The cement industry in 2013
with substantial changes
Summary: The cement producers are expecting to emerge stronger from the current economic crisis. However, the fact is that the preconditions for the companies vary widely and that, as in sport, there are losers as well as winners. On the other hand, the forecasts in the business reports of even the leading cement companies contain only relatively vague predictions. To create a well-founded database on this subject the OneStone Consulting Group has carried out a new market study to make a thorough analysis of the world cement market covering over 100 cement-producing countries [1]. The current cement consumption figures for 2009 are used, the imports and exports are highlighted and the further development of cement production capacity figures and capacity utilization figures is examined. The way the market potential will unfold in the future is very important for plant suppliers.
A collapse in world cement consumption was widely feared, but in fact the new market study shows worldwide consumption figures for 2009 of 2960 million t/a after 2815 million t/a in 2008, which corresponds to a growth of 5.1 %. However, Figure 1 shows that without China there were major losses. In the “mature” markets the consumption fell by 13.7 % or 59 million t/a. In the other emerging markets apart from China the losses were only 0.9 % or 9 million t/a. The diagram also shows how cement consumption will probably change up to 2020. A significant...