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It’s not every week that a ‘new’ cement producer gains hold of nearly 30Mt/yr of production capacity.¹ Back in 2022, a few readers studying the North America pages of the year’s Global Cement Directory probably wondered “Where’s Lafarge gone?” following the dissolution of the France-based producer’s corporate identity into Holcim in June 2021. Now, in the upcoming Global Cement Directory 2026, readers will be able to search in vain for another name among the cement maps of Canada and the US – that of Holcim itself. A decade on from the completion of the Lafarge/Holcim merger, the combination of the two in North America has precipitated something entirely new: Amrize.

On 23 June 2025, Amrize assumed the entire business of Canada and US market leader Holcim North America, following its successful spin-off from Switzerland-based Holcim. Amrize occupies its predecessor’s operational headquarters in Chicago, US, with registered offices in Zug, Switzerland, and is dual-listed in the US and Switzerland.² For those interested in finance, shares in Amrize debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in the US at US$50. Meanwhile on the SIX Swiss Exchange, they dropped by 13% from reference price, to US$49.30, while those in its erstwhile parent rose by 14%.

Table 1 (below) gives the relative size of the entities, based on their latest published figures and the Global Cement Directory 2025. Amrize and Holcims’ respective percentages of the former Holcim total are given in brackets:

Metric                                     Amrize                        Rump Holcim            TOTAL

Integrated cement plants     18 (17%)                     88 (83%)                     106

Capacity                                 28.7Mt/yr (11%)          224.9Mt/yr (89%)        253.6Mt/yr

Employees                             19,000 (29%)              46,000 (71%)              65,000                        

Revenues                               US$7.85bn (24%)       US$24.95 (76%)         US$32.8bn

Amrize chair and CEO Jan Jenisch stated the company’s aims in a post to LinkedIn: to be partner of choice for the US$2tn/yr North American construction sector, to deliver ‘advanced’ materials ‘from foundation to rooftop’ and to serve customers in every province and state.³ This paraphrases Amrize’s Five Strategic Drivers: 100% North America focus; unparalleled footprint and resources; value creation; unlocking growth and driving shareholder value. The menu on the company website offers not ‘products,’ but ‘solutions,’ categorised by type of construction. For cement, users can navigate to Our Businesses > Building Materials > Cement.⁴ Behind this new messaging, the Canadians and Americans who rely on Amrize’s cement business might like to know what exact role cement will play.

Holcim’s global cement revenues first fell below 50% of group sales in 2024, at US$16.4bn (49%). In North America, its recent acquisitions include both those within the cement value chain (British-Columbia based Langley Concrete Group in June 2025) and outside it (OX Engineered Products in November 2024).

Amrize is organised into Building Materials (cement, concrete, aggregates and asphalt) and Building Envelope (insulation, roofing, sealants and weatherproofing). It operates in five regions: Central (Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and inland US west of the Mississippi, from Missouri to Nevada northward), Great Lakes (Ontario and the US Midwest), Northeast (Quebec, Nova Scotia and the eastern US from Maryland northward), Pacific (British Columbia, California, Oregon and Washington) and South (southern US, west to Arizona, and Ohio).

Setting aside its extensive grinding and logistics infrastructure, the geographical footprint of North America’s largest cement producer breaks down as follows:

Region            Integrated cement plants     Capacity

Central           4                                              9.8

South              5                                              7.6

Northeast       5                                              5.5

Great Lakes   3                                              4.7

Pacific            1                                              1.1

TOTAL            18                                            28.7

Four of these geographies – all except South – are transnational. This at a time when Canada and the US are diverging in industrial policy and engaged in a trade war… Supposedly, regional directors will be juggling ambitious projects like Amrize’s on-going Bath, Ontario, and Richmond, British Columbia, carbon capture projects in Canada with a complement of lower-cost strategies in the US.

Just as important for the future of the company is the team in charge. Leadership is structured similarly to Holcim, with some names even reprising the same role. Chair and CEO Jan Jenisch previously chaired Holcim from May 2023, and was its CEO between September 2023 and April 2024. Jenisch first joined Holcim from Switzerland-based Sika, where he had been CEO, in 2017. He obtained his Master’s of Business Administration degree from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, though Jenisch is in fact a German national.

Ian Johnston steps into the Amrize chief financial officer (CFO) position. A long-time Lafarge and Holcim mover in North America, he holds an accountancy degree from the University of Ottawa in Canada. Building Materials division president Jaime Hill came up through the Holcim corporate structure in the group’s Latin America region, including stints as CEO of Holcim Colombia in 2015 – 2019 and Holcim Mexico in 2019 – 2024, before entering the North American region as regional head in September 2024. However, his familiarity with the region goes back to his completion of a bachelor’s in Business Administration, Management and Marketing at Georgetown University in Washington, US.

Nollaig Forrest was Holcim’s chief sustainability officer (CSO) in September 2023 – June 2025; Amrize doesn’t have one. Instead, Forrest moves across to the chief marketing and corporate affairs officer spot. It’s possible that her intended role had a larger sustainability component during planning in 2024, that might have been struck off after US President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the Paris Accords and suspended, then withdrew, new decarbonisation funding. If this is correct, then Amrize may be giving strategic primacy to the larger US over Canada. Whatever the case, its enormous undertakings towards reaching net zero in Canada do not appear to have a dedicated champion on the leadership team. Forrest is another European, and brings leadership experience at chemicals companies Firmenich, Dow and Dupont and the World Economic Forum, grounded in a master’s in International Relations from the Geneva Graduate Institute in her home country of Switzerland.

Also of interest is Patrick Cleary, who steps up as senior vice president commercial cement for the US, and previously worked with Holcim US and LafargeHolcim US in Chicago. Only cement has a dedicated commercial director at this level, and then only in the US. Meanwhile, Samuel Poletti will serve as chief strategy and mergers and acquisitions. He was previously Holcim’s head of mergers and acquisitions since July 2018, before which time he was high up in the group’s South Asia subregion, including serving as Ambuja Cements’ head of strategy and commercial development in India. Poletti, presumably, will be responsible for sustaining the inorganic growth of the Holcim North America era. The flip side of this strategy for Holcim was flash market exits, including from Brazil, Zimbabwe and India in 2022. Insofar as there is a pattern to Holcim’s geographical realignment, it may be towards growth in ‘mature markets’ – a description to which all of Amrize’s regions conform. Ultimately, Amrize is a whole different company to Holcim. Whatever strategy the team is going in with, there is likely to be a transition phase and time needed to feel things out.

Overall, the Amrize leadership displays a thorough grounding in the Holcim way of doing things and a record of responsibility in a variety of its markets. Above them sits the board, with Nicholas Gangestad beside chair Jan Jenisch as lead independent director. Amrize’s 10-seat board includes four (40%) women: Theresa Drew, Holli Ladhani, Katja Roth Pellanda and Maria Cristina Wilbur.

Amrize has arisen. What makes the spin-off so interesting, besides its unprecedented scale, is the strangeness of the market into which it emerges. Spin-off plans went public in January 2024, at a time when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) were set to unleash over US$1.9tn in additional public spending into the medium-term future. This is not now going to happen. Yet Amrize’s new website proclaims that “The US and Canada are modernising their infrastructure” for ‘greater efficiency and resilience.’ Of course, building materials consumption will continue in other forms, but the level of visibility is less than ideal. One of Holcim’s partner start-ups, Sublime Systems, appeared on a government list on 30 May 2025 and lost US$87m funding at a stroke.

As for Holcim, it enters the second half of the 2020s in a different shape to that in which it began the decade. Only the geographical signature of its North and West African and Latin American subsidiaries (as well as in Bangladesh and the Philippines) confirm this European producer as having once been the closest thing ever to a global cement hegemon. Holcim’s Latin American holdings look distinctly peripheral without the multi-megatonne bookends of Holcim Brazil and, now, Holcim US.

Amrize inherits an environmental, social and governance (ESG) apparatus from Holcim that suits Canada but is now inappropriate for the US. It has chosen to strip out sustainability from its corporate structure, messaging and Strategic Drivers. The wisdom of this decision can only be measured in the longer term. On the other hand, Amrize’s efforts to mitigate its impacts may continue quietly, in a kind of reverse greenwashing – ‘brownwashing’? – until political conditions are suitable to emphasise them once again.

References

1. Global Cement Directory 2025, www.globalcement.com/directory

2. Amrize, ‘Contact Us,’ accessed 25 June 2025, www.amrize.com/us/en/contact-us.html

3. Jan Jenisch, post to LinkedIn, 23 June 2025, www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7342995000399421440/

4. Amrize, ‘Our Cement,’ accessed 25 June 2025, www.amrize.com/us/en/our-businesses/building-materials/cement.html

UK: Heidelberg Materials UK has opened a railway line connecting its Horton limestone quarry in North Yorkshire to the rail network. The move reinstates the movement of materials by rail, following a transition to road transport upon the original closure of the railway line in 1965. Heidelberg Materials UK expects to supply 1650t/yr of stone for use as aggregates in the construction industry in North West England.

US: Ozinga has broken ground on a 1Mt/yr alternative cement grinding plant in East Chicago, Indiana. The plant is equipped with a Gebr. Pfeiffer MVR5300-C6 vertical roller mill. It will produce ASTM C989-compliant slag cement and other blended cements. When operational in 2026, it will be the largest of its kind in North America, and avoid 700,000t/yr of CO₂ emissions from conventional cement production. Its location offers strategic rail, road and shipping access to large markets in the US and Canada.

East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland welcomed an anticipated 150 new jobs resulting from construction and subsequent operations at the plant.

India: ACC Chair Karan Adani says that he expects the cement industry to benefit from the an anticipated US$2.2tn in new public infrastructure spending between 2025 and 2030.

Press Trust of India News has reported that Adani said "ACC crossed the 100Mt/yr cement capacity milestone in April 2025, propelling us closer to our ambitious 140Mt/yr target by the 2028 financial year." The company’s capacity corresponds to 15% of an all-India installed capacity of 686Mt/yr.

Peru: Grupo Gloria plans to invest US$100m in an upcoming lime plant in Lima. OneStone Consulting has reported that the plant will supply lime for Lima’s construction, agriculture and mining sectors.

Grupo Gloria subsidiary Cal & Cemento Sur already operates a five-kiln lime plant in Puno Region with five kilns, comprising three Maerz Parallel Flow Regeneration (PFR) vertical kilns and two horizontal kilns.

India: During the fourth quarter of the 2025 financial year (which ended on 31 March 2025), premium products constituted 16% of Shree Cement’s sales mix, up from 12% one year previously. During the period, the company further diversified its offering with the launch of two new premium cements, Bangur Marble Portland slag cement and Extra White Portland slag cement, in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. Both products are designed for maximum brightness and smoothness within their category of CEM-II Portland slag cements. The company says that its growing portfolio helped it to increase its full-year financial realisation per tonne by 5% year-on-year.

Business Today News has reported that managing director Neeraj Akhoury said "In the 2025 financial year, 74% of our cement output was blended, avoiding over 7.2Mt of CO₂ emissions."

Shree Cement crossed 60% consumption of energy from renewable sources in May 2025, Construction World News has reported. It has 582MW of installed renewable power capacity and is currently in the process of building a 1MW battery storage system at one of its cement plants in India.

Vietnam: Siam Cement Group Vietnam (SCG Vietnam) recorded sales of US$301m in the first quarter of 2025, 43% of group regional sales outside of Thailand.

SCG Vietnam hosted Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at its US$5.5bn Long Son petrochemicals complex earlier in 2025, when it announced that currently planned investments will target the petrochemicals division, as opposed to cement. It acquired the Sông Gianh cement plant in Quảng Bình for US$156m in 2017.

Poland: The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) has launched an investigation into Cement Ożarów, Cemex Polska, Dyckerhoff Polska, Góradżdże Cement, Górażdże Beton and Holcim Polska over potential cement cartelisation. The office has not stated the exact triggers of such an investigation at this time.

ISB News has reported that UOKiK previously discovered an 11-year-long conspiracy to divide the market and fix prices between seven companies in 2009.

UOKiK President Tomasz Chróstny said "The return of a cartel would be particularly outrageous, considering that cement is one of the basic construction materials, necessary for the development of housing, road infrastructure and the entire economy."

If found to have been party to any agreement restricting competition, companies can expect penalties as high as 10% of turnover.

Australia: Minister for Climate Change and Minister Chris Bowen says that the government is ‘considering’ the enactment of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to prevent carbon leakage from high emissions-intensity products, including cement.

The Australian Parliament committed to 43% national CO₂ emissions reduction between 2005 and 2030 in 2022, and capped emitters’ individual carbon footprints in 2023. Final advice from a government Carbon Leakage Review was due after May 2025, and was possibly complicated by on-going US climate and trade reforms under President Trump. The Australian Cement Industry Federation bemoaned a lack of action on carbon leakage in March 2025. It warned of jeopardy to both decarbonisation and 1400 jobs in the Australian cement sector.

Australia’s construction industry imported 40% of its cement used in 2024.

India: Management guidance for Indian cement demand growth in the 2026 financial year for ‘most companies’ in the sector was 6 – 7% year-on-year.

In the 2025 financial year, UltraTech Cement and JK Cement raised their cement sales volumes by 17% and 15% year-on-year respectively, due to to demand recovery and the effects of new acquisitions. Ambuja Cement’s volumes grew by 13%, while Dalmia Cement Bharat’s fell by 2% and Ramco Cements’ by 5%.

The Business Standard newspaper has reported that the all-India cement capacity ended the 2025 financial year at 655Mt/yr, up by 5% year-on-year. 60Mt/yr-worth of new cement production capacity is due to come online later in the 2026 financial year, which would increase that figure by a further 9%.