Displaying items by tag: Government

Vietnam: The government of Quang Ngai has threatened to shut the Dai Viet-Dung Quat cement plant if it does not improve its dust emissions. 107 households living within 50m of the unit have been moved but more than 1600 households remain close to the site, according to the Vietnam News Agency. The 0.5Mt/yr cement plant started operation in 2015.

China: The city of Tangshan ordered cement and steel plants to shut down for five days to prevent pollution. The directive followed a forecast of heavy smog in mid-July 2018, according to a source quoted by Reuters. Tangshan, an industrial city, is located in the northeast of Hebei province.

Vietnam: Tran Viet Thang, the former General Director of the Vietnam Cement Industry Corporation (Vicem), has been dismissed as a member of the Executive Committee of the Central Businesses Party Unit and member of the Executive Committee of Vicem's Party unit. He has been found guilty of several legal violations as well as breaking Communist Party of Vietnam rules, according to the Viet Nam News newspaper.

Thang was appointed as the head of government-owned Vicem in mid-2013. He is accused of raising company debts of US$175m by the end of 2016. He left the position in mid-2017. According to the Secretariat of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Thang signed documents and took decisions that he was not authorised to. His actions allegedly violated local corporate and bidding law, as well as rules for Communist Party members. He has been accused of damaging the reputation of Vicem and the Communist Party.

The punishment against Thang is part of an on-going crackdown in the country against corruption.

Cameroon: Engineering Construction Manufacturing and Trading plans to build a new 0.5Mt/yr cement plant. The project has an investment of US$27m, according to the Agence de Presse Africaine. The local company has signed an agreement with the Investment Promotion Agency to build the plant. It enables it to receive customs and tax breaks as part of the deal.

Africa: The establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is expected to help Dangote Cement’s production capacity to expand 27.5Mt/yr by 2030. The Nigerian Office for Trade Negotiations (NOTN) made the forecast as part of a report on the potential benefits of the free trade area, according to this This Day newspaper. The report follows a meeting of the African Union in Mauritania in late June 2018. It used the cement industry as a case study for the benefits of the free trade arrangement.

Ukraine: The Interdepartmental Commission on International Trade has started an anti-dumping investigation on imports of cement from Russia, Belarus and Moldova. It will look at the conduct of Dyckerhoff Cement Ukraine, HeidelbergCement Ukraine, Podilsky Cement and Ivano-Frankivskcement, according to the Uryadovy Courier newspaper. The probe will examine the cement market between 2015 and 2017.

Botswana: The Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry plans to restrict imports of cement following the introduction of new legislation. It will require 70% of cement to be sourced from local producers with only 30% allowed to be imported, according to the Weekend Post newspaper. The Control of Goods, Prices and Other Charges Act was announced in April 2018. An import permit scheme is scheduled to start in September 2018. The new regulations are intended to regulate trade with South Africa better.

Sudan: Musa Mohamed Karama, the Minister of Industry, says that government is keen to remove all obstacles facing the cement industry including a block on exports. The announcement follows a meeting with Mohamed Abdullah, the UAE-based chairman of Berber Cement Company, according to the Sudan News Agency. The country’s cement production capacity exceeds its domestic consumption.

Vietnam: Cement exports rose by 50% year-on-year to over 15Mt in the first half of 2018. Estimates from the Construction Materials Department of the Ministry of Construction shows that the country consumed 51.4Mt of cement, an increase of 25%, according to the Viet Nam News newspaper. Cement inventory was 3.1Mt or equivalent to 14 - 15 days of production. High local consumption has been attributed to good weather and growing exports have been attributed to a halt in cement production in a number of cities in China.

Hillhead 2018 is on this week and where better to capture a feel of the UK’s quarrying and construction industries? For those that don’t know, Hillhead is a biennial show that takes place in a quarry in Derbyshire. The show bills itself as the largest quarrying, construction and recycling event in the world. A large scale UK show gives us the opportunity to look at the local cement industry and we did exactly that in the June 2018 issue of Global Cement Magazine with Edwin Trout’s feature on the UK cement sector in 2017 and 2018. Following on from that article we’ll pick up a few threads.

Graph 1: Domestic cement production in the UK, 1996 - 2016. Source: Mineral Products Association (MPA).

Cement production in the UK fell by 5Mt/yr during the financial crisis of 2007 - 2008. Since then, as Graph 1 shows, production has been growing almost uniformly. However, it may have reached a plateau in 2017, with the major producers complaining about a weakened market due to Brexit uncertainty.

Main points from a news angle are the rise of the Breedon Group with its acquisition of Ireland’s Lagan Cement in April 2018, investments at Hanson’s Padeswood cement plant and Tarmac’s Dunbar cement plant and a fairly static market reported by the major producers. Alongside this, Ireland’s Ecocem opened a terminal in Sheerness in June 2017 and, more recently, has just inaugurated its slag grinding plant on the other side of the English Channel at Dunkirk.

The decision by Breedon to straddle an impending UK-European Union (EU) border seems wise with Hanson’s parent company HeidelbergCement actively blaming Brexit for market uncertainty in the UK. The rise of Ecocem, a slag cement grinder and distributor, also seems to suit the atmosphere with its smaller, more nimble operation than a clinker producer. It’s into this situation that Hanson is reusing a mill from Spain for its Padeswood project and Tarmac is buying its mill from Cemengal, a manufacturer known for making modular mills that can be moved after installation if so desired.

Banging on about Brexit, and indeed Brexit uncertainty, can’t last forever and once clarity appears then the building industry can focus on various pressing issues. One is the country’s lack of residential housing supply. One possible solution for this is a new national planning policy. The government finished a consultation period in May 2018 for the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and industry bodies like the Mineral Products Association (MPA) have been making their views known. The MPA worries that that the proposed changes will weaken the mineral planning system and threaten the replenishment of aggregate and other mineral reserves. It argues that to secure the essential minerals required to build all those new houses the government needs an, “...efficient and effective mineral planning system with up to date plans, well-resourced planning departments and good data, which are prerequisites, as is appropriate capacity and capability in the ministry to ensure the system is planned, monitored and managed.” Detractors may point out that once the NPPF gets sorted we can all get on with the job of actually, like, building things but, as ever, the MPA has its part to play in the process.

Another indicator for the resumption of ‘business as normal’ might be the number of exhibitors at a trade show like Hillhead. The oranisers say that the exhibitors have grown by 10% in 2018 from 2016. With a heatwave forecast, the group stages of the football World Cup continuing and live demonstrations ongoing there are worse places to be to ponder the state of the industry. Come and find Global Cement at our stand (PC45) in the main pavillion at Hillhead 2018 and tell us what you think.