China Cement Network, the price of cement in central Hebei has almost always been the highland of Hebei since this year, among which Baoding ranks first in Hebei.
Local cement companies said that the relatively high price of cement in Baoding was mainly due to:
1. Close to Xiongan New Area, the construction of the new area brought some cement support , and last year's floods caused damage to some houses and infrastructure. The relevant recovery construction has also objectively brought support to the local cement demand;
2. The approval of Baoding mine is difficult. Among the six cement clinker enterprises, only one enterprise has its own mine for mining, and the other five cement enterprises can only rely on the purchase of limestone ore, so the cost of raw materials is high; In addition, the local industrial solid waste is significantly less than that in heavy industrial cities such as Tangshan, resulting in higher production costs of local cement and less room for price decline.
At the same time, the special terrain and the relatively high price make Jizhong become the coveted cement enterprises of the surrounding parties. Although there are six cement clinker enterprises
in Baoding, which are mainly concentrated in three brands, it is difficult to control the price trend.
"In this way, the price of Jizhong looks at Tangshan, and the price trend of Tangshan cement almost determines the price trend of Jizhong," said a local cement enterprise, although Tangshan is more than 200 kilometers away from Baoding. However, Baoding is an important sales market for Tangshan cement enterprises, and some cement enterprises in the south will also export cement to Baoding. Local cement enterprises
in Tangshan have also said that Baoding and other Jizhong markets account for a large proportion of enterprise sales.
From the topographic point of view, Jizhong Cement seems to have doomed Baoding to be a "strategic place". The terrain of Hebei can almost be described as "distinct". The western and northern parts are separated by natural terrain such as Taihang Mountains, Bashang Plateau and Yanshan Mountains. The plains are concentrated in the central, eastern and southern parts, forming a corridor terrain from south to north. Baoding and other places in the middle are vulnerable to the impact of cement enterprises in the north and south.
"We have been strictly implementing the staggered peak production plan in Hebei Province, but some enterprises in the north are not in place, and now the logistics cost is also reduced, and the freight from Tangshan is about 60-70 yuan/ton, which has a great impact on us," a local cement enterprise further said. In the first half of the year, the cement price situation in Baoding and Hebei as a whole remained good, but the contradictions accumulated among regional enterprises in the first half of the year may erupt in the second half of the year, which adds risks to the market trend in the second half of the year.
In addition, at present, the off-peak production time is getting longer and longer, which leads to the increase of production cost of enterprises, but the price transmission ability of downstream commercial mixing industry is weak, and the large regional cement market is increasingly showing the characteristics of "a chess game", and the small-scale price increase is also difficult to maintain. "In the current market situation, enterprises can not sacrifice their market share in order to raise prices, prices can fall, but the share can not be lost," a local enterprise said, in this context, cement prices are becoming more and more difficult.
On the one hand, the cost of off-peak production increases, on the other hand, the difficulty of price increase increases, and the contradiction between the two is becoming more and more difficult to reconcile. How long can price of Jizhong cement be maintained in the future? The above enterprises are slightly pessimistic.
