Displaying items by tag: Egypt

Israel/ Palestine: Israel has reportedly asked Egypt to block imports of cement and other building materials into Gaza, according to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation. The move is intended to stop militant groups in the territory using the materials. It follows a ceasefire between the Israeli government and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in late May 2021 after nearly two weeks of fighting. So far, cement and other building materials have been entering Gaza unimpeded via Egypt.

Egypt: Suez Cement, part of Germany-based HeidelbergCement, has begun its first round of staff inoculations against Covid-19 at its plants and offices. Government medical staff supervised the sessions, which the company said were well attended.

Human resources director Sherry Bishara said, "I am pleased to take this opportunity to thank the Ministry of Health and Suez governorate Preventive Medicine Directorate for their collaboration in providing the vaccine and medical staff needed for administering the vaccine for staff and also to thank the group's medical service for facilitating the campaign.”

Reporting from Egypt this week suggests that the government may be finally taking action to aid the country’s beleaguered cement sector. Sources quoted by Reuters indicate that a production cut of at least 14% has been proposed. One of the cement industry sources broke it down into a 10.5% baseline reduction with a further 3.7% reduction per production line at a cement plant with an additional cut of 0.7% per year of operation. The Ministry of Trade and Industry has declined to comment on the story.

Graph 1: Cement production and capacity utilisation in Egypt. Source: Cement Division of the Building Materials Chamber of the Federation of Egyptian Industries.

Graph 1 above shows the key problem facing the sector: cement production has fallen each year since 2016. Added to this, local capacity utilisation took a knock when the 13Mt/yr government/army-run El-Arish Cement plant at Beni Suef opened in 2018. Before it opened the natural utilisation rate was around 80%. By 2020 it had sunk to 60%.

The coronavirus pandemic was another problem that the building materials market didn’t need and the last time this column covered Egypt (GCW 475), HeidelbergCement was restructuring its local subsidiaries in the country. Most producers were holding on for better days in the future but hoping for some form of government intervention such as production limits or an export subsidy programme. Meanwhile, analysts have been waiting for divestments. However, the prospect of the situation becoming worse was also present, in the guise of the Egyptian Cement Group’s new integrated 2Mt/yr plant, scheduled to open at Sohag later in 2021. Since then there’s not been much of a change until now.

Some very rough calculations by Global Cement suggest that the alleged government measures could have created an artificial utilisation rate of 78% in 2020 before the age of the plants was taken into account. For example, the El-Arish Cement plant with its six production lines would potentially see its production cut by around 33% and capped at 8.7Mt/yr. In theory a measure like this could better share out the market between the smaller producers or those with less market share. However, how this would play out with actual plant running costs or existing market share is unknown, although, as mentioned above, some of the multinational producers have been publicly calling out for these kinds of controls.

Playing around with the proposed caps could potentially create some absurd situations. For example, if a single line plant had been running for over 120 years (!) then it wouldn’t be allowed to produce any cement at all. It is lucky then that the earliest plant in the country opened in 1911 and it’s likely long gone. It’s a silly example, but the point is, if production limits do come in, there are likely to be winners and losers. The question for the local producers then is whether a system like this would be better than the current situation.

Egypt: The Egyptian government has reportedly proposed that cement companies cap production by at least 14%. Multiple sources quoted by Reuters reveal that a formula was discussed in April 2021 proposing that cement plants cut production by a base amount of 10.5%. An additional cut of 3.7% would then be made for each production line a plant has and another 0.65% for each year they have been in operation. However, it is unclear how the age of a plant or production line would be determined. The Ministry of Trade and Industry has not commented on the story.

The measures have been suggested in order to help the sector cope with falling consumption and production overcapacity. Cement sales fell by 5% year-on-year to 41.7Mt in 2020 from 43.8Mt in 2019. However, two of the cement executives quoted said that the proposed cuts seemed unfair on multinational companies like their own that had older plants.

A great question was asked at yesterday’s Virtual Global CemTrans Seminar: what impact did the recent blockage of the Suez Canal cause to the cement industry? Luckily, Rahul Sharan from Drewry was on hand discussing freight costs following the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

As most readers will know, the Suez Canal was blocked in late March 2021 when the 200,000dwt Ever Given ran aground, at around six nautical miles from the southern entry of the canal. The ultra large container vessel was subsequently refloated and towed away just under a week later. While this was happening the fate of the ship became a global news story with business analysts totting up the cost of the obstruction. 40 bulk carriers were reported as waiting to transit the waterway the day after the blockage started and some of these were carrying cement. Reporting by the BBC noted that 369 ships were stuck waiting on either side of the blockage on the day before the ship was finally freed. The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) estimated their loss of revenue from the incident at US$14 – 15m/day. Analysts like Allianz placed the cost to the global economy at US$6 - 10bn/day.

In Sharan’s view the blockage of the Suez Canal happened at a potentially risky moment for cement and clinker shipping because there was already congestion in shipping lanes built up on the east coast of South America and around Australia. However, a delay of a week around the canal, followed by the resulting congestion dispersing quickly over the following days, does not seem to have had any major impact so far.

Sharan’s presentation at Global CemTrans also included a summary of cement shipping. The key takeaways were that clinker shipping overtook cement shipping in 2019 with a connected increase in fleets investing in handymax-sized vessels. He also pointed out the key cement and clinker importing countries in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic started causing market disruption. For cement: the US, the Philippines and Singapore. For clinker: China, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Turkey and Vietnam were the biggest exporters for both in that year.

The Ever Given incident has highlighted the continued importance of the Suez Canal for global trade for commodities. Goods still need to be physically moved around, however much stuff we digitise. It also contrasts with the issues that the Egyptian cement sector has faced in recent years such as production overcapacity. While domestic cement plants have struggled to maintain their profits, plenty of cement carriers have been transiting through the Isthmus of Suez. Local producers may well have gazed at them and wondered where they were going.

One of them, Al-Arish Cement Company, took action in this direction this week with its first export shipment of clinker. The Clipper Isadora ship disembarked East Port Said port for Ivory Coast. Future shipments are planned for West Africa, Canada, the US and Europe. Ship tracking reveals that the Clipper Isadora has not taken the Suez Canal on this occasion.

The proceedings pack for the Virtual CemTrans Seminar 2 2021 is available to buy now

Egypt: Sinai Cement’s consolidated net loss before minority interests was US$35.6m in 2020. The figure represents an increase of 26% year-on-year from US$28.3m in 2019, according to Mubasher.

Egypt: South Valley Cement’s full-year sales in 2020 were US$22.3m, down by 20% year-on-year from US$28.0m. Loss also fell by 20%, to US$16.0m from US$20.1m in the 2020 financial year, according to Mubasher.

Egypt: Developer Mountain View has awarded a 300,000m³ concrete supply contract to Lafarge Egypt, part of Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim. Mountain View will use the concrete to build its Mountain View iCity in East Cairo. The investment in the project totals US$12.7m.

The producer has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Egyptian National Research Centre to undertake initiatives aimed at enhancing construction.

Greece: Titan Cement’s consolidated earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by 7% year-on-year to Euro286m from Euro267m in 2019. Sales remained level year-on-year at Euro1.61bn and net profit after taxes and minorities (NPAT) fell by 97% to Euro1.50m from Euro50.9m. The group attributed the profit slump to one-off charges, namely the full write-off of the Euro46.6m goodwill of subsidiary Titan Cement Egypt and the derecognition of Euro17.3m of accumulated deferred Egyptian tax assets. If not for these, the group says its consolidated NPAT would have increased by 28% to Euro65.4m.

Cement sales were 17.1Mt, up by 1% from 17.0Mt. The group called the impacts of the coronavirus outbreak ‘less severe than expected.’ Ready-mixed concrete sales rose by 3% to 5.4Mm³ from 5.2Mm³.

Construction activity continued under coronavirus lockdown in most of the group’s countries of operation. As a result, sales remained resilient across all markets. US sales fell by 2% to Euro938m from Euro952m due to negative currency exchange effects. Greece and Western Europe sales rose by 1% to Euro247m from Euro245m. Southeastern Europe sales rose by 3% to Euro938m from Euro952m and Eastern Mediterranean sales rose by 1% to Euro152m from Euro150m.

Group executive committee chair Dimitri Papalexopoulos said “In 2020, we delivered strong financial performance while taking care of our employees and those around us, ensuring high-quality, uninterrupted customer service and accelerating progress towards our digital and sustainability aspirations. In the face of uncertainty caused by Covid-19, we remained confident in our business model. We adapted to shifting market conditions and continued to pursue operational excellence while laying the groundwork to capture future growth.” The group anticipates a positive market trend in all regions in 2021.

Egypt: Arab Swiss Engineering Company (ASEC) has launched legal action against Misr Beni Suef Cement. The latter terminated the supplier’s technical management contract in mid-February 2021. Arab Finance has reported that the producer alleges that ASEC breached its commitments regarding its Beni Suef cement plant’s production capacity.