Global Cement News

Denmark: FLSmidth has announced the appointment of Eric Thomas Poupier to a newly created position in group executive management, as group executive vice president, business development. Poupier will take up his new position on 15 January 2014.

Since 2011 Poupier has been a manager at Bain and Company in Stockholm, managing projects for Nordic clients. From 2007 to 2011 he was a consultant for Bain and Company and specialised in reorganisation, growth strategy, sales force effectiveness and performance improvements. Over 2005 to 2007 Poupier completed a full time MBA study in the USA and in 2005 he held the position of purchasing manager for Bosch Group in Changzhou, China. Previous to 2005 Poupier had a number of managerial positions in strategic purchasing within the Bosch Group in Germany.

Eric Poupier brings with him a broad experience within business and strategy development as well as within purchasing and change management. The new business development position in group executive management was created in an effort to strengthen FLSmidth Group's competitiveness by focusing more on effectiveness, strategy development and integration.

Sri Lanka: Holcim Lanka has appointed Nirmala GihanWickremeratne as chairman and Premila Perera as director.

Wickremeratne has a long and distinguished career at one of Sri Lanka's most respected conglomerates, the Hayleys Group, where he served as managing director / CEO of Dipped Products Group and later as chairman and chief executive of the Hayleys Group. He is credited with the establishment of Dipped Products plc and its evolution into a world leader in its field. Wickremeratne was the founder chairman of the Sri Lanka Association of Manufacturers and Exporters of Rubber Products (SLAMERP) and has been a committee member of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber's representative on the National Labour Advisory Council and president of the Sri Lanka-France Business Council. Following his retirement, he served as an independent non- executive director of a premier private sector bank.

Premila Perera, formerly partner and head of tax at KPMG in Sri Lanka, is a fellow of the institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka. She has served as regional tax director of KPMG Asia Pacific in Singapore, a member of KPMG International's 'Firm of the Future' Task Force and on the faculty of the Tax Business School of KPMG International.

There was a great quote on BBC News from Nigerian cement mogul Aliko Dangote to start 2014 with: "Can you imagine, can you believe, that [Nigeria] has been growing at 7%/yr with no power, with zero power? It's a joke."

In the article Dangote is describing economic growth in Nigeria and the BBC points out that 170 million people in Nigeria use the same amount of power as 1.5 million people do in the UK. The author then goes on to predict that Nigeria could grow at a rate of 10 – 12%, by just solving power infrastructure in the country.

For the start of 2014 the British state broadcaster has been running a radio series on the so-called MINT economies. The term refers to the growing economies of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey and is being used as a new buzzword in the same fashion as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) to describe broadly similar growing economies outside the traditional western bloc dominated by the G7.

Comparing the cement industries in the MINT countries raises some discrepancies between the desires of Western economists and the local cement industries. Mexico has a population of 118m, a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$1.85tr and a cement production capacity of 50Mt/yr. Indonesia has a population of 238m, a GDP of US$1.29tr and a cement production capacity of 47Mt/yr. Nigeria has a population of 175m, a GDP of US$479bn and a cement production capacity of 28Mt/yr. Turkey has a population of 74m, a GDP of US$1.17tr and a cement production capacity of 82Mt/yr.

Mexico and Turkey have the lower populations in the MINT group, the highest (and most similar) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita at US$15,000 and are the more developed cement industries in the group with the higher cement production capacities per capita. All of the MINT countries have infrastructural issues that will require large amounts of cement in the coming years.

Highlighting Dangote's concerns we cover a cement industry news story this week from Nepal, where Dangote is considering potential locations for a cement plant. Part of the publicly reported meeting between Dangote and the Nepalese government concerned power requirements for the project. Dangote intends to generate 30MW itself and has asked Nepal to provide 30MW. From the CEO downwards the cement producer clearly understands the problems of underdeveloped infrastructure. This is not surprising given his comments above!

That MINT economies are growing powers will not surprise the cement industry. In this week's Global Cement Weekly, in addition to the Dangote story, we feature two news stories focusing on direct industry capital investment in Indonesia. Looking more widely nearly half the stories are from BRIC or MINT countries.

With this in mind Global Cement has developed its own buzzword for the cement industry in 2014: the VISA group. This group includes Vietnam, Italy, Spain and Australia, countries that have all had problems with their cement industries in 2013 such as a production overcapacity or financial losses. If readers have any nicknames of their own for groups of cement producing nations let us know at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Pakistan: Maple Leaf Cement has appointed Tariq Saeed Saigol as the chairman of the company from 1 January 2014 for a three year term.

Saigol studied Law at University Law College, Lahore. He started his career in 1968 at Kohinoor's Chemical Complex at Kala Shah Kaku and became the chief executive of Kohinoor Textile Mills, Rawalpindi in 1976. Since 1984, he has been chairman of Kohinoor Maple Leaf Group, which has interests in textiles, energy and cement production.

He has also been chairman of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association in 1992 - 1994, president of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry for 1995 - 1997 and chairman of the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association from 2003 - 2006.

Ukraine: On 1 January 2014 Volyn Cement (part of Dyckerhoff Ukraine) relieved two members of the supervisory board, chairman of the supervisory board Otto Lose and supervisory board member Volker Sonnabend. The posts remain vacant.

Volyn Cement suffered a loss of Euro2.69m in 2012 according to the International Financial Reporting Standards. Its net revenues increased by 1.85% year-on-year to Euro59.2m in 2011.