Displaying items by tag: Infrastructure

Spain: Oficemen, the Spanish cement association, reports that domestic cement consumption fell by 10% year-on-year to 13.3Mt in 2020 from 14.7Mt in 2019. Consumption at this level was last reported in 1967. The 12-month accumulated consumption figure began to fall in April 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions and the association does not expect growth in 2021 despite an improvement in December 2020. Cement and clinker exports fell by 3.4% to 5.99Mt from 6.20Mt. It has forecast anything between a 3% rise and a 3% fall in consumption in 2021, due to coronavirus-related uncertainty.

The figures suggest that capacity utilisation in the cement industry is at roughly 60% nationally, according to the El Economista newspaper. Oficemen president Víctor García Brosa said that this level ‘cannot be indefinitely maintained.’ The association called for a recovery plan committed to infrastructure development, residential construction and rehabilitation and energy efficient transport.

Spain: Mexico-based Cemex has supplied 30,000t of cement and 100,000m³ of concrete for an expansion of Teruel Airport Platform (PLATA) maintenance, repair and operations airport in Teruel, Aragon. The company said that the expansion consists of a 3km runway, terminals, an expanded parking platform and two new hangars, in addition to an industrial zone and other facilities. The airport's current expansion phase requires a further 40,000m³ of concrete.

Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia regional president Sergio Menéndez said, "Since the beginning of the Teruel Airport project more than a decade ago, Cemex has been present in its construction and continuous expansion. We are proud to have contributed to this infrastructure, becoming an engine of economic recovery.”

UK: Cemex will supply 40,000t of lining-sprayed concrete for the construction of the 13km central section of the Thames Tideway sewer project in Greater London. Engineering partners Ferrovial Construction and Laing O’Rourke will use the concrete for shafts and launch tunnels. The company produced the concrete at its Buxton, Derbyshire concrete plant. It says that it offers ultra-high strength, consistency and two-hour workability in line with the stringent requirements of the job. It also needs to be pumpable with a pipeline length of up to 400m. The producer will deliver up to 3000t/month of the concrete to Central London over ‘a few months.’

Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia president Sergio Menendez said “The Thames Tideway Tunnel project is one of incredible scale which will solve serious capacity issues with London’s sewer system and have considerable benefits for the area’s wildlife and population, while also preventing pollution, creating jobs, a rejuvenated river economy and new areas of public space.” He added “This is a remarkable piece of engineering, and we’re proud to be working with world-class contractors to build this key infrastructure in the most sustainable and cost-effective way possible for one of the world’s greatest cities.”

The 25km ‘Super Sewer’ will conduct the city’s sewage to a new treatment facility at Abbey Mills in the Borough of Newham. The central section runs between 30m and 60m below the Thames past part of West London, Westminster and the City of London.

Mexico: Cemex Mexico has signed an agreement with the state government of Puebla for the repair of 5km of road near Tepeaca. The El Sol de Mexico newspaper has reported that under the agreement Cemex will supply hydraulic concrete for the works. The company plans to first repair a 3km stretch of the road, then complete the remaining 2km in 2022.

President Juan Romero said “The purpose of Cemex is to build a better future. That is the reason that drives us to get up every day. We started at home, by building it for the more than 12,000 employees who work in the company and we made sure that everyone found in Cemex the best place to work and develop personally and professionally; but we also do it for our clients, with products of the highest quality and giving the greatest focus and attention to all the projects in which we participate, from the smallest expansion or remodeling of a small rural house to the large infrastructure works that they are underway in the country.”

In 2019 and 2020 the company invested US$3.5m in social projects in Puebla State. It repaired 4.5km of roads and donated 160t of concrete.

Italy: Federbeton, the Italian cement and concrete association, has called for a coordinated infrastructure investment plan to restart the national economy once the coronavirus crisis recedes. It has noted a halt to production not seen since the 1940s during the current crisis and a general reduction in cement consumption to 17Mt/yr from 47Mt/yr over the last decade, according to the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA). It is calling on a strategic plan for the sector to make any post-pandemic economic recovery as efficient as possible.

Cement scalpers in Tanzania have been threatened with jail time for hoarding cement! The country faced a shortage of cement and other building materials in October 2020 and Prime Minister Kassim Majawali ordered an investigation into the issue following the conclusion of the presidential election earlier that month. Both regional commissioners and the National Prosecution Service have been dragged into the initiative. Director of Public Prosecutions Biswalo Mganga promised to local press that wrongdoers could face up to 30 years in prison for daring to hoard products or distort the market.

Rhetoric aside, the situation is curious given that HeidelbergCement’s local subsidiary, Tanzania Portland Cement, seemed to think in its 2019 annual report, that the country faced a 5Mt/yr overcapacity from integrated and grinding plants compared to a total production base of 10.6Mt/yr. However, the East African newspaper reported that despatches fell to 150,000t in October 2020 from 450,000t in September and August 2020, with a 30% surge in the price in some parts of the country.

In the wake of this, Dangote Cement apologised publicly for failing to communicate a planned stoppage at its Mtwara plant to the wider public. Tanga Cement then denied that its production was down. It said instead that production was at the highest level and that large chunks of its output was servicing government-backed infrastructure projects like the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) and the Kigongo-Busisi Bridge, which will span the southern end of Lake Victoria. It also blamed a lack of trains on the Tanga-Moshi, which was reopened in mid-2019. It seems reasonable that cement prices might vary quite markedly, even before the profiteers got involved, due to the reasons above. Other issues locally include poor transport links, long distances in a country like Tanzania, the recent election and lingering hiccups from the blockage of imports from Kenya in 2018 that may not have helped either. The investigation continues.

A wider issue here is how much cement production capacity the country and the region can support given a propensity for spikes in prices. As Global Cement has covered previously (GCW456 and prior issues) Chinese producers have been heading into Sub-Saharan Africa over the last decade. Huaxin Cement bought ARM Cement’s assets in Tanzania in May 2020. It renamed the company African Tanzanian Maweni Limestone and then started trial production of clinker at the newly upgraded 0.75Mt/yr Maweni Limestone clinker plant in July 2020. Depending on how long ARM Cement’s former subsidiary was out of action, this one seems unlikely to rock the market too much. Tanga Cement also took the opportunity in November 2020 to say that talks with the government about a new 0.5 – 0.75Mt/yr grinding plant in Arusha were progressing

The proposed 7Mt/yr CNBM/Sinoma ‘mega’ plant is another matter entirely. Most of its output is intended for export but any disruption to local transport links, current or future, could swamp the local market. The export of Chinese infrastructure development around the world through its loan system could offer (occasionally literal) bridging solutions here as cement from a Chinese-backed factory is used to build the transport networks backed by Chinese loans that allow exports to proliferate. Tanzanian President John Magufuli’s comments that the poor terms for a US$10bn Chinese loan supporting a port project could “…only be accepted by a drunken man,” may not have helped international diplomacy. Still, Chinese money is actively getting things built here and elsewhere around the world at a rate previously unheard of.

Returning to the present, it makes a change to highlight a market where cement is truly demanded. A coronavirus-related lockdown may have slowed sales in the first half of 2020 but Dangote Cement estimated that the total market for cement in Tanzania was about 4.2Mt in the first nine months of 2020 and it reported its highest ever orders and dispatches in September 2020. That the country’s prime minister decided to discuss cement prices is a reminder of how important the commodity remains in parts of the world.

UK: DB Group has supplied its Cemfree concrete product to a site in Birmingham, West Midlands for use by the Environment Agency in a flood defence project. It says that the agency will use the concrete “for kerb bedding and backing over several kilometres in conjunction with various recycled products in an effort to reduce the projects’ carbon footprint.” Cemfree is a low carbon concrete made using ground blast furnace slag (GGBS) and pulverised fly ash.

Nigeria: LafargeHolcim subsidiary Lafarge Africa says that it has signed an agreement with the Cross River State government to build a 38km concrete road connecting its local cement plant to the wider network. Chief executive officer (CEO) Khaled El Dokani said the project was a major contribution of Lafarge to the state at large with the purpose of making the roads safer for the citizens. The road is intended to divert trucks away from a nearby city centre once it is completed.

India: The state of Odisha has announced a US$1.2bn infrastructure investment package aimed at “reviving the industrial economy, which has been impacted by the coronavirus outbreak.” National Business Media News has reported that the plans, encompassing “micro, small, medium and large scale” projects across sectors including cement and steel production, renewable energy and IT and will create “huge job generation avenues” and significantly increase cement demand.

State governor Ganeshi Lal said, “The new industrial units will provide an added impetus to the confidence of investors in the industrial sector.”

Mexico: The total cement demand generated by infrastructure projects in 2020 will be 1.9Mt, down by 95% from 40Mt in 2019. The El Sol de Mexico newspaper has reported that the government plans to invest US$12.1bn in 32 projects throughout the course of 2020.

Cemex president Rogelio Zambrano welcomed the decision to continue investing in infrastructure, saying that the promised sum would likely stimulate private sector investment in construction exceeding US$13.8bn. He added, “Both self-construction and infrastructure activity are to thank for the recovery in the construction industry since June 2020.”