Displaying items by tag: Export

Vietnam: Three new integrated cement lines are expected to raise Vietnam’s total installed cement capacity by 8% to 115.4Mt/yr in 2022, from 106.6Mt/yr at the beginning of the year. VNDirect Securities has calculated that the upcoming lines – Dai Duong 1, Long Thanh and Xuan Thanh 3 – have a total capacity of 8.8Mt/yr. They are situated in Northern Vietnam’s Ha Nam Province and Central Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa Province, both of which already have cement overcapacity.

Viet Nam News has reported that Vietnam exported 4.31Mt of cement and clinker in April 2022, down by 7.6% month-on-month. The products’ total value was US$171m, down by 2.9% month-on-month.

Japan: Sumitomo Osaka Cement’s sales fell by 23% year-on-year to US$1.43bn in the financial year to the end of March 2022 from, US$1.85bn in same period in 2021. Its domestic sales volumes of cement grew slightly to 8.34Mt but exports sales volumes rose by 8.4% to 1.54Mt. Its operating income dropped by 59% to US$53.3m from US$129m. The company blamed its falling profits on rising input costs including energy prices such as a coal and oil.

Pakistan: Cement producers in Pakistan sold 44.3Mt of cement in the first 10 months of the 2022 Pakistani financial year, which runs from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022, down by 8.2% year-on-year from 48.3Mt in the corresponding period of 2021.Members of the All Pakistan Cement Producers Association (APCMA) record domestic deliveries of 39.5Mt, down by 1.8% from 40.2Mt, and exports of 4.8Mt, down by 40% from 8.02Mt.

The association said that political and economic uncertainty in March 2022 had stalled construction sector investments. It called on the government to help to increase sales and reduce the cost of cement production.

Uzbekistan: Kyrgyzstan-based Kant Cement has announced plans to open a sales office in Uzbekistan. Kant Cement is a subsidiary of United Cement Group and operates the Kant and AC cement plant in Kyrgyzstan’s Chüy Region.

Tajikistan: Data from the Agency for Statistics under the President of Tajikistan shows that cement production fell by 5.9% year-on-year to 0.97Mt in the first quarter of 2022 from 1.03Mt in the same period in 2021. The country produced over 4.2Mt of cement in 2021, according to Asia-Plus. However, in April 2022 the government set an export target of 2Mt/yr by 2024.

Nigeria: Dangote Cement sales volumes in the first quarter of 2022 have been hampered by disruptions to gas supplies domestically and by high freight rates restricting its exports of cement and clinker to Cameroon, Ghana and Sierra Leone. Its sales volumes of cement fell by 3.6% year-on-year to 7.25Mt in the first quarter of 2022 from 7.52Mt in the same period in 2021. Its revenue grew by 24% to US$994m from US$801m. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 18.6% to US$508m from US$428m.

Michael Pucheros, the chief executive officer of Dangote Cement, said “Our group volumes were down 3.6% mainly due to energy supply challenges in Nigeria. Our operations relying on cement and clinker imports – namely Ghana, Sierra-Leone, Cameroon - were impacted by the global supply chain challenges.” Additionally, its operations outside of Nigeria was also negatively affected by a cement plant in Congo being shut for over two months due to maintenance and repairs and extended power plant maintenance in Senegal.

Kenya: Bamburi Cement’s net profit was US$11.9m in 2021, up by 22% year-on-year from 2020. The company attributed the growth to increased domestic selling prices in Kenya, due to a higher proportion of premium products sales and targeted price actions in the retail segment.

Managing director Seddiq Hassani said that he envisages cement demand growth in Bamburi Cement’s markets in the rest of 2022, supported by a stable economic environment. He looked optimistically to possible export growth arising from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s admission into the East African Community (EAC) in March 2022. He further noted the impact of the Rwanda-Uganda border closure as a downside risk.

Cameroon: The government has enacted a ban on the export of cement, along with other commodities including oil and grain, from East Region. The Journal du Cameroun newspaper has reported that the impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have exacerbated a difficult supply situation of the basic commodities in the region, dating to the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak in the country in March 2020.

The East Region borders the Central African Republic and Congo. It has no cement plants of its own.

Tajikistan: The government plans to increase exports of cement to 2Mt/yr by 2024. Exports are expected to grow at 0.2Mt/yr from 1.5Mt in 2021. Local production capacity was estimated at 5.6Mt/yr in 2021 from 16 plants. Over 4.2Mt of cement was produced in 2021.

Indonesia: Donny Arsal, the chief executive officer of Semen Indonesia, has told the government that the ongoing war in Ukraine has negatively affected supplies of coal and kraft paper to the cement industry.

The head of the state-owned company said that the international price of coal had driven local mines to export it rather than sell it locally at capped prices, according to the Jakarta Post newspaper. This had made it more difficult for cement producers to buy coal at the lower price. The Indonesian coal index (HBA) price rose to high of US$288/t in April 2022 following the introduction of international economic sanctions but the local domestic market obligation (DMO) price is US$70/t. Around 160Mt of coal is sold at the capped price. The majority of this goes to power generation and the remaining quarter of this is made available to cement and other industries.

Arsal lobbied the government to clarify its supply policy for DMO. He said that the cement sector needs 16Mt/yr of coal. Semen Indonesia needs about half of this. However, at present, it is only receiving about 63% of its coal requirements at the DMO price.

Arsal also mentioned that imports of kraft paper from Russia had stopped since the war started. Semen Indonesia uses the paper to make cement bags. Most of its kraft is sourced from Russia. The company spends around US$68m/yr on paper. It is now switching to using a woven material instead.