Displaying items by tag: Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia: Saudi Cement’s consolidated sales totalled US$207m in the first half of 2021, up by 3.9% year-on-year from US$199m in the first half of 2020. Its net profit for the period took an 8.2% drop to US$54.9m from US$59.8m.

Saudi Arabia: Najran Cement’s revenue grew by 13.7% year-on-year to US$82.3m in the first half of 2021 from US$74.1m in the same period in 2020. Its net profit after zakat and tax increase by 27.9% to US$24.9m from US$19.5m. It reported lower sales and profit in the second quarter of 2021 due to Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr.

Saudi Arabia: Yanbu Cement’s first-half sales were US$143m in 2021, up by 23% year-on-year from US$116m in the first half of 2020. Net profit fell by 11% to US$30.7m from US$34.5m. The company said that a local price drop and an increased cost of sales offset increased sales to yield the drop in profit.

Egypt: Saudi Arabian-based Mohammed Hassan Al Naqool Sons has started pilot production at its Cement Industries subsidiary based in El Alamein. The project has an investment of around US$5m. It will manufacture cement-based products, including blocks and concrete. Commercial production at the site is expected to start in the third quarter of 2021.

Saudi Arabia: Southern Province Cement Company plans to upgrade its Jizan cement plant in Abha with a new 10,000t/day clinker production line to replace the plant’s existing clinker lines. The producer plans to launch the project in mid-late 2021.

Saudi Arabia: Arabian Cement has placed an order with Denmark-based FLSmidth for the supply of equipment for an upgrade of its Rabigh cement plant. The order includes new DDX top cyclones, a quenching chamber and an ABC Cooler Inlet. Installation and commissioning is expected to be during the fourth quarter of 2021.

Arabian Cement’s chief executive officer Badr Osama Johar said, “With FLSmidth having provided the original line, they were the obvious candidate for the upgrade - we wanted a trusted partner who knows the ins and outs of the plant and is able to secure the success of the upgrade.” The producer previously engaged the company for the supply of its Rabigh plant’s kiln in 2008.

Saudi Arabia: Yamama Cement plans to transfer and install the seventh production line from its old plant in the south of Riyadh to the new plant’s location in Northern Halal in Al-Kharj governorate of the Riyadh region. The line has a clinker production capacity of 10,000t/day. Following the completion of the move by the end of 2024 the new plant will have a capacity of 30,000t/day. The cement producer said that cost of the move would be funded from the available company's resources.

Saudi Arabia: Yanbu Cement says that a two months modernisation project on Line 4 at its integrated Yanbu plant that was first reported in mid-February 2021 has been delayed. This has been caused by a hold up in receiving certain spare parts. The cement producer said that the financial impact would be limited to the increase in production costs only since the start of the shutdown date. It also stressed that sales would not be affected by the stoppage due to its existing clinker stocks.

US: Coherent Market Insights (CMI) has forecast in a recent market report that the global cement grinding aids market will grow by 55% to US$5.02bn in 2027 from US$3.23bn in 2019. Factors driving market growth include increased cement industry concerns about energy consumption reduction and product fineness. A major driver is the Asia Pacific market, which accounted for 34% of value in 2019. In North America, US residential construction is forecast to continue its five-year increase. CMI predicted that projects in Saudi Arabia will also drive Middle Eastern market growth. It added that the Covid-19 outbreak has caused a drastic short-term decrease in demand.

Many Saudi Arabian cement producers have reported increased annual sales and profits in recent weeks. Southern Province Cement’s sales revenue rose by 27% year-on-year to US$440m in 2020 from US$347m in 2019. Net Profit after zakat and tax increased to US$162m from US$123m. Other producers enjoyed similar boosts. The reason can be seen in the country’s domestic cement sales. They rose by 21% year-on-year to 51Mt in 2020 from 42Mt in 2019. After a promising start to the year the coronavirus pandemic hit local production hard in the second quarter of 2020. However, it nearly doubled year-on-year in June 2020 and kept up the pace thereafter.

Graph 1: Domestic cement sales in Saudi Arabia, 2010 – 2020. Source: Yamama Cement.

Graph 1 above puts the cement sales in 2020 into context over the last decade. Sales hit a high in 2015 but then started to wane as infrastructure spending dried up due to lower oil prices and decreased government spending. A ban on exporting cement was subsequently relaxed but the general market appeared to adapt to the new situation. This changed significantly in 2020 with analysts attributing the turnaround to programs organised by the Ministry of Housing. This growth has carried into 2021 with NCB Capital forecasting an increase of 3.5% in local cement sales in 2021 due to the ongoing housing programs, the country’s so-called ‘Giga’ projects and investment by its sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), as part of its 2021 - 2025 strategy. They reported that demand created by the country’s large-scale projects began to be felt along the supply chain in the fourth quarter of 2020 and associated contracts have started to be issued.

To give an example of the scale of some of these schemes, one of the proposed giga projects is to build a new city called Neom from scratch near the Red Sea coast. The resulting conurbation is intended to showcase new technologies and diversify the Saudi Arabian economy away from hydrocarbons. It has a price tag of US$500bn. An airport was built in 2019 and a next step was announced in January 2021, introducing a 160km linear city without roads called ‘The Line.’ Doubtless it will require lots of cement to realise the dream in whatever forms it happens to end up taking.

The wider picture here is that global oil prices hit a low in April 2020 as coronavirus lockdowns triggered a worldwide drop in demand although they then started to recover. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that Saudi Arabia’s gross domestic product fell by just under 4% in 2020. In response the PIF has upped its investment in the local economy including in the ‘Giga’ projects like Neom. There has been scepticism internationally about whether these projects will progress any further beyond press releases and actually get built. However, the cement producers’ financial results, cement sales figures and reporting from analysts like NCB Capital show that some investment is happening and it’s having results. The sector still faces a battle against overcapacity. It had a production utilisation rate of just under 70% despite the increase in cement production in 2020. Yet cement producers in Saudi Arabia have done well. While the Saudi Arabian government continues to spend on infrastructure in order to rebalance its economy this looks set to continue.