Global Cement News

India: The state government of Telangana has instructed cement producers that the price of cement must fall to support the construction sector. Telangana Minister for IT, Industry, Municipal Administration and Urban Development Rama Rao said, “There is a need to extend a helping hand to the sector and the government is therefore seeking cooperation of the cement companies in bringing down the prices so that real estate picks up momentum.” The Hindu newspaper has reported that producers “responded positively to the request.” Each will decide internally on the measure of price reductions.

All Telangana producers will continue to supply cement to government projects at a pre-agreed rate.

Uzbekistan: Russia-based Eurocement subsidiary Akhangaran Cement said that it shipped 180,000t of cement in May 2020, up by 11% year-on-year from 163,000t in May 2019. Uzbekistan Newsline has reported that the increase resulted from a combination of production modernisation, business process efficiency improvement and personnel training and development.

Akhangaran Cement general director Gennady Kulikov said, “Despite the special mode of operation associated with the coronavirus pandemic, the enterprise team at all stages of the technological process is set to work efficiently. Together with the achievements of high production results, employees pay special attention to ensuring industrial safety, production culture and organisation of workplaces.” The Akhangaran Cement cement plant’s new 3.0Mt integrated line is due for completion in mid-late 2020. It will enable the company to serve 100% of demand in the Toshkent region and 30% of Uzbekistan’s total domestic demand of 17.3Mt/yr.

Russia: The government has launched a strategy to support that development of manufacturing industries that it says will increase cement production by 50% to 90Mt/yr from 60Mt in 2019. The strategy consists of investment in equipment and vehicles, reducing building materials imports to below 1% of consumption, reducing the cost of construction by 30% across all building types and increasing the energy efficiency of building materials by a heat loss factor of 30%.

Egypt: Misr Cement Qena’s first quarter sales were US$50.4m in 2020, up by 2.0% year-on-year from US$49.1m in the first quarter of 2019. Daily News Egypt has reported that the company’s debts on 31 March 2020 were US$30.0m, down by 20% from US$37.5 on 31 December 2019. Misr Cement Qena managing director Tarek Talaat said, “The extraordinary performance in the quarter will contribute to alleviating the repercussions of the coronavirus outbreak on the company’s 2020 results.” Talaat urged the “revitalisation of demand” to boost prices. Egyptian producers produced 78.0Mt of cement in 2019, 29.3Mt surplus to the domestic cement demand of 48.7Mt/yr.

South Korea: All nine domestic cement producers and the Ministry of Environment have agreed on measures to reduce NO_x emissions. Asia Cement, Halla Cement, Hanil Cement Manufacturing, Hyundai Cement, Korea Cement, Sampyo Cement, Ssangyong Cement Industrial, SungShin Cement and Union Corporation have agreed to invest in upgrades to filters or new high-efficiency filters and process improvements, according to the Korea Times newspaper. There was also an agreement to set NO_x emissions reduction targets for the allocation of funding. The Korea Environmental Industry Technology Institute is investing US$2.93m in research towards developing methods of selective catalytic NO_x emissions reduction and selective non-catalytic NO_x emissions reduction.

The government aims to reduce national NO_x emissions by 20% to 155,000t/yr from 195,000t/yr through subsidies to emissions reduction technologies development and uptake. The cement sector presently emits 62,500t, 32% of the domestic total.