2023. The CCA’s prediction for 2025 is that cement demand will fall by 5% as the real estate market continues to deflate. However, it expects government-led capacity reduction schemes to start making progress.

Graph 2: Sales revenue from selected Chinese cement producers. Source: Company financial reports.

Graph 3: Sales volumes of cement and clinker from selected Chinese cement producers. Source: Company financial reports.

CNBM’s sales revenue fell by 14% to US$24.8bn in 2024. Sales of its Basic Building Materials segment fell by 23% to US$12.5bn. This was blamed on falling volumes and prices of cement and other heavy building materials. Sales from the group’s two other segments - New Materials and Engineering Technology Services - rose modestly but this wasn’t enough to hold up total group sales. Operating profit from the Basic Building Materials segment decreased by 45% to US$544m. It was a similar picture at Anhui Conch with sales revenue and net profit down by 36% to US$12.4bn and by 25% to US$1.01bn respectively. Notably, CNBM’s sales volumes of cement decreased by 21% to 245Mt in 2024 compared to a decrease of 6.5% to 268Mt by Anhui Conch. This made Anhui Conch the world’s biggest cement company by sales volumes in 2024.

Tangshan Jidong Cement and China Resources Building Materials Technology (CRBMT) both reported a similar situation. Revenue was down and a net loss was reported by the former. Both revenue and net profit were down for the latter. CRBMT said that its cement capacity utilisation rate was 69% in 2024, down from 71% in 2023. This appears to be significantly higher than the national rate mentioned above by the CCA but the company’s regional distribution may be at play here.

Following from recent years, Huaxin Cement bucked the general market trend and its revenue rose modestly to US$4.7bn in 2024. Its net profit still fell by 12.5% to US$330m. Its overseas businesses made the difference. It reported an increase of 37% to 16.2Mt in overseas cement sales with its non-China cement production capacity rising by 8% to 22.5Mt/yr. Milestones include various new or upgraded plant projects in Sub-Saharan Africa capped off by its announcement at the end of 2024 that it was preparing to buy Lafarge Africa. Other cement companies were also keen to promote overseas activity. CNBM said that the first signing of overseas merger and acquisition was achieved in 2024. This is likely to be the purchase of the Djebel El Oust cement plant in Tunisia from Votorantim Cimentos that was completed in late March 2025. Tangshan Jidong Cement acquired the remaining 40% share in South Africa-based Mamba Cement in April 2024.

All of this leaves the cement sector in China still waiting for the market to stabilise. US tariffs seem unlikely to have an effect in any meaningful way unless the general economy is altered. The declining real estate sector and cement production overcapacity are the main drivers at the national level. The CCA expects the real estate market to continue to fall in 2025 although it hopes that government remedy measures will start to show an effect. It is more optimistic about capacity reduction plans. One route towards this is through merger and acquisition activity. In a recent response to investors about industry integration, Huaxin Cement speculated that the sector might consolidate down to 30 companies from around 300 at present. There is clearly still a way to go.

Tunisia: Sinoma Cement has held a ceremony marking its acquisition of the Djebel El Oust cement plant. Karim Brinji (Governor of Zaghouan), Wan Li (China’s Ambassador to Tunisia), Jalel Tabib (Director general of Foreign Investment Promotion Agency) and representatives of the company all attended the event, according to La Presse de Tunisie newspaper. The China-based company acquired a share worth US$140m in the plant from Votorantim Cimentos at the start of April 2025. It also plans to upgrade the plant.