Total shipments of Portland and blended cement in the USA and Puerto Rico in December were 6.04Mt, representing a 8.6 per cent YoY fall, according to the US Geological Survey. The total includes 617,045t of imports to supplement the 5.42Mt supplied by domestic producers.

Texas was the leading cement-consuming state, followed by California, Florida, Georgia and New York. These states received 44 per cent of December shipments.

The leading cement-producing states were Texas, California, Florida, Missouri and Alabama (in descending order).

Clinker production reached 5.52Mt in December 2016, down 20 per cent from December 2015.

The leading clinker-producing states were Texas, California, Missouri, Florida and Alabama (in descending order).

Full-year data
Cement sales for 2016 totalled 93.3Mt, up 1.9 per cent when compared with 2015. Of this total, some 82.65Mt was supplied by US producers while 10.65Mt was imported.

Clinker output in 2016 totalled 75.67Mt, slipping modestly YoY from 76.6Mt in 2015.

Imports of hydraulic cement and clinker came mainly from Canada, which imported 4.55Mt of cement with a total value of US$375.19m into the US. Other sizeable volumes originated in Greece (2.47Mt), China (1.74Mt) and Turkey (1.6Mt). Smaller but significant volumes were imported by South Korea (758,757t), Spain (617,932t) and Mexico (479,649t).