Global Cement News

The Iranian authorities may have taken glee in recent months in reporting that their country is on course to become the third biggest cement producer in the world. It's the position normally taken by the US in recent years (after China and India). For a country reeling from US-led sanctions it must provide some comfort. Yet what is the cost of this industrial 'victory'?

In December 2012 Iran's production for the first eight months of the Iranian calendar year beat the previous period by 6% to 49Mt. Current projections see the country hitting 75Mt by the end of the 2012-2013 year and then 85Mt by the close of the 2013-2014 year. Claims that Iran is now becoming the world's third biggest producer fit with estimated cement production figures for 2011 from the US Geological Survey (USGS) putting Iran behind China and India. The US produced 68Mt in 2011. A rough estimate for Portland cement shipped in the US in 2012 from USGS data is 79Mt.

Two stories this week build up a complex picture of the cement industry in Iran. Iranian news agencies have been reporting frequently how well the domestic industry has done in recent months. The latest concerns how Iran's Bank of Industry & Mine has allocated around Euro400m to complete 15 cement projects since 2010. However, also this week, we can report that Iran is facing a seasonal decline of cement demand leading to large stores of clinker in some plants. One can't quite imagine the state run news agencies reporting that they have larger stores of clinker than the US.

Despite the increasingly complicated international trade sanctions in force against Iran, exports are booming. In the current Iranian calendar year they have jumped by 30% to 9Mt, going principally to Iraq, Central Asia, United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan, where it has displaced a significant proportion of Pakistani exports. As our columnist Yves De Moor commented in the November 2012 issue of Global Cement Magazine, Iranian cement is cheap due to overcapacity but hard to import due to the sanctions.

In the absence of recent consumption figures for Iran, comparing the US and Iran on a graph of cement consumption per capita against GDP per capita helps. The US remains at the upper end of the distribution curve at 250kg/capita and US$48,000/capita. Iran is flying off above the other end of the curve at 1000kg/capita and US$13,000/capita. This suggests either overcapacity or a production boom.

Further overcapacity can only push the price of exported cement down further making neighbouring markets more willing to brave the sanctions. This may support Iran's economy as President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad has stated that non-oil exports are one way his country can overcome the sanctions. Additionally, overcapacity offers some political capital on the world stage. The cost for the Iranian cement industry if and when the sanctions end may be devastating though.

US: Eduardo Garcia has joined Loesche America to support the sales and marketing team for the South American market.

Garcia holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a MBA with a

concentration in supply chain management. His prior experience has been within the cement industry with Cemex in Venezuela and more recently for Holcim Group Support in the US. In his previous positions Garcia's responsibilities ranged from contract negotiation of major capital projects, to the operation and maintenance of cement plants and cement marine terminals.

At Loesche America Garcia will responsible for aiding in the definition and execution of sales and marketing strategies to further increase the sales potential in South America. Garcia joined Loesche America in 2012.

Forget Europe! The US cement industry is back in the game and could be looking forward to growth of 8.1% in cement consumption, according to a new forecast from the Portland Cement Association (PCA). This compares to a growth of 6% in consumption the PCA predicted in the autumn of 2012 in the shadow of the US 'fiscal cliff'.

The new forecast is based upon PCA research that estimates that total residential housing starts will reach 954,000 units in 2013. To give an idea of how badly the 2007 financial crisis hit the US residential housing market, according to US Census Bureau data in 2005 a total of 2,068,300 total housing start units were recorded. In 2007 this fell to 1,355,000 units. By 2009 this levelled out at 554,000, the lowest figure since at least 1960. A loose comparison with Spanish cement consumption in 2012 is worth noting here, when it too hit levels not seen since the 1960s.

The PCA's report predicts US cement consumption of 78.5Mt in 2013. As we pointed out in our overview of the US Cement Industry in the May 2012 issue of Global Cement Magazine, in 2006 the cement consumption of the United States was 122Mt. When the financial crisis hit, consumption nearly halved to 67Mt in 2009. The prediction for 2013 is a great improvement but the levels of 2005 are still a long way off. Currently, the Global Cement Directory 2013 places US cement production capacity at 114Mt/yr.

Other encouraging signs for the US cement industry include the sale of two Lafarge plants to Eagle Materials in September 2012 and less industry anxiety over US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emissions legislation. Lafarge choosing to sell plants in Missouri and Oklahoma with the US market starting to recover suggests that the French producer may have had its doubts. Yet Eagle Materials certainly thought the plants were worth the price tag of US$446m.

In summary the signs are broadly positive for the US cement industry at the start of 2013 although the dizzy heights of consumption of the early 2000s seem a long way off. US cement producers may take comfort from recent news stories from Beijing about efforts to contain air pollution from a cement plant. Hopefully for them it will be a case of 'been there, done that'.

India: Shree Cements appointed Dr Leena Srivastava as an additional Director of the company. The announcement was made to the Bombay Stock Exchange following a meeting held on 21 January 2013. With induction of Srivastava to the board of the company, the board now holds 10 members, with the number of independent directors in the board has increased to six.

This week Donal O'Riain, the Irish chief executive of Ecocem, cried out for an 80% tax on cement producers in Ireland. His reason? In his words, Irish producers are making profits from an over-allocation in the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) despite demand dropping in the Irish industry. The tax was his suggestion to address this 'anomaly' and give the Irish Exchequer a boost.

The timing of his comments are interesting given that the EU ETS entered its third phase at the start of 2013. Towards the end of 2012 environmental campaign group Sandbag questioned in a report whether the scheme was actually helping the environment or not. As Sandbag pointed out generally, not just for the cement industry, carbon prices in the scheme had remained low due to an excess supply in the market. Due to the oversupply, prices were so low that the EU ETS has ceased to function.

The European Commission conceded this failing of the EU ETS in November 2012 by announcing that it was taking steps to address the supply-demand imbalance of emission allowances in the scheme. Firstly 'back-loading' action volumes, revising the auction time profile and delay of the auctioning of 900 million allowances, came into effect from 1 January 2013. Secondly the Commission launched a debate on broad structural measures with a report on the carbon market.

Any emissions trading scheme can distort the market in unexpected ways. With regards to the cement industry, if O'Riain is correct, then parts of the Irish cement industry are making profit on carbon credits despite demand falling. Or, to put it as O'Riain did, the EU ETS may be subsidising environmentally-unfriendly plants at the expensive of more environmentally sensitive ones. Such as Ecocem we must presume. What would be really interesting here is to find out whether other European cement producing countries are also benefitting from over-allocation as demand falls, specifically in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.

Another distortion is that in the EU ETS, offsets generated from developing countries can be surrendered by companies in competing sectors in the EU, giving, in effect, a subsidy to competitors outside the EU. For example, as ETS schemes spread then staying outside of such regulation could prove profitable for cement exporters.

Koen Coppenholle the chief executive of CEMBUREAU, the European Cement Association, tackled this in his response to the European Commission's report, "It is essential that any further reduction of CO₂ emissions above the targets agreed should remain conditional upon the conclusion of an international agreement between all major greenhouse gas emitting countries. This should be undertaken with a view to establish a global crediting scheme, characterised by a comparable methodology to measure greenhouse gas emission reductions and equivalent monitoring and reduction efforts." Hence the interest in regional Chinese ETS schemes such as the emissions trading schemes that were launched in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong in 2012. China currently plans to introduce its own national scheme in 2015.

Despite the bureaucrats' efforts to improve emissions trading schemes, Petroleum Review summed up their effect in June 2012, "Carbon trading appears to have pulled off the noteworthy achievement of uniting oil and gas producers and environmentalists in their appraisal of its shortcomings." We could add cement producers to that list.