Switzerland: Holcim recorded net sales of US$6.75bn in the first quarter of 2022, up by 20% year-on-year from US$5.62bn in the first quarter of 2021. The group’s recurring earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBIT) rose by 16% to US$643m from US$553m. The company has upgraded its outlook 2022 to a forecast of full-year net sales growth of at least 10%.

CEO Jan Jenisch said “I am very encouraged by the record start of the year, setting a solid foundation to our Strategy 2025 – Accelerating Green Growth.”

The first quarter of 2022 brought four new bolt-on acquisitions in addition to the group’s conclusion of its US$1.35bn Malarkey Roofing Products acquisition. The company says that it remains actively engaged in supporting humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

Holcim has also published its industry-first Climate Report 2022. The report details the company’s progress towards achieving its sustainability targets under the four pillars of its Strategy 2025 – Accelerating Green Growth. Under the Accelerating Growth pillar, Holcim reached a total of 15 markets with its ECOPlanet reduced-CO₂ cement range. Under Expanding Solutions & Products, it reduced the proportion of cement sales in its consolidated sales to 57% in 2021 from 60% in 2020. Its other pillars are Leading in Innovation and Sustainability and Delivering Superior Performance. In 2021, the company used 6.6Mt of recycled construction and demolition waste in its products, against a 2050 target of 10Mt.

Chief sustainability and innovation officer Magali Anderson said “On our net-zero journey, we are walking the talk at Holcim, taking clear science-driven action to win the race for climate.”

Middle East/North Africa: The World Cement Association (WCA) has called on its members in the Middle East and North African cement sectors to take new actions towards industry decarbonisation. UAE-based consultant and WCA member A3 & Co has said that companies in the region have the potential to cut their carbon footprints by up to 30% with no new capital expenditure required. The Middle East and North Africa accounted for 15% of global cement production in 2021. In the region, only the UAE and Saudi Arabia have committed to national net zero carbon targets, for 2050 and 2060 respectively.

WCA CEO Ian Riley said “There has been a lot of discussion in Europe and North America about decarbonisation roadmaps for the cement industry and good work has been done to start on this journey. However, 90% of the world’s cement is produced and used in developing countries; to impact overall industry emissions we must include these stakeholders. Cement companies in the Middle East have some low hanging fruit to take advantage of, which will lower costs at the same time as reducing CO2 emissions. At WCA we have a number of programmes that can help them realise this opportunity."

Colombia: Cementos Argos says that 368,000 people directly benefited from its social investment programmes in Colombia in 2021. During the year, the company invested US$4.56m in projects including its Hogares Saludables home improvement programme and its Via Forte road infrastructure programme. The Via Forte programme has laid 600km of road since 2017, while the Hogares Saludables programme aims to assist and improve over 10,000 homes by 2027.

Canada: Carbon Upcycling Technologies has secured US$6.15m in financing from a group of companies led by Clean Energy Ventures, Cemex Ventures, Amplify Capital and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures (OLCV). The investment round includes participation from Zero Carbon Partners, Purpose ESG, Clean Energy Venture Group, Fund for Sustainability and Energy, Prithvi Ventures, Bryan Trudel, and Mark and Faye McGregor. Carbon Upcycling intends to use the funding to grow its team and build its second commercial-scale facility in North America, with a production capacity of over 200t/day of its cement and concrete additive. Carbon Upcycling sequesters CO₂ in secondary cementitious materials such as fly ash, which are then used in cement or concrete production.

Serbia: The impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine mean that the Serbian cement industry’s operations are ‘endangered’ and will likely fail to meet steady market demand in the coming months. Serbian Cement Industry Association director Dejana Milinkovic said that the industry relied on Russia and Ukraine for 50% of its coal supply in 2021.

In 2021, the industry produced 2.6Mt of cement, up by 10% year-on-year, operating close to 100% capacity utilisation.

Bangladesh: Shun Shing Group subsidiary Seven Circle says that it has successfully migrated its on-premises, business-critical, finance and manufacturing systems to Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure digital services platform. The Bangladesh Monitor newspaper has reported that the company made the transition in order to lower its costs, increase its operational agility and improve productivity. It has since experienced a 30% drop in capital expenditure and almost doubled its uptime as a result. Seven Circle also deployed cloud disaster recovery capabilities for its workloads on the new platform. This can allow the company to serve its customers in a timely manner and reinvest the savings to drive innovation.

Shun Shing Group human resources and digitalisation head Anika Ali Chowdhury said “Running our back-office operations quickly and reliably, 24/7, is critical for success. It helps us to ensure we are sourcing the best raw materials, making the right production investments, and delivering quality products with reliable and fast delivery. This allows us to earn the highest level of customer trust.”

US: Concrete companies have reported an on-going shortage of cement as a contributor to increased costs in the construction industry. Local press has reported that the shortage is the result of high demand, most notably from commercial projects. A lack of cement truck drivers has reportedly exacerbated the supply situation.

North Carolina-based ready-mix concrete producer Metrocon president Dan Crosby said that his company’s facilities are currently operating at 60% capacity due to the shortage.

US: Conveyor Components has announced the launch of its SBR belt cleaner, a smaller version of its original brush-style belt cleaner. The cleaner uses an electric motor to drive a helical shaped, open face brush. Its hanger rail mounting allows for field customisable mounting on most conveyors. The supplier says that the product efficiently removes fines and carry-back material without clogging or loading.

Namibia: Immigration authorities have deported eight illegal Whale Rock Cement workers back to China. The Namibia Press Agency has reported that a court sentenced the Chinese nationals to deportation and fined them US$403 each.

Whale Rock Cement has reportedly launched its own legal action against vigilante workers’ rights group Namibia Economic Freedom Fighters (NEFF), which uncovered the illegal practices, for trespassing.

This week’s big story has been that Holcim may be considering selling its business in India. Both the Economic Times newspaper and Bloomberg separately reported that the owner of Ambuja Cement and ACC has been holding early talks with local producers. The discussions have been described as exploratory and an eventual divestment is far from certain. The combined market value of both companies was placed at US$15bn, at the time that the story broke, making it one of the largest potential acquisitions in India. Holcim has refused to comment on the matter.

If it actually happened then the scale of this potential sale would be breathtaking. Holcim has been gradually slimming down since the merger between Lafarge and Holcim in 2015. The big divestments mostly came after the appointment of former Sika boss Jan Jenisch in 2017. Four integrated plants and other assets were sold in Indonesia for US$1.75bn in 2019, a 51% stake in three integrated plants and two grinding plants were sold in Malaysia for US$396m (also in 2019) and five integrated plants were approved for sale in Brazil for US$1.03bn in April 2022.

A complete divestment of Ambuja Cement and ACC in India would see 17 integrated plants and 14 grinding plants being sold with a production capacity of around 66Mt/yr. If any company did buy the lot in one go, at a stroke it would become the second-largest cement producer in the world’s second-largest second market. The nearest acquisition in the last decade that comes close to this was when CRH purchased 24 cement plants with a production capacity of 36Mt/yr from Lafarge and Holcim in 2015 for US$6.5bn.

2022 would certainly be a good time to sell up with both Ambuja Cement and ACC having reported strong sales and earnings figures in 2021 following the coronavirus-related lockdowns in 2020. Performance is even better compared to 2019. Ambuja Cement’s net sales and earnings before taxation, interest, depreciation and amortisation (EBTIDA) grew by 23% year-on-year to US$1.81bn and by 21% to US$420m respectively in 2021. ACC’s sales and operating EBITDA grew by 17% to US$2.07bn and 28% to US$393m respectively in 2021. However, ACC’s net sales growth was much lower compared to that in 2019. Ambuja Cement produced 25.9Mt of cement in 2021 with a production capacity of 31.5Mt giving it a utilisation rate of 82%. ACC produced 26.9Mt of cement in 2021 with a production of 34.5Mt/yr giving it a utilisation rate of 78%. Both of these rates are higher than the national cement sector rates forecast by analysts of up to 64% in the 2022 financial year. The corporate specifics of any sale are that Holcim owns a majority stake in Ambuja Cement, which in turn owns a majority stake in ACC. In other words: buy one, get the other.

One wider question here is whether there are still any companies and investors out there prepared to put money on this scale into a carbon-intensive industry with net-zero deadlines on the way. Ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November 2021, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi pledged that his country would cut its emissions to net-zero by 2070. There’s plenty of time left to turn a profit, as cement kilns last about 50 years, but the risk of investing in a stranded asset is growing if the targets are honoured or even brought forward. As a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report put it, “Cement and concrete are currently overused because they are inexpensive, durable, and ubiquitous, and consumption decisions typically do not give weight to their production emissions.” All of this suggests that buyers might well be more interested in purchasing parts of Holcim’s Indian operations rather than the whole bundle or breaking operations up further down the line. And that’s even before any competition concerns related to any local buyers are considered. Holcim, for its part, has shown with recent divestments, such as its business in Northern Ireland, that it isn’t necessarily against smaller piecemeal divestments. Negotiations, if they are indeed happening, will be closely guarded.