The lack of public works and the paralysis due to the uncertainty of the future cause the drop in cement consumption

The Catalan cement industry faces the challenge of continuing its activity after the latest market statistics seem to confirm that the expected recovery will not be achieved once the Covid-19 pandemic is over. In fact, during the month of August, cement consumption fell by 1.5% in Catalonia and stood at 160 thousand tons, a figure lower than that of 2021 and practically identical to that of August 2020, in the midst of a health emergency.

The retraction in demand is explained, according to the analysis by the president of Ciment Català, Salvador Fernández Capo, in the poor evolution “of investment in public works and a certain paralysis of activity caused by uncertainty about the future and the evolution of the costs“. For the sector leader, “the sector suffers from a double problem” in this sense. On the one hand, “we continue to have an extremely low level of public bidding per capita if we compare it with the European average.” But, in addition, “the degree of materialization of these bids in public works is also very low. In addition, the uncertainty about the future and the real costs may even be stopping works in progress and delaying promotions. In the last decade, about a third of the bids placed have not ended up being executed, ”he says.

This situation not only harms the cement sector but “harms our society as a whole, since the energy, environmental, social and logistics infrastructures that should make the country progress and prevent its decline are not being built.” This prevents applying solutions to problems such as energy costs, the ecological transition, the water cycle (at a time of extreme drought), the mobility of citizens or the lack of health, educational or social use facilities.
The fall in the domestic market is not compensated by sales in foreign markets: although in August they increased significantly compared to the same month in 2021, in the last year as a whole they also fell by 10.9%. All this has led to a decrease in production, which in August fell by 9%. In parallel to these operating magnitudes, the energy costs that Catalan cement factories have to face remain at historical highs.