Global Cement News

France: Irish cement producer Ecocem plans to industrialise a new technology that will be implemented at its Dunkirk site in northern France by 2025. The technology, called ACT, replaces clinker with limestone filler to reportedly reduce the carbon footprint of cement by 70% compared to the average French cement.

The company is relying on public funding from Bpifrance, the Hauts-de-France region and the urban community of Dunkirk.

Spain: Cement consumption in Spain fell by 3.3% in the first half of 2024 to 7.27Mt, a decrease of 0.25Mt from the same period in 2023, according to Oficemen's latest statistics. June 2024 saw a year-on-year decline of 4.2%, with consumption dropping to 1.25Mt. Cement exports also decreased significantly in the first half of 2024, representing a decline of 20.2% year-on-year.

Oficemen's general manager, Aniceto Zaragoza, said "Our forecasts point to a change in trend towards more positive data in the second half of the year. In fact, the figures for average daily consumption, which only consider working days in the comparison, show growth of 5.3%."

Colombia: The cement sector in Colombia is experiencing difficulties due to a contraction in the construction sector. This is attributed to an economic slowdown that has impacted on housing and infrastructure projects. From January – April 2024, cement production declined by 4% year-on-year. The industry is also contending with high production costs, which have reduced profit margins. Delays in infrastructure projects, influenced by the transition in local governments, have further affected demand for cement.

A battle over cement pricing in Ghana reached a new stage this week when the Chamber of Cement Manufacturers (COCMAG) hit back at proposed government regulation. Frédéric Albrecht, the chair of the association, told a meeting that about 80% of local production costs linked to cement manufacture are related to the local currency exchange rate. So fixing the price would do little to address the main cause behind rises.

Albrecht was speaking at a stakeholders’ forum organised by the Ghana Chamber of Construction. The group was convened to discuss the government’s proposed Ghana Standards Authority (Pricing of Cement) Regulations 2024 that were formally presented in the country’s parliament in early July 2024. The association argues that the cement sector has not been consulted properly over the proposal and that introducing it could have negative consequences for the construction sector as a whole. It says that imported clinker is subject to numerous taxes and that the average price of cement has actually lagged behind the rate of inflation.

The government is dealing with an economic crisis that forced it to default on its external debts in 2022 and ask the International Monetary Fund for support. This has led to depreciation of the local currency and high inflation. Around the same time the authorities have also been attempting to regulate the cement sector more closely. In 2022 the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) took action against a brand of cement, Empire Cement, that appeared to be on sale without any of the required permits. Then in the autumn of 2023 the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) shut down Wan Heng Ghana’s grinding plant in Tema after the company failed to pay a major tax bill. Action by the GSA followed when it shut down three more plants in the Ashanti Region - Xin An Safe Cement Ghana, Kumasi Cement Ghana and Unicem Cement Ghana - for using inferior materials in cement production.

In April 2024 a nine-member committee was established to monitor and coordinate the local cement industry. Notably, cement producers have been required to register with the committee in order to secure a licence to manufacture cement. Kobina Tahir Hammond, the Trade and Indus¬try Minister, then said in late June 2024 that the government wanted to intervene in cement pricing to protect consumers from what he described as the ‘haphazard’ increment in cement prices by manufacturers. A legislative instrument doing just that was presented in parliament on 2 July 2024. Around the same time the GSA reportedly threatened to close down ‘several’ more cement plants for non-compliance.

The cement industry in Ghana is particularly vulnerable to currency exchange effects as it is dominated by grinding plants. One integrated cement plant, Savanna Diamond Cement, was launched in the north of the country in the mid 2010s. However, this compares to 14 licensed grinding plants in the country reported in the local media. This includes units run by Ciments de l’Afrique (CIMAF), Dangote Cement, Diamond Cement (WACEM) and Heidelberg Materials subsidiary Ghacem and its CBI Ghana joint-venture amongst others. This makes it one of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with the most grinding plants, along with places such as Mozambique and South Africa. When the Ministry of Trade and Industry started a consultation on regulating the cement sector in late 2023 it calculated that the country produced 7.2Mt of cement in 2021 and that the country had an overcapacity of 3.5Mt. This gives the country an estimated cement production capacity of just below 11Mt/yr.

Some sense of the growing costs that the cement sector in Ghana is facing can be seen in the Ghana Statistical Trade Report for 2023. Clinker was the country’s third biggest import by value at US$206m. It was only exceeded by diesel and other automotive oil products. The Ghana Statistical Service reported that most of the country’s imported clinker in 2023 came from Egypt, South Africa and its neighbours in West Africa. Both Dangote Cement and Heidelberg Materials flagged up the country’s economy as being hyperinflationary in their respective annual reports for 2023.

Argument and counter-argument over cement pricing is prevalent around the world especially in Africa. Fellow West African country Nigeria, for example, has endured plenty of very public dialogue and debate about the price of cement. In Ghana’s case it seems more likely than not that factors beyond the control of the local cement companies are driving the prices given the grinding-dominated nature of the sector with lots of different companies involved. Negative currency effects and inflation look more likely to be driving cement prices than anything else, although one should always be wary of the potential for cartel-like behaviour by cement producers. The economic crisis in Ghana certainly fits the bill for the conventional introduction of price controls on selected commodities but getting the fine tuning right could be difficult in practice. Fixed prices will reassure consumers in the short term provided supplies hold. Beyond this the actual causes of the high cement prices should emerge in time.

UK: Aggregate Industries has appointed Lee Sleight as its new CEO. He succeeds Dragan Maksimovic in the post, who was appointed as Region Head West Europe earlier in 2024. Sleight will take up his new position from 1 August 2024.

Sleight joined the UK subsidiary of Holcim in 2021 as the managing director of the ready-mixed concrete division. He became the head of the aggregates division in late 2023. Prior to his time with Aggregate Industries, Sleight worked for Sika in the UK from 2008 to 2019 in a variety of managerial roles. He was then appointed as Business Unit Manager for Sika in 2019.

Kaziwe Kaulule will succeed Sleight as the managing director of the company’s aggregates division. Kaziwe joined Aggregate Industries in late 2023 as Director of Strategic and Commercial Growth, having previously been CEO of Holcim’s South Africa and Zimbabwe businesses.