Displaying items by tag: Export
Update on Spain, February 2022
09 February 2022The data on cement consumption for 2021 in Spain is out this week and it looks promising. As the national cement association Oficemen explained, last year was the sector’s best for over a decade, nearly reaching 15Mt consumption and exceeding the figure in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic started. Oficemen also singled out particular strong performance in December 2021. It now expects this growth trend to continue into 2022 with a forecast of 5% to 15.6Mt predicted based on both domestic and infrastructure segments.
Graph 1: Cement consumption in Spain, 2012 – 2021. Source: Oficemen.
The Spanish cement industry reached a peak consumption of over 50Mt in the late 2000s before hitting a near-50 year low in the 2010s in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The market then started to recover in the second half of the 2010s until Covid-19 came along. A report on the Spanish cement market to the start of 2021 that lays out the situation can be found in the February 2021 issue of Global Cement Magazine. The larger news stories since then have been Votorantim Cimentos’ growth in the market through its acquisitions of FYM and Cementos Balboa, and Çimsa Çimento’s final completion of its deal to buy the Buñol white cement plant from Cemex. Each of these stories involve an integrated cement plant changing ownership.
Looking back at Oficemen’s summary describing 2012 depicts a much different dwindling market. However, one commonality it shares with the association’s roundup for 2021 is that it complains about the country’s disadvantage in electricity costs compared to its neighbours. Back in 2012 this was framed as holding back exports. As Oficemen noted at the time it exported 5.9Mt of cement in 2012, less than half the 13Mt it exported in 1983. Jump forward to 2021 and exports are now 6.8Mt. Energy is still a key issue though. Now Oficemen’s president, José Manuel Cascajero Rodríguez, says that the sector’s production costs have increased by 25% since the latest round of electricity price rises began. He then compares the cost of energy intensive industry in Spain unfavourably against France and Germany and calls for a structural change in the Spanish electricity market to make prices more predictable. Cement producers elsewhere in Europe and beyond may share Oficemen’s concerns regard unpredictable energy prices over the last six months but electricity has been a particular issue for Spain for a long time. To take one recent local example, in November 2021 Cementos Cosmos said it was planning to scale down the production of clinker at its Córdoba cement plant as a result of the high cost of electricity.
The other issue that gets raised in Oficemen’s 2021 summary is competition from cement importers outside the European Union (EU) and the necessity of a border carbon adjustment mechanism (CBAM) to take in account carbon taxation for producers within Europe. To jump back a bit, back in May 2021 the EU Emissions trading Scheme (ETS) reached Euro50/t. Then in December 2021 Cembureau, the European cement association, published a calculation predicting that if the EU ETS CO2 cost made it to Euro90/t then this could represent 12 - 15% of the production costs of cement producers. Well, as readers will have guessed, the EU ETS beat Euro90/t on 2 February 2022 and then rose to Euro96.7/t on 7 February 2022. Answers in an email for when readers think the EU ETS price will top Euro100/t.
All of the above feeds neatly into the week’s other big Spanish news story: Cemex and Synhelion have successfully produced clinker from concentrated solar radiation at a pilot unit at the Very High Concentration Solar Tower of IMDEA Energy near Madrid. It’s early days yet as the process needs to be scaled up but, make no mistake, this is a big story. An interview with the team behind Cemex and Synhelion’s solar concentration project can be found in the December 2020 issue of Global Cement Magazine for more information. The SOLPART (Solar-Heated Reactors for Industrials Production of Reactive Particulates) project in France did similar research a few years ago but it didn’t reach the 1500°C target required to reach the sintering phase where clumps of clinker form. US-based Heliogen has been trying to industrialise concentrated solar energy but not much has been heard about its cement-industry ambitions since it said it reached temperatures of about 1000°C in 2019.
The relevance of an eventual full-scale concentrated solar unit for the entire production line or just the preheater and/or calciner at a cement plant in Spain makes considerable sense. At a stroke energy costs are reduced, diverted to a renewable source and any desired CO2 capture becomes, in theory, easier and cheaper. Cemex said in the interview with Global Cement Magazine that the tentative next step would be a pilot unit at a cement plant, although, candidate plants could be in the US or Mexico, as well as Spain. Another side of the drive to cut energy and carbon costs can also be seen in a couple of photovoltaic solar projects supplying cement plants that were announced in 2021 for Spanish plants run by Cemex and Cementos Cosmos.
We leave the Spanish cement sector in a growth phase but with plenty of challenges ahead, not least from electricity costs and the mounting cost of carbon. Yet in common with other countries in Europe the industry faces a high-wire balancing act between staying economically viable and inching towards net zero. It’s conceivable that an industrial scale concentrated solar unit at a cement plant in Spain by 2030 might steady the wobbles along the way.
Algeria exports 5Mt of cement in 2021
02 February 2022Algeria: Ali Bey Nasri, the president of the National Association Algerian Exporters, says that his country exported 5Mt of cement in 2021 with a value of US$200m. Local cement production exceeded 40Mt in 2021 and a rise in exports is expected in 2022, according to the Horizon newspaper. Groupe des Ciments d'Algérie (GICA) operates half of the country’s cement production plants.
Cement exports resume from the Port of Malaga
25 January 2022Spain: Bulk cement exports have resumed from the Port of Malaga for the first time since September 2021. The Panamanian-flagged Grit Cement II docked at the port in mid-January 2022 to collect a consignment of 8000t, according to Málaga Hoy. Trade in cement from the port stopped in the autumn of 2021 when HeildebergCement sold the Southern Spain business of its FYM subsidiary to Brazil-based Votorantim Cimentos. Prior to the reopening, ships from the port exported cement to the Port of Banjul in Gambia.
Saudi cement output remains stable in 2021
24 January 2022Saudi Arabia: Cement output rose slightly to 53.7Mt in 2021 from 534Mt in 2021. Clinker output increased by 12% year-on-year to 55.1Mt from 49.2Mt. Cement exports fell by 32% to 1.44Mt from 2.13Mt but clinker exports grew by 50% to 6.73Mt from 4.50Mt. Saudi Cement remained the country’s largest clinker export but exports from Yanbu Cement and Arabian Cement grew sharply.
Peruvian cement production grows by 41% to 12.9Mt in 2021
24 January 2022Peru: Cement production grew by 41% year-on-year to 12.9Mt in 2021 from 9.14Mt in 2020. Data from the Association of Cement Producers (ASOCEM) shows that cement and clinker exports increased by 43% to 205,000t and by 128% to 707,000t respectively. Cement and clinker imports rose by 23% to 884,000t and 131% to 1.55Mt respectively. In December 2021 94% of cement imports came from Vietnam and the majority of clinker imports came from South Korea. ASOCEM added that the recovery of local cement despatch levels from July 2020 was a sign that the market had recovered after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Argentine cement despatches rise by 23% to 12.1Mt in 2021
24 January 2022Argentina: Data from the Association of Portland Cement Manufacturers (AFCP) shows that total cement despatches grew by 23% year-on-year to 12.1Mt in 2021 from 9.87Mt in 2020. Cement consumption rose at a similar rate to despatches. However, exports fell by 13% to 115,000t in 2021 from 132,000t in 2020. Annual cement despatches have previously fallen in consecutive years since 2018. This trend started to change in the autumn of 2021.
Cementos Argos invests US$42m on new terminal in Cartagena
24 December 2021Colombia: Cementos Argos has invested around US$42m on a new terminal in the free trade zone of Cartagena. It is expanding its port infrastructure and tripling the import-export capacity of the site to 3.5Mt/yr. The new terminal, which adds to Argos' existing port facility, from which it exports cement and clinker to the US and other destinations in the Caribbean and Central America, will begin operations in the first quarter of 2022. An official ceremony marking the opening of the terminal will be held in January 2022.
"This new terminal will allow us to substantially increase cement exports to the US, taking advantage of the growing demand for construction materials in that country," said Juan Esteban Calle, the chief executive officer of Cementos Argos.
Vietnam: Vietcombank Securities Company (VCBS) has forecast a 16% year-on-year rise in Vietnam’s cement and clinker exports to 44.5Mt from 38.4Mt. 22.3Mt (50%) of the 2021 exports will be to China. Viet Nam News has reported that VCBS forecast a drop in Vietnam’s cement and clinker exports to China in 2022 due to a Chinese property market slowdown. From 2023, the Vietnam government plans to raise its clinker export tariff to 10% from 5%.
China produces 1.96Bnt of cement in first 10 months of 2021
30 November 2021China: China has increased its production of cement by 2.1% year-on-year to 1.97Bnt in the first 10 months of 2021. Xinhua’s China Economic Information Service has reported that the country exported US$19.6bn-worth of building materials over the period, up by 13%, while its domestic construction market grew by 11%.
Venezuela to export cement to Caribbean countries from 2022
15 November 2021Venezuela: Corporacion Socialista del Cemento plans to begin to export cement to countries in the Caribbean from the beginning of 2022. The El Universal newspaper has reported that the company’s plant is in the process of increasing its production of cement and clinker for the start of exports. In the first 10 months of 2021, it more than doubled its production and more than tripled its sales volumes.
President Pietro Acosta said "We are contributing to the growth of a new free, non-oil, diversified economy.” He added “We will still continue to serve the national market."