Displaying items by tag: Government

India: Neeraj Akhoury, the managing director and chief executive officer of ACC Cement, says that a ban on imported petcoke to the National Capital Region will increase the cost of cement. Akhoury told the Business Standard newspaper that the cement producer would be able to cope with the restriction through the use of alternative fuels. The Environment Ministry put the ban into effect on 19 January 2018 to control air pollution. This follows a relaxation of a temporary ban on petcoke in December 2017 by the Supreme Court to the cement industry.

Nepal: The Department of Supply Management and Protection of Consumers Interest (DSMPCI) has ordered cement producers to reduce their prices within three days. Following a survey the DSMPCI found that the price of cement had risen by 10 – 16% in recent weeks despite input costs, such as raw materials and transportation costs, only growing by 7 – 9%, according to the Republica newspaper. The department has issued its directive via the Nepal Cement Manufacturers' Association.

Pakistan: Mian Saqib Nisar, the Chief Justice of Pakistan, has said that the Supreme Court will prevent the construction of any new cement plants or upgrades to existing plants near Katas Raj Temples in Punjab. However, he said that no existing plants in the area would be shut down, according to the Business Recorder newspaper. The investigation by the court had been taken in response to media reports that the pond at the Hindu heritage site was drying out due to water consumption by nearby cement plants. The local government has also been taking steps to stop new cement plants being built in parts of the province.

Philippines: Big Boss Cement has appealed against a decision by the Board of Investment (BOI) denying its application for registration because it lacked ‘proof of concept’. Big Boss’ president Gilbert Cruz said that the new cement company’s application was turned down in 2017 because it was not producing clinker, according to the Manila Bulletin newspaper. It plans to open a cement grinding plant in Pampanga in March 2018.

Egypt: The Industrial Development Authority (IDA) has not received any requests for 11 cement plants licenses offered since early 2017. Sources quoted by the Al-Mal newspaper reveal that despite eight local and foreign companies purchasing statements of work by the end of 2017, there has been little interest in the licences.

The IDA offered 14 cement licenses in 2016 to build plants or expand operations in nine governorates. Three licences were sold to SVC, Elsewedy Cement and Egyptian Cement respectively for US$28m in 2016. The remaining licences for Minya, Sohag, Qena, Aswan, New Valley, Matrouh, Suez and South Sinai were re-offered in 2017. Oversupply of cement in the country is estimated to be 30Mt/yr.

Pakistan: Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjb, has approved summary legislation banning the installation of new cement plants in the province on environmental grounds. The summary will be passed to standing committees on legislation for deliberation and recommendations, according to the Nation newspaper. The region has 12 cement plants, of which eight are located in the Salt Range of hills, where local residents have become increasingly intolerant of new industrial plants due to damage to underground water tables and increased air pollution.

The summary will also examine expansion plans by existing cement plants in the province and it has hired a consultancy, Artelia, to study the situation. The Supreme Court of Pakistan also being looking at the issue separately. However, the local cement industry is in an expansion mode as it copes with resident and public sector construction markets and large-scale infrastructure projects driven by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative.

Indonesia: Semen Indonesia forecasts that domestic cement consumption will grow at a rate of 5 – 7% year-on-year in 2018, a lower rate than the level of 7.8% recorded for the first 11 months of 2017. Semen Indonesia corporate secretary Agung Wiharto said that the prediction was based on continued demand for cement from government infrastructure projects, according to the Jakarta Post. The company also took other factors - such as inflation, political stability and market confidence - into account in its sales projection. Indocement has also forecast a cement consumption growth rate of 5 – 6% in 2018. Both companies reported reduced earnings in the third quarter of 2017.

Nepal: The Department of Mines and Geology has technically disqualified Nigeria’s Dangote Cement from applying for three limestone mine licences in an open bidding process. The Investment Board Nepal (IBN) had approved the investment in 2013 before passing the application to the mining department, according to the Republica newspaper. Department deputy director general Ram Prasad Ghimire claimed that Dangote's proposals lacked essential documents on the required skilled manpower and it was not considered qualified for the next financial proposal.

Dangote Cement had applied for three mines: two in Dhading and one in Palpa. However, China’s Huaxin and United Cements recently won two limestone mining licences. Previously, Dangote Cement purchased a limestone mine in Makawanpur that was later found to be a substandard. The Nigerian company has also faced opposition from local producers who have described the country as being self-sufficient in cement.

Egypt: Khaled Fahmy, the Minister of Environment, has recognised the work by subsidiaries of Suez Cement to reduce air pollution and so called ‘black cloud’ periods. The minister presented certificates of appreciation to the manager of Helwan cement plant, Ahmad Ragae, the manager of Tourah cement plant, Omar Khorshid, the manager of the Environment Department at Helwan cement plant, Ragheb Hammouda and the manager of Environment Department at the Tourah cement plant, Badry Ibrahim.

Congratulations are due to India’s UltraTech Cement this week for finally completing its US$2.5bn asset purchase from Jaiprakash Associates. The deal has been around in some form or another since at least 2014 when UltraTech arranged to buy two cement plants in Madhya Pradesh for around US$750m. That deal, publicly at least, became a victim of the 2015 amendment to India’s Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) (MMDR) Act. The Bombay High Court eventually rejected it in early 2016 after a period of delays. However, the deal bounced back in a much larger form around the same time and since then everything has gone relatively smoothly.

As chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla put it in his letter to shareholders in the company’s 2016 – 2017 annual report the, “move is essentially for geographic market expansion.” He then went on to mention all the usual keywords like ‘synergy’ and ‘economies of scale’ that you expect from an acquisition. Quite rightly he finished with, “It is with great pride that I record, that UltraTech is the largest cement player in India and the fifth largest on the world stage.” On that last point he meant outside of China but UltraTech does have a small number of assets outside of India, notably in the UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Bangladesh, hinting at an international future for the cement producer.

Map 1: UltraTech Cement’s plants in India. Source: UltraTech Cement Corporate Dossier, January 2017.

To give a scale of the deal, UltraTech has increased its number of integrated cement plants in India to 18 from 12 and its cement grinding plants to 21 from 16. Its overall cement production capacity will increase by nearly 40% to 91.4Mt/yr from 66.3Mt/yr. The new assets are in Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. The main regions that will benefit are the North, Central and South zones. In particular the Central Zone will see its capacity jump to 21.1Mt/yr from 6.2Mt/yr. This area also includes a new 3.5Mt/yr plant at Dhar in Madhya Pradesh that is scheduled for commercial production in late 2019.

The completion of the Jaiprakash Associates deal was followed by the introduction at the start of July 2017 of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), a rationalisation of some of the country’s central and state taxes. UltraTech promptly said it had reduced its product prices by 2 – 3% in light of tax reductions under the new regime. Some producers were warning of a rise in cement prices in the run-up to the introduction of the GST and the Cement Manufactures’ Association said that the new tax rate was insufficient. However, UltraTech said that the new tax rate of 28% was better than 30 – 31% previously. Other Indian producers also reduced their prices this week following the introduction of the GST.

UltraTech’s expansion and the start of the new tax scheme auger well for the Indian cement industry in 2017. Demonetisation knocked cement production at the start of the year and it may have lowered UltraTech’s capacity utilisation rate as well as reducing domestic sales by cutting housing demand. However, sector rationalisation and a simpler tax approach should help to remedy this. Not all government interaction has been helpful to the cement industry in recent years as the MMDR amendment and demonetisation show but the signs are promising.
Roll on the next set of financial reports.