Kenya: The Treasury has granted the East African Portland Cement Company (EAPCC) a four-year moratorium on the repayment of a US$15m loan borrowed in 1990, laying bare the firm’s financial difficulties. EAPCC borrowed the money in Japanese Yen from the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (JICA) in March 1990 but defaulted in 2016 after making only partial payments. This forced the government to step in and clear the loan on its behalf. The government cleared the company’s loan with JICA in March 2020.

New details now reveal that Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi entered an agreement with the company in July 2025, pushing forward repayment dates for the outstanding loan to start in September 2029. The government, through the National Treasury, has since entered into an agreement with the company setting out the terms and conditions for the loan repayment.

The agreements were entered into when the government was the controlling shareholder of EAPCC. However, the company got a new majority owner in December 2025 when Kalahari Cement, part of Tanzania’s Amsons Group, acquired a 68.7% stake after multiple transactions.

Russia: Cemros, the largest cement producer in Russia by installed capacity, has suspended the operation of its plants in the Belgorod and Ulyanovsk regions and switched to a limited production mode at the enterprise in the Lipetsk region, according to Forbes. The decision was made against the background of a reduction in cement consumption for housing construction in the country and a simultaneous increase in imports from Belarus and Iran.

US: Authorities in the US have reported that a man died in an industrial accident at the National Cement plant in Lebec, California, on 6 January 2026. The Department of Industrial Relations said that an employee of MZP Kiln Services was killed when he was caught by a slide gate motor that shifted as he attempted to remove it.

The Kern County coroner's office identified the worker as 50-year-old Oswaldo Alejandro Rodas Hernandez from Jacksonville, Florida. It said he was found unresponsive and pronounced dead at the scene. It determined the cause of death to be multiple blunt force injuries and stated the manner of death is accident.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health is investigating the accident. National Cement said "Our thoughts are with those impacted. We are cooperating fully with authorities and regulatory agencies, and we have no further comment at this time."

North Korea: State-owned press has announced that the Sunchon Cement Complex in North Korea produced ‘hundreds of thousands of tonnes more cement than planned’ in 2025, although it did not provide exact figures. It also reported that the plant’s limestone quarry built its own maintenance base and secured enough accessories and spare parts for normal operation of excavators, thus boosting production.

Miners at the Jikdong Gypsum Mine and the Stathe Clay Mine were reported to have ‘made innovations in production by increasing the operation rate of mining equipment’ and ‘shortening the turnaround time of wagons.’ The workers in the pyroprocessing section were reported to have ‘overfulfilled their daily clinker production plan’ by applying a ‘rational method of kiln operation during winter weather conditions.’