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Zimbabwe: According to Southern Eye, PPC Zimbabwe's cement exports in the first half of its 2015 fiscal year, which ended on 31 March 2015, took a knock due to the weakening of the South African Rand against the US Dollar.

PPC said that exports from its Zimbabwe operations accounted for only 10% of cement sales volumes, although local sales were encouraging. It said that cement volumes in Zimbabwe grew by 9% in the first half of its 2015 fiscal year due to new marketing strategies implemented during the period.

PPC Zimbabwe's managing director Njombo Lekula confirmed that exports had fallen. "In terms of business, we are doing fairly very well, but there has been a bit of a slowdown from last year. However, performance internally in the country is still very good and that is something we can be happy with," said Lekula. "Obviously, on exports it wasn't great, partly because of the strengthening of the US Dollar and capacity in other surrounding areas. To export has been a bit difficult this year. Looking forward, we think the second half of the year will be very good as usual. We normally do very well in the last three months of our financial year, which ends in September 2015. I'm quite happy with the PPC Zimbabwe performance at this point in time."

PPC Zimbabwe is constructing a US$75m, 680,000t/yr capacity cement plant in Harare. The plant is expected to start production in the middle of 2016. The group recently unveiled an adjustment to its brand name for Zimbabwe and is now trading as PPC Zimbabwe.

Slovenia: According to the Slovenian Press Agency, on 24 June 2015 the government adopted a proposal for changes to the environment protection act that remedies shortcomings in provisions governing environmental permits. The problems with the existing legislation had led to the European Commission (EC) taking Slovenia to the EU Court of Justice.

The government said that the key purpose of the amendments was meeting the demands of the EC and that all plants without environmental permits at the time when the changes enter into force will need to stop operations. The step is related to the Lafarge cement plant in Trbovlje, which was instructed to stop operations in March 2015 after lax legislative provisions allowed it to continue to operate for a protracted period even though it did not have an environmental permit.

The EC announced in February 2015 that it was taking Slovenia to the EU Court of Justice for its failure to implement environmental licensing in line with the integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) directive of 2007. The EC said that the legal action came because one of the country's major cement producers had continued to operate without the required permit, in reference to Lafarge. The EC was seeking a base fine of Euro1.6m for the country plus Euro9009 for each day that the violation persisted.

Philippines: According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, on 24 June 2015 the Pasig City government brought online what it described as, 'The country's largest facility for turning rubbish into fuel, capable of processing 600t/day of trash.'

The plant, which is Pasig City's joint project with the IPM Construction & Development Corp (IPM) and the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA), can process almost all of the city's daily waste production into refuse-derived fuel (RDF). Pasig City mayor Maribel Eusebio said that the plant would produce fuel pellets from the waste, which would then be supplied as an alternative fuel to cement plants. The RDF is majority-owned by Basic Environmental Systems & Technologies (BEST), a subsidiary of publicly-listed Minerales Industrias Corp, as well as France-based Lafarge Industrial Ecology International.

The plant mechanically segregates waste, selecting garbage with high thermal value that will be shredded, made into pellets and wrapped into bales. The plant is expected to convert 25 – 35% of the processed waste into alternative fuel for cement kilns. "The plant addresses serious concerns on increasing municipal solid waste and disposal," said Eusebio. "The RDF plant also complies with the waste diversion requirement of Republic Act No 9003 or Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. It also addresses climate change issues associated with how municipal wastes are managed."

The use of RDF in lieu of coal addresses the twin issues of solid waste management and climate change. "This is the largest RDF plant in the Philippines to date," said Isabelita P Mercado, president of IPM, which operates and manages the plant. "This is also a pioneering endeavour to save the environment by reducing our dependence on fossil fuel."

Indonesia: According to the Jakarta Post, Semen Indonesia has lowered its prices by around 10% so far in 2015 to compete with rivals amid an economic slowdown that has seen a decline in the construction sector. With an increase in competition in the local market, Semen Indonesia had hoped that its exports would boost its revenues, according to company marketing director Amat Pria Darma.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo instructed state-owned cement producers to lower their prices in January 2015 to support the government's massive infrastructure projects. However, Darma added that state-run cement producers had to lower their prices further later in 2015 to cope with tighter competition and lacklustre demand. "A number of new plants have started operating and new supplies are coming in. We have to lower our prices to keep up with the market with overall plunging domestic demand," said Darma.

Semen Indonesia saw its domestic sales volumes fall by 5.3% in January – May 2015 to 9.91Mt, even steeper than the national decline in cement demand of around 3.8%. In May 2015 alone, the company's domestic sales fell by around 14%.

While cement demand has contracted since the start of 2015 on the back of the slowing economy, several cement producers have seen additional production from newly operating plants. New players have also entered the market, such as Semen Merah Putih. Semen Indonesia saw its market share in the country slip from 44% in 2015 to 43% in 2015. Darma said that he was pessimistic that Semen Indonesia could achieve its target of seeing sales volume up by around 6% in 2015, or even maintain it at the same position as 2014. The company will instead look to export markets as a strategy to cope with the domestic slowdown.

Semen Indonesia's exports rose by more than eight times from 22,155t in the first five months of 2014, to 184,181t in the same period of 2015. According to Agung Wiharto, the surges were not particularly good news as with high transportation costs, cement makers only exported their production when domestic sales were down and the contribution from exports was not significant. Exports, he said, were made to better ensure that its products were absorbed to maintain utilisation and efficiency. Wiharto said that Semen Indonesia was looking to initiate contract-based exports, in comparison to its current spot sales, in the near future if the economy does not show any signs of improvement. By relying on a six-month to one-year contract, the company could ship more cement, ensuring a more certain market.

"We hope to see our exports hit 1Mt in 2015. The prospect is good, given that some of our traditional markets have no cement producers," said Wiharto. Among Semen Indonesia's major export customers are Timor-Leste, Bangladesh and the Maldives.