Spanish cement consumption drops by 16% in March

Cement consumption fell by 15.5 per cent in March, to 1,164,416t, according to Oficemen, Spain's cement association. This figure represents a loss of 213,479t compared to the same month last year, largely due to the transport strike, with a heterogeneous incidence throughout the national territory, said the association.

“The situation resulting from the stoppage of transport has already been corrected in our industry and, currently, the supply chain to and from our factories is operating normally. The month of March has been very marked, especially in the second half, by the transport strike that made it impossible in some cases, both the arrival of raw materials, as well as the subsequent distribution of cement to the concrete plants and to the works. They were two critical weeks in which many links in our supply chain were severely affected”, explains Oficemen President, José Manuel Cascajero. "On the other hand, the problem of the cost of production due to the inflation of energy costs persists," he stresses.

The fall in consumption in March has caused a loss of 12.5 points in the accumulated growth of the first quarter, which now stands at 3.5 per cent, compared to 16 per cent in February, with an absolute value of 3.4Mt. In the YoY calculation of the last 12 months (April 2021-March 2022), growth of 10.7 per cent is maintained, six percentage points below the growth reported in February, although it allows it to continue to exceed, in absolute values, the barrier of 15Mt.

Exports accumulate 300,000t loss in 1Q22
In the month of March, exports fell by 25.3 per cent, to 498,178t almost, 169,000t less than in the same month last year. This places the accumulated drop in the first quarter at 17.2 per cent, with a loss of almost 300,000t.

“Although the situation of our exports, weighed down by extremely high energy costs, continued to be critical in March, we are optimistic about the measures approved by RD-L 6/2022 at the end of March, including the 80 per cent reduction in the toll transmission and distribution, or the limitation to EUR67/MWh for new bilateral contracts or renewal of existing ones. However, the main measure to recover the competitiveness of the electro-intensive sectors, decoupling the price of electricity from gas, is still pending approval by the European Commission,” explained the president of Oficemen.