Market review
China’s cement industry in a state of strong flux
1 Introduction
The November 2008 figures in China did not bode well for the cement industry. Compared to the preceding year, the accumulated cement output had only risen by 2.8 %. For some other countries this would have been a good result, but China’s cement industry had become used to two-digit growth rates. The fact that the December figures pushed the total for the year up to 5.2 % will have alleviated the disappointment somewhat, but a portion of the growth will merely increase the stock on hand. A more serious portent is that the first signs of demand saturation have appeared in those...
