Cement sales in Brazil fell by 6.6 per cent YoY to 5.51Mt in July 2022 from 5.899Mt in July 2021, according to the Brazilian cement association, SNIC. However, when considering dispatch per working day, the decrease is only 2.6 per cent YoY. Exports saw a 33.3 per cent drop to 28,000t in July 2022 from 42,000t in July 2021.

January-July 2022
In the first seven months of 2022, domestic dispatches were down to 3.3 per cent to 36.094Mt from 37.334Mt in the 7M21. In addition, cement producers saw a 13 per cent decline in export sales to 221,000t in the 7M22 from 254Mt in the year-ago period.

Outlook
However, going forward the view for Brazil’s cement companies is less optimistic. The country’s cement producers have seen input costs such as energy, freight, sacks, gypsum and refractories surge. Energy inputs such as petcoke have been particularly affected by the Ukraine-Russia war. At home, the increase in the Selic rate to 13.75 per cent makes access to housing finance more challenging but the announcement of changes to the Casa Verde e Amarela programme has injected new energy into the low-income real estate sector, says SNIC.

“The slowdown in global growth, the increase in national and international interest rates and the uncertainties in the Brazilian economy, signal a less optimistic end of year for the cement industry, which predicts a drop in sales in 2022,” saidPaulo Camillo Penna, president of SNIC.