Paraguay’s INC on track to achieve 11m bag production goal

Paraguay’s cement industry produced 1,070,000 bags of cement in October 2024, according to Gerardo Guerrero, president of state-owned cement producer INC. The company sold 1,272,000 bags of cement during the month.

“This gives us the security of having a significant production autonomy to be able to achieve our goal of 11m bags of cement that we have been setting for 2024”, Mr Guerrero said.

He added that all this was possible thanks to the planning of "our supply chain, despite the fact that the water conditions of the Paraguay River are not the best, so we had to migrate our entire logistics chain to the land modality, these numbers were achieved 100 per cent with the land freight modality and despite all this our quota in the national market is 37 per cent, all this work was thanks to the continuity of production in the Vallemí and Villeta plants."

INC is currently seeking to lower its debt ratio and have a stable financial and accounting structure. To achieve this, the company is reducing the raw material and other input costs. It has reduced the cost of land freight from PYG256,000/t (US$32.90/t) to PYG234,000/t.

“As of 30 September of this year, with a partially closed financial statement, we have a variation of just PYG9bn, which represents just 1.5 per cent of the total income, which is PYG465bn that we have already achieved as of 30 September. This compared to 2023, where the loss had already been PYG65bn, is quite auspicious for us,” Mr Guerrero said.