Namibia: Ohorongo Cement officially inaugurated its 5MW photovoltaic solar plant this week at its head offices at Farm Sargber near Otavi in the Otjozondjupa Region.

Speaking at the opening, Tom Alweendo, Minister of Mines and Energy said that solar electricity generation had grown so exponentially in Namibia since the inception of the Renewable Energy Feed-In Tariff programme in 2014.

Bolivia: The cement producer Fancesa has started legal action against transport industry leaders Oscar Reynolds and Macguiver Rosales over threats and criminal association, after they stopped transporting its cement. Fancesa earlier reduced the rate paid to hauliers to transport cement from its plant to Santa Cruz by 13.7% to US$1.88/bag (50kg), prompting hauliers to stop transporting its cement.

Brazil: Italy’s Buzzi Unicem has announced that it has reached an agreement to buy a 50% stake in the Brazilian company BCPAR from Grupo Ricardo Brennand for Euro150m. BCPAR operates two integrated cement plants, one in the north east state of Paraíba and one in the south east state of Minas Gerais. The Minas Gerais plant started operations in May 2011 and has an annual production capacity of 2.4Mt/yr of cement. The Paraíba plant was commissioned in August 2015 and it has a capacity of 1.7Mt/yr. Buzzi Unicem will retain the right to buy the remaining 50% of BCPAR from Ricardo Brennand until 1 January 2025.

Buzzi Unicem said in a press release that the agreement reached allows it to extend its industrial operations to the largest economy in South America and improve the geographical diversification of its regional presence. Buzzi Unicem believes that the current downturn in the Brazilian economy, and in particular of the local cement industry, can be positively resolved, starting from 2019. It adds that Brazil's key macroeconomic data concerning cement production are encouraging. The population is expected to grow at an average rate of 1.1%/yr and per capita cement consumption is currently at its lowest levels in years.

Zimbabwe: Lafarge and PPC are reported to be ‘scrambling’ to contain cement shortages in Zimbabwe. Capacity is down owing to maintenance and operational issues and there have been problems importing some raw materials due to a lack of foreign currency. Shortages of cement and related products have hit the country in the past week, with wholesalers, supermarkets and other retailers running out of stock.

PPC Zimbabwe’s managing director, Kelibone Masiyane, said that the ‘current cement shortage is temporary’ and Lafarge has authorisation to import up to 5000t. Some of this had reportedly come in from Mozambique over the Forbes border crossing.

Brazil: Cemex Latam Holdings (CLH), the subsidiary of Mexican cement company Cemex in Central and South America and the Caribbean region, together with its subsidiary Corporacion Cementera Latinoamericana, expect to finalise the sale of Brazilian cement producer Cimento Vencemos Do Amazonas (CVDA) for around US$30m by the end of 2018. On 25 May 2018, the pair agreed to sell all of the shares they own in CVDA to Brazilian cement company Votorantim Cimentos.

Pakistan: Overall cement sales in Pakistan fell by 2% year-on-year to 7Mt in the first two months of the current fiscal year, which began on 1 July 2018. Domestic sales dropped by 5.3% to 5.9Mt, while exports increased by 21.5% to 1.1Mt.

A spokesperson from the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) said that the industry had been expecting slower growth at home but had not expected a contraction. He added that in July 2018 overall sales had grown by 5% but they fell by 8% in August 2018.

Argentina: Both the sale and consumption of cement grew by 17% in August 2018 compared to July 2018, according to the national government. With sales of 1.1Mt, August 2018 also grew 0.1% compared to August 2017.

"The August figures are very positive in this economic context, which shows that construction, public and private, continues to advance,” said Guillermo Dietrich, Minister of Transportation. “The sale of cement maintains the same values as in August 2017, setting a historical record. We are facing the most ambitious infrastructure plan in history and that does not stop."

Nigeria: BUA Group has announced that it will commence core drilling in Ebonyi State, prior to establishing a greenfield cement plant there. Speaking in the state capital Abakalik on 5 September 2018, BUA’s Managing Director Kabiru Rabiu said that he was surprised there was no cement plant already in the state, despite there being enormous limestone deposits. Ibeto Cement is in the process of setting up two integrated cement plants in the state.

"We are here because the state is blessed,” said Rabiu. “It has a huge deposit of limestone that is very high in quality. The state also has coal, which is necessary for cement production. The state is strategically located; it is close to Enugu, close to Cross River State and close to the Middle Belt.”

What’s long, thin and has already exported more than 20Mt of cement in 2018? The answer is Vietnam, which reported this week that it exported 20.1Mt of cement between 1 January 2018 and 31 August 2018. That’s 106 - 112% of its annual ‘target’ in just eight months and around the same amount as it claims to have exported during the whole of 2017. Total cement production in Vietnam was 63.9Mt between January and August 2018, meaning that the country has exported 31.3% of the cement it made over this period. Vietnam itself consumed ‘just’ 43.8Mt. The government target for Vietnamese cement consumption during 2018 is around 65 - 66Mt. That’s basically the amount it has already made.

From a market-led mind-set these targets seem fairly large, huge even, especially the export target. Indeed the concept of such national targets is in itself an alien concept. In most of the world, imports and exports are results of market supply and demand trends, not drivers prescribed by the government.

The reasons behind this apparent desire to export these very large volumes of cement are, therefore, probably best understood from within Vietnam, and we won’t speculate too much on them here. However, Vietnam is clearly determined to continue to produce ever more cement than it can use. In what other country could a major government-owned producer export more than 70% of the cement it makes? In the first half of 2018 Vicem did just that, shipping 11.7Mt of cement overseas from the 14.2Mt that it made.

In 2017 Vietnam’s export target was 15Mt. It ended up smashing this to the tune of 5Mt, 33% more than the target. At the current rate the sector looks like it could overshoot even more spectacularly this year, perhaps hitting as much as 30Mt of cement exports in 2018. This is more than a big European country like Germany can produce! It certainly sounds like a lot but… is it really an exceptional number?

Looking at data from World’s Top Exports (WTEx), which we advise delving into, it seems that this would be a very high number indeed. It reports that a total of 166.6Mt of cement were exported internationally in 2017. It reports that the top exporter was not, as you may by this point have been primed to suggest, Vietnam. It wasn’t even China, as the former number one was bumped into second place (12.91Mt) by Thailand (13.03Mt). Turkey was third (12.79Mt), with Japan fourth (11.93Mt) and Vietnam was listed as fifth (9.53Mt).

All of these biggest exporters except Turkey are in the Far East, an area swamped with cheap cement. China’s average export selling price according to WTEx was US$45/t, against a global average of US$55/t. Thailand undercut it by US$3/t at US$42/t, perhaps explaining its rise to the top spot. Turkey’s average export price was also US$42/t, although it is located in a region that has a lot of saturated markets and others that are growing rapidly. Its average export distance was second only to China’s. Vietnam’s average cement export price was US$51/t, higher than the others. This does not tie in with the apparent rise in exports so far in 2018. This price may have since fallen. Surprisingly, Japan had the lowest export price of the top five exporters by volume at just US$30/t in 2017.

So, to re-answer the question posed two paragraphs above, 30Mt is a very high number indeed. But you’ll have spotted the large discrepancy between WTEx’s 9.53Mt figure for Vietnam, which relies on reciprocal import partner data, and the government’s official line of 21Mt for 2017. One is tempted to ask where the other 50% of the exports reported by the Vietnamese actually ended up, especially given that WTEx reports a US$1.5bn difference in the value of exports and imports across the year. Imports were valued at US$8.8bn but exports were valued at US$10.3bn.

The mystery destination of all that cement, real or imagined, could be the topic of an entire separate column. What appears to be the case at present, is that rampant Vietnamese cement overcapacity is here to stay. The country, as well as Japan, Turkey, Thailand et. al., could stand to benefit in the short term, as China acts ever more aggressively to end its own oversupply situation. However, there could come a time when it has to take its foot off the gas. There are no signs of that yet though.

Canada: Kate Strachan has become the new plant manager of the Lafarge Exshaw plant in Alberta, the largest in Canada. She took up the position in June 2018.

Born and raised in Warrington, UK, Strachan moved to Canada with her family when she was 10 years old, following her father’s job in marine engineering. She graduated from the University of Victoria with a mechanical engineering degree in 2000 before joining Lafarge Canada’s Richmond plant in the mechanical engineering department. Over the next 12 years she moved up through the mechanical department, eventually becoming the maintenance coordinator and then production coordinator at the plant.

After holding that position for several years she was promoted to production manager for Lafarge’s Sugar Creek plant in Missouri, US, but returned to Canada in less than a year to assist with the Exshaw plant’s US$600m expansion. “The commissioning of a new plant line is a once in a lifetime opportunity, so it was something I couldn’t really pass up,” said Strachan.

After spending nearly two years as the plant’s production manager, Strachan assumed her new role as plant manager in June 2018, taking over from Jim Bachmann, who was the plant manager since 2015.