Spanish cement demand falls 4% in November

Cement consumption in Spain fell 4.4 per cent YoY to 1.104Mt in November, according to Oficemen, the country’s cement association. In the year to date, demand has reached 13,321Mt.

Exports dropped 30.2 per cent YoY to 0.449Mt from approximately 0.648Mt in November 2018. In the January-November period exports have dropped 21.5 per cent YoY to approximately 5.842Mt.
Meanwhile, imports, of mainly clinker, have grown 41 per cent in November and 100 per cent in the year to date to 0.45Mt.

“At the recent climate summit in Madrid, the Spanish cement industry made clear its commitment in the fight against climate change, investing in innovation, manufacturing new cements with a lower carbon footprint and using fuels derived from waste in place of fossils , most of them totally or partially biomass, carbon neutral. This commitment to the planet must be extended to the rest of the non-EU economies if we do not want to witness the disappearance of the European cement industry in the medium term, something that, let's not forget, would lead to an increase in emissions, derived from production in third countries with little commitment in the fight against climate change”, explains Oficemen President, Víctor García Brosa.

“We also manufacture a product that applied to construction allows to reduce the energy consumption of buildings, thanks to the high thermal inertia of concrete. All this, in order to fulfill our responsibility as a CO2 emitting industry, ”says Mr García Brosa, who adds that“ The figures for the drop in exports and the increase in imports in our country are a good example of the loss of competitiveness to which Our industry is driven by the extra cost of emission rights vis-à-vis third countries, as well as because the price of electricity for the industry in our country is still 27 per cent more expensive than in Germany or France. ”