Despite the fact that during the month of August, cement consumption in Catalonia fell by 1%, the market maintains the recovery that began in the second half of last year and shows an improvement of 8.2% in year-on-year terms. The 2.17 million tons consumed in the last 12 months are close to the volume that was registered in 2019, the year before the outbreak of the pandemic, although they still do not equal it.
The industry expects that the continuity in the recovery process of the domestic market will now be consolidated through the activity derived from the investments from the Next Generation European Funds aimed at promoting the ecological and digital transition. Although these EU Funds are not directly allocated to the Construction sector, they will involve the construction of infrastructures related to telecommunications, mobility or environmental protection, with the consequent effect on the use of cement and concrete.
The president of the employers’ association Ciment Català, Salvador Fernández Capo, affirms that “the sector foresees the evolution of the indicators with moderate optimism”. And he explains that “we see a trend towards improvement”, but he also recalls that obstacles such as the price of CO2 emission rights harm the activity of Catalan factories causing them to lose competitiveness. This has clearly had an impact on cement and clinker exports, which fell 27% in August.