Switzerland: Eric Olsen, chief executive officer of LafargeHolcim, has been elected as the new chairman of the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) in 2017. The appointment was confirmed at the CSI’s annual CEO Meeting in Madrid.

“It is an honour for me to be chairing this important industry organization in the coming year. Sustainability in the construction sector is not the preserve of one organisation. I will focus on ensuring that the CSI continues to play an important role in building collaboration within our industry and encouraging joint action across the entire value chain. As one of the largest global sustainability programs ever undertaken by a single industrial sector, we have a real opportunity to drive change. Our plans are ambitious and we are conscious that we will only achieve them by working together”, said Olsen.

LafargeHolcim is one of the founding members of the CSI which is part of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and was launched in 1999 with the aim of supporting the progress of the global cement sector toward sustainable development. The CSI unites 23 major cement producers with operations in more than 100 countries. Collectively these companies account for around 30% of the world’s cement production and range in size from multinationals to local producers.

Oman: Salem Bin Alawi Mohammed Baabood has resigned as group chief executive officer of Raysut Cement Company with effect from 8 December 2016 due to personal reasons. Mohammed Bin Ahmed Aideed has been assigned to assume the functions and duties of the group chief executive officer of Raysut Cement until a successor is appointed.

Denmark: Klaus Schäfer, the managing director of Beumer’s Danish subsidiary, has been appointed honorary consul of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Central Jutland region of Denmark. In addition to his day job for Beumer Group, his new duties include fostering closer ties between Germany and Denmark, with an emphasis on both trade and culture. Schäfer will assist with both administrative and ceremonial consular tasks. The role is a voluntary one.

Germany: Erik Bach has been appointed the Vice President of the Minerals Processing division at Hazemag. His focus will be on the technology leadership for established products, the consistent completion of the product portfolio and the expansion of the company’s markets. Bach, aged 43 years, has previously worked for FLSmidth.

India: Manoj Kumar Sinha, a deputy general manager of the Cement Corporation of India has died in a car crash. Sinha and three other persons were killed in an accident on the Yamuna Expressway, according to the Times of India.

Construction firm DMCI Holdings announced plans this week to enter the Philippine cement market. The company intends to build one cement plant on Semirara and three cement grinding plants elsewhere – at Batangas, Iloilo and Zamboanga – to give it a national presence. DMCI’s managing director Victor Limlingan admitted to local press that his company was taking a gamble on spending US$368m in this way.

It has staked its money on the Duterte Infrastructure Plan, a scheme from the new administration that was elected in June 2016 to target US$165bn (!) towards infrastructure spending until the early 2020s. Even if a portion of this money makes it from political hyperbole to the diggers then it is likely to mean a sustained construction boom for an economy that is already growing at around 6%/yr. DCMI’s excitement was almost palpable in mid-November 2016 when it put out a press release calling for potential partners to help it benefit from the rush when it comes. Although the company did add that all the discussions were at the exploratory stage at this time because it was still awaiting bidding documents.

DMCI’s project joins six plants in various stages of planning and construction from San Miguel, Northern Cement, Eagle Cement and LafargeHolcim. In addition four existing plants are carrying out upgrades to increase their production capacity. Clearly, things are looking up for the local cement industry. DMCI follows San Miguel which announced that it was going to spend US$1bn on building five cement plants around the country in mid-2015.

In line with this kind of investment the Cement Manufacturers Association of the Philippines (CEMAP) said that cement sales had risen by 10.1% year-on-year to 20.1Mt in the first three quarters of 2016. This follows annual sales growth of 8.7% to 21.3Mt in 2014 and of 14.3% to 24Mt in 2015. CEMAP’s data for 2015 also shows that local demand overtook the country’s kiln capacity in 2014. Subsequently imports peaked to 314,000t in 2014, the highest level since 2002.

The country’s second largest producer Republic Cement, a joint venture between CRH and Aboitiz, reported sales growth similar to CEMAP’s one for the first three months of the year. LafargeHolcim, the largest producer, didn’t reveal any figures in its third quarter report but it marked the Philippines as one of its key contributors in the quarter. By contrast, Cemex noted lower growth in its third quarter report at 4% for the nine months to September 2016. It also said that the government transition following the election had slowed cement consumption, especially from infrastructure projects.

The Philippine cement industry is in the enviable position of being in a boom. The kind of problems it has to cope with includes provincial cement shortages, lobbying to increase usage of blended cements, scrutiny of prices by the government and a rise in technical smuggling. Once the new plants and upgrades start becoming operational the true nature of the market should become more apparent. At present it looks likely that DCMI gamble may turn out to be a wise one. The next question will be how many more companies want a piece of the piece too?

US: The Portland Cement Association (PCA) has elected Allen Hamblen, president and chief executive officer of CalPortland Company, as chairman of the PCA board of directors, and Tom Beck, president of Continental Cement Company, was elected vice chairman. Hamblen takes over PCA board chairmanship from John Stull, chief executive officer of US Cement for LafargeHolcim US.

Prior to 2006, Hamblen was president and chief executive officer of Glacier Northwest and has worked with CalPortland and its predecessor for 31 years. He is a former chairman of the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, a trustee of the Ready Mixed Concrete Research and Education Foundation and is a former president of the Washington Aggregates and Concrete Association.

Beck has served as senior vice president at Continental Cement from 2005 to 2013, and as vice president of sales and marketing from 1996 to 2005. He is also a former chairman of the American Concrete Paving Association.

Thailand: Siam Cement has appointed Cholanat Yanaranop as its Executive Vice President. He will also retain his role as President of Siam Cement Group Chemicals. The promotion will take effect from 1 January 2017.

Morocco’s Directorate of Financial Studies and Forecasting has reported that cement sales rose by 8.4% year-on-year in October 2016. It's good news for a local cement industry that saw its sales fall from 16.1Mt in 2011 to a low of 14.1Mt in 2014. Sales picked up slightly in 2015 and it looks like the same is going to happen again in 2016. Data from the Moroccan Cement Association (APC) support this with consumption of cement very slightly higher for the first nine month for 2016. Good sales figures in October can only help.

Graph 1: Cement consumption for the first nine months of the year, 2013 – 2016. Source: L’Association Professionnelle des Cimentiers du Maroc.

2016 has also been an interesting time for the Moroccan cement industry due to consequences of the merger and acquisition activity by the multinational producers that operate there. In March 2016, amidst a slew of divestments, LafargeHolcim made a point of announcing that it was holding on to its cement businesses under Lafarge Maroc and Holcim Maroc and enlarging them with its local partner SNI to form LaafrgeHolcim Maroc. The deconsolidation of Holcim Maroc picked up a net gain before taxes of Euro219m for a total consideration of Euro463m, which should considerably add to the group’s cash proceeds.

It managed to avoid being forced to sell off assets by the local competition body when it merged in 2014 due to its relatively low stakes in its companies. Today it has a production capacity of 13.2Mt/yr from seven integrated cement plants or over half the country’s production capacity. In its annual report for 2015 LafargeHolcim said that its cement business saw its results improve, mitigating problems in its aggregate and ready-mix concrete markets. This was followed by good results in the first half of 2016. New projects in the pipeline include plans to build a cement plant in Agadir and a grinding plant in Laâyoune in Western Sahara.

2016 has also seen the acquisition of Morocco’s second largest cement producer, Ciments du Maroc, by HeidelbergCement as part of its purchase of Italcementi. It’s too soon for HeidelbergCement to have reported upon the territory in its first integrated quarterly financial report following the takeover but it did describe Morocco as a having a ‘high growth potential.’ How these assets fit into the wide portfolio of HeidelbergCement’s new production base will be interesting. Ciments de l’Atlas’ (CIMAT), the country’s third largest and local producer, saw its sales fall slightly to Euro124m in the first half of 2016. However, its net profit rose by 13% year-on-year to Euro30m.

The other story of note in recent months in Morocco has been the public outcry against a shipment of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) from Italy in June 2016 destined for a cement plant in Casablanca. The subsequent protests saw waste imports to be suspended, leading Hakima al-Haiti, the government minister at the heart of the affair, to describe the furore as causing damage to the country’s economy in the aftermath. However her opponents rallied under the phrase “Nous ne sommes pas une poubelle” or ‘We are not a trash can.’ Despite this setback for the secondary fuels market, LafargeHolcim highlighted the work its Ecoval waste processing subsidiary has been conducting producing RDF at its Oum Azza site ahead of the Climate Change Conference of the Parties held in Marrakech in mid-November 2016. Although the key difference here is that Ecoval is generating RDF from local waste streams not importing them.

Perhaps as a sign of the growth potential Morocco may hold, this week, a non-cement producer was revealed to be planning to build a cement plant at Tarfaya. Previously the company, Global Oil Shale, had intended to develop shale oil resources at the site but it has switched its plan to constructing a 1.6Mt/yr cement plant instead and hired Luis Verde, a former technical director at Cemex who has also worked for Dangote. Together with the Lafarge project in Laâyoune and the Ciement Sud (CIMSUD) plant also in Western Sahara due to open in mid-2017 it suggest that the investors smell opportunity.

Canada: McInnis Cement has appointed Hervé Mallet as its president and chief executive officer. Other new appointments include the assignment of Gaétan Vézina as Vice-President, Cement and Sustainable Development and Alexandre Rail as Vice-President, Operations – Port-Daniel–Gascons.

Previously Mallet was the Executive Vice-President – North America for Dynacast. He is a graduate of the University of Wolverhampton and Brunel University in the UK.