Global Cement News

Well, it seems like they were serious.

The UK Competition Commission has provisionally decided that Lafarge Tarmac should sell off one of its cement plants in the Midlands. The Commission also wants the sale to exclude buyers from any pre-existing UK cement producer. The door is open from Holcim or CRH downwards to enter the UK market. Although if the enforced Lafarge sale of Hope to Mittal Investments in 2012 is indicative, it may well be to an industry outsider.

If the move goes ahead it will open up the Midlands and north of England from four cement producers - Hope Cement, Lafarge Tarmac, Hanson and Cemex - to five. Lafarge Tarmac's cement production capacity lead of nearly 4Mt/yr will be knocked down to nearer 3Mt/yr, putting it level with Hanson Cement's production capacity.

Unsurprisingly Lafarge Tarmac is not best pleased, putting out the following in response to the commission's announcement. "The Commission's assumptions and reasoning have serious flaws and the biggest loser in this process will be the customer. There is strong evidence to demonstrate there is effective competition in the sector – with new players having recently entered the marketplace."

The Commission also wants to increase competition in the supply chain for ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS). According to the Commission findings Hanson dominates the UK GGBS market and Lafarge Tarmac controls the market for its precursor, granulated blast furnace slag (GBS). So production facilities may need to be sold by both Hanson and Lafarge Tarmac.

As an aside it's worth noting that the Belgian Competition Council recently imposed fines due to anti-competitive practices also related to GGBS. Also, elsewhere in the news this week Irish GGBS cement producer Ecocem is aligning itself with the EU carbon roadmap to 2050, partly at least because its product produces less CO₂ per tonne of cement. Whoever or whatever controls the supply of GGBS in the UK has implications for how emissions are lowered in the cement sector.

Other suggested measures from the Commission such as restricting the publication of UK cement market data seem problematic. Although it may make it more difficult for UK cement producers to collude it will also make it harder for related businesses (including press and industry analysts like Global Cement) to understand what is happening at any given time.

Finally, we have to ask what the effects of the Commission's suggestions might be at the start of an uncertain recovery in the UK construction market might be. According to the Minerals Production Association cement production fell from 8.5Mt in 2011 to 8Mt in 2012, the first decrease since 2009. 2013 seems set for modest growth on 2012. The implications of Commission's plans - if they happen – could be huge.

Russia: André Martin has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Lafarge Russia effective from 16 September 2013. He had been the Senior VP, Industrial Customer Segment at Lafarge corporate head office in Paris since 2012. Martin replaces Alex de Valukhoff.

A graduate of French management school ESSEC, Martin joined Lafarge in 1995 as cement M&A in Central and Eastern Europe manager. Highlights in his career include becoming president of Lafarge-Agregate-Betoane in Romania in 1999 and joining Lafarge-Beton de Paris as President in 2002. In 2005 André Martin moved to North America as VP Marketing Aggregates and Asphalt & Paving at Lafarge and he became President at Lafarge East US Aggregates & Asphalt in 2008.

Cement production took an unnecessarily harsh rap from the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The cause? Misleading wording.

In its summary for policymakers from Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGI AR5), every time CO₂ emissions were mentioned, cement was also mentioned. Typically this was along the lines of: "annual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production". Energy supply or transport industries were not mentioned. Only cement was. Subsequently in some general press reports covering the IPCC report, cement was duly parroted as the major industrial source of CO₂ emissions.

Digging into the data revealed that this particular wording derived from one of the data sources that the IPCC used that examined global CO₂ emissions from fossil-fuel burning, cement manufacture and gas flaring from 1751 - 2008 from the US Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. Here cement production was grouped along with different type of fossil fuels, such as gas, liquids and solids, and gas flaring. Deeper into the IPCC draft report it was revealed (using this research) that total cumulative emissions between 1750 and 2011 amounted to 365 ± 30 PgC (1 PgC = 10¹⁵ grams of carbon), of which only 8 PgC (2%) came from the production of cement.

Undoubtedly the cement industry's carbon emissions are huge but ambiguous wording in a release targeted for policymakers is not helpful.

Thankfully at about the same time as the IPCC made headlines last week European Cement Association, Cembureau, followed the UK's Mineral Products Association (MPA) in releasing its own lobbying document for the industry. This consisted of five parallel routes to lowering emissions related to cement production. Unfortunately Cembureau's press release didn't receive the global media coverage that the IPCC did.

The bottom line is this: cement is essential for modern industrial societies.

With or without climate change caused by human behaviour, we will all need somewhere to live and work. For the moment such structures will be built from cement and concrete. Organisations like Cembureau offer a way forward. Global policymakers should pay attention.

Pakistan: Muhammad Ali Tabba of Lucky Cement Company has been unanimously elected Chairman of the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) for the 2013 – 2014 term. Sayeed Tariq Saigol of Maple Leaf Cement and Babar Bashir Nawaz of Attock Cement Pakistan were also unanimously elected as Senior Vice Chairman and Vice Chairmen of the association respectively.

Muhammad Raza Mansha of DG Khan Cement, Azam Farooque of Cherat Cement, Major General Rehmat Khan (retired) of Lafarge Cement Pakistan, Lieutenant General Muhammad Sabir (retired) of Fauji Cement, Lieutenant General Taufiq Rafiq (retired) of Askari Cement, Syed Asif Shah of Bestway Cement, Aizaz Mansoor Sheikh of Kohat Cement, Mazhar Iqbal of Pioneer Cement and Muhammad Tousif Paracha of Gharibwal Cement were elected as members of the executive committee.

The timing of the UK Mineral Products Association's (MPA) latest call to arms makes one wonder how well the economic recovery is going in parts of Europe. The MPA has launched a document entitled 'Cementing the Future – Sustaining an Essential British Industry' to promote the UK cement industry. It is the MPA's job to beat the drum for the industries it represents so in this sense it should always be trying to raise the minerals sector's profile.

Yet as the UK economy starts to lumber out of the recession, a publication like this suggests that the challenges ahead of the industry are still large. MPA figures released in July 2013 showed that year-on-year growth in cement volumes hit a low of -10% in the second quarter of 2012 before rising to better (negative) rates to the first quarter of 2013. No data was available for the second quarter of 2013.

One of the MPA's recommendations is that the UK government does more to protect the main internationally-owned players from international trading markets. At least foreign-owned companies provide local jobs. The main thrust is to protect the industry from carbon taxation, ensuring better international competiveness. On the back of Cembureau's latest industry figures, chief executive Koen Coppenholle recommends much the same thing for Europe as a whole in his column in the September 2013 issue of Global Cement Magazine.

One thing the MPA doesn't need is more bad news when the UK Competition Commission publishes its report on an investigation on the aggregates, cement and ready-mix concrete market in December 2013. On that score the investigation hasn't been too troubling so far with its provisional findings concluding that despite poor competition between firms on price there was no explicit collusion.

In terms of competition though things could be worse. For example, take Colombia. In August 2013 the Colombian competition agency, the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC), announced its investigation in the country's main players for 'sustained and unjustified' increases in the price of cement since 2010. For the first six months of 2013 cement prices rose by 8% compared to an inflation rate of 1.73%.

Whatever is happening in Colombia, its largest cement producer, Cementos Argos, saw its profits rise by 5.9% to US$218m in 2012. At present the MPA can only dream of times like that again and hope that the UK government takes note of its advocacy.