Thierry Legrand: Lafarge has appointed a new country CEO for its South African operations. Thierry Legrand was formerly the General Manager of Lafarge in South Africa but has changed role in line with the French building material giant's worldwide restructuring programme.

"Implementing this new structure will allow us to focus more efficiently on our customers and get closer to our markets," said Legrand. "We will use the strengths of our different product lines to design solutions in line with our customers' needs."

Legrand has managed several senior portfolios within the Lafarge group, both in South Africa and Europe.

Nigeria: This week has seen a major development in the Nigerian cement industry, with a call from domestic manufacturers to ban cement imports, three months ahead of the government's schedule for the ban. The call has been presented in some quarters as proof that the country, long blighted by high cement imports, has achieved President Goodluck Jonathan's bold target of making Nigeria a net exporter of cement before 2013. In the face of steadily diminishing oil revenues the government would like Nigeria to be known as the regional cement exporter, but what else might happen?

According to the Cement Manufacturers' Association of Nigeria (CMAN), the country's total cement capacity now stands at 22.5Mt/yr. Domestic consumption is estimated at 18.5Mt/yr, translating into a required capacity utilisation rate of 82%. It is bizarre, therefore, that cement producers feel the need to call for an import ban. Perhaps:

a) The producers know that they can't compete with the low cost of imports from outside Nigeria,

b) The producers want to recoup their plant investment costs as quickly as possible,

c) The producers know that they can't export if the country continues to import.

With notoriously poor transport links within Nigeria, option c may be a small factor. If road and rail links are poor, transport costs increase and exports become less desirable for both the supplier and the end-user. What is more likely however, is a combination of a and b. Producers need to recoup their investments but can't if China and India can undercut them from thousands of miles away. If the desire to recoup investments goes unchecked when the import ban comes in, there is a high potential for cartel-like behaviour to surface again in the country.

One does not have to look back far to the last major incident of apparent cement market cartelisation in Nigeria. In mid-2011 President Jonathan had to step in and personally call for a 25% price reduction. His target was hit within three months, but since then prices have slowly started to rise again, even with Dangote's Ibese 6Mt/yr plant coming online just three months ago! With four producers committed to setting up a 3Mt/yr plant each by 2015 in exchange for 2011 import licences, the supply of cement in Nigeria will continue to rise, making the temptation to collaborate even stronger.

India: Madras Cements has promoted its executive director for finance, A V Dharmakrishnan, to chief executive officer.

"A V Dharmakrishnan has been designated as chief executive officer of the company with effect from 1 April 2012," the Chennai-based cement maker said in a BSE filing.

Dharmakrishnan is a chartered accountant who began his career with Madras Cements in 1982. He has been an additional director at Rajapalayam Mills and Ramco Systems since 2008 and serves as a director On-Time Transport Company Limited. In addition he is a member of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Madras Cements is the flagship company of the diversified Ramco Group and it produces 13Mt/yr at its five manufacturing plants across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Apart from cement, Ramco Group has presence in real estate, paper production, hardware and stainless steel.

Indonesia: It seems that not a week goes past without a forecast, announcement or other report about the continued boom in the Indonesian cement industry. Similarly, there is a steady stream of expansion announcements to accommodate the future demand. In light of another round of impressive cement statistics, what's the story for Indonesia in 2012 and beyond?

In the three months to 31 March 2012 Indonesia produced 12.5Mt of cement, an 18% rise on the first quarter of 2011. In the whole of that year, the cement industry turned out a massive 17% more cement than in 2010. These headline increases are certainly impressive and show that if the first quarter of 2012 was repeated three more times throughout the rest of the year, Indonesia would hit its 53Mt production forecast. This is more than double the cement production of 1998 (22Mt/yr in the midst of the Asian banking crisis) and, while from a low base, the values represent incredible sustained year-on-year demand growth.

But what is the potential of the Indonesian cement industry? This can be assessed by looking one of Indonesia's neighbours, namely Malaysia, and doing a quick thought-experiment. What would the Indonesian cement industry look like if the country were to suddenly develop demands and cement consumption patterns like Malaysia does today? Indonesia has a population 8.3 times higher than Malaysia¹ and a cement consumption/capita rate approximately 2.4 times lower.² Assuming current Indonesian cement consumption to be 50Mt, if all of the people in Indonesia were to suddenly start using cement like Malaysia does today, the country's cement industry would have to be nearly 1000Mt/yr to support demand!

While this is clearly not the case today and is unlikely to be fully realised, Indonesia will continue to develop economically. As it does, the world's fourth most populous nation will need more cement. How much is open to debate, but even if a small percentage of that hypothetical 1000Mt can be realised, it will certainly justify the current rush to add extra capacity. This is now especially likely in light of the December 2011 relaxation of land acquisition rules, which will make it easier to build both cement projects and the large construction projects that need cement.

Click here for much more on the cement industries of Indonesia and Malaysia (as well as Vietnam) from the April 2012 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

1. CIA World Factbook website, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook.

2. Cement consumption per capita data for Malaysia taken from Lafarge 2010 Annual Report. (http://www.lafarge.com/04112011-customers_activities-cement_market_2010-uk.pdf). Malaysia is a representative comparison for Indonesia based on its GDP to cement consumption ratio.

US: Henrik Wesseling, the plant manager at the Lehigh Cement Permanente Plant in Cupertino, California, is returning to Germany. Lehigh Cement announced that Wesseling will be leading the global fuel optimisation strategy for its parent company HeidelbergCement. His last day at the Lehigh facility will be on 26 April 2012.

Wesseling took on the plant manager role at Permanente in 2008. In his time there, he worked toward helping the company install emission-reducing technology to meet new environmental regulations. Over the past two years, he led an initiative to install an activated carbon injection system that aims to reduce mercury emissions by more than 90%.

"Henrik has performed admirably as plant manager and I commend him for all he has achieved," Kari Saragusa, Lehigh Western Regional President, said in a statement. Axel Conrads, Lehigh's region west vice president of cement operations, will lead plant operations on an interim basis while a new plant manager is sought. A new plant manager is expected to be in place within the coming months.

Camargo Corrêa's ongoing bid for Cimpor must be creating nightmares for Brazil's anti-cartel authorities.

If the takeover goes through, Camargo Corrêa's Brazilian market share will rise from 24% to 37% according to data from the Global Cement Directory 2012. Together with industrial conglomerate Grupo Votorantim, who already own 21% of Cimpor, this share would amount to 72% of the country's total cement capacity.

As covered in this week's Global Cement Weekly #44 Jose Barros Franco, chief executive of Intercement a subsidiary of Camargo Corrêa, has explicitly denied that Camargo had a pre-agreement with Votorantim to split up Cimpor assets. However, he did not rule out a deal in the future to jointly manage the company. This implies that companies representing nearly three-quarters of the Brazilian cement market might be working together to at least some degree!

In October 2011 Camargo Corrêa denied that it was in talks to buyout Cimpor. According to one source at that time, Camargo Corrêa planned to take over Cimpor's operations in Brazil while Votorantim was considering taking assets outside of Brazil. Currently analysts expect the same thing to happen now if the takeover goes through, especially given any possible anti-competitive attention in Brazil.

With operations in four continents Portugal's Cimpor holds 77% of its global capacity outside of Brazil. If the takeover does actually happen, then the key question is this: how much of Cimpor's international operation does Votorantim want in return for helping its competitor Camargo Corrêa to grow back at home in Brazil?

Ukraine: The supervisory board of Eurocement Ukraine has appointed Vitalii Horholiuk to the post of acting director-general. The board dismissed the application of the deputy director-general and director of engineering Ihor Nikolaenko. Nikolaenko has occupied these positions since June 2010. Former Eurocement Ukraine director-general Demis Galchev was relieved from the position on 31 January 2012. Since that time the post has been vacant.

Germany: With effect from April 2012 Roger Meier has been appointed sales director of FLSmidth Sample Processing Technology, Wuppertal, Germany (formerly Pfaff AQS). Roger Meier will also be responsible for coordinating the common sales effort for FLSmidth Brno (formerly Autec) and FLSmidth Wuppertal.

FLSmidth Sample Processing Technology designs and manufactures a wide range of products for every stage of the sample processing chain in cement, steel and other minerals sectors. Previously Roger Meier has held a position as Building Materials Segment Manager and Industrial XRD Applications Manager at PANalytical BV, in the Netherlands.

Friday saw the news that many have long suspected: China is producing too much cement. Liu Ming, an official with the department of industry within the National Development and Reform Commission, announced that China faces national overcapacity in the next five years.

For anyone used to reading the permanently good news from China's cement industry this is a massive jolt. The natural reaction to dealing with industrial news from a command-style economy is to assume that everything is 'airbrushed'. This then demands the question: how much trouble is the Chinese cement industry really in?

Despite persistent rumours querying how long China's unparallelled growth could last, official responses have only appeared in the last two months. First the environment ministry announced stricter rules regarding nitrogen oxide emissions from cement plants in February 2012. Commentators suggested that the move could wipe out a third of the industry's profits. Shortly afterwards FLSmidth, entered the Chinese environmental control technology market.

In early March 2012 Premier Wen Jiabao lowered China's growth target for 2012, signalling public political acceptance of an inevitable economic 'soft landing'. Then in late March 2012 analysts' reports emerged predicting that each of China's main producers would suffer weakened profits in 2012. Only CNBM, China's biggest producer, appears to have bucked this trend. It announced that it expected its net profit to jump more than 100% compared to 2011. However the general uncertainty regarding statistics from China throws doubt on how realistic this forecast may be.

Yet before we give up hope it's worth remembering that opportunity abounds in a market as gargantuan as China. The rest of 2012 will be an interesting period for the Chinese cement industry.

Canada: René Thibault and Bob Cartmel have been appointed by the Lafarge Group as its senior leaders for all markets and product lines in Canada. Thibault will oversee the four western Provinces and three Territories as well as the Pacific north west and the Dakotas in the US. Cartmel will oversee the six Eastern Provinces.

Thibault has over 20 years of experience with Lafarge in Canada, which has included an assignment at the Lafarge group headquarters in Paris, France. He has an Engineering degree from Queen's University in Ontario and has completed executive studies at Harvard Business School in the US.

Cartmel has over 25 years of experience with Lafarge spanning Canada, the United States and Latin America. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario.

Lafarge said that the appointments, which are part of its wider geographical restructuring programme to bring all of Lafarge's businesses together under a single leader in each geographical area, would provide further career development opportunities for employees, strengthen the company's customer approach as it delivers sustainable solutions to the construction industry and allow its community investment projects to be more focused.