On May 18, the 2024 Annual Conference of the World Cement Association was held in Nanjing. Zheng Jianhui, chief analyst of Cement Big Data Research Institute of China Cement Network, gave a keynote speech on the current situation and trend analysis of China's cement industry from a global perspective.
Zheng Jianhui introduced that the overcapacity of China's cement industry continues to intensify, and it is urgent to speed up the capacity removal. From 2019 to 2023, the number of cement enterprises stabilized at about 2900, and the concentration of TOP10 production capacity stagnated. The real production capacity of clinker further increased, and the actual capacity utilization rate continued to decline.
Zheng Jianhui pointed out that China's cement price is a depression in the world. There are three main reasons: first, the supply is large and there is a lack of systematic long-term consideration; second, the labor cost is relatively small; third, the cost of carbon and energy saving and emission reduction is still low. Resource consumption does not match value, and there are many historical debts.
Zheng Jianhui predicts that China's cement demand will decline by at least 3% in 2024. The market starts slowly in the first quarter and is under the greatest pressure throughout the year. It is expected that the demand will decline by about 12%. It is expected that the decline will gradually narrow in the second, third and fourth quarters.
According to Zheng Jianhui's analysis, broadening the industrial chain, entering new energy and accelerating overseas development will be the main trend of cement enterprises in the future. In terms of
new energy, entering the new energy track such as photovoltaic, one is to reduce carbon, the other is to develop new industries and create a new growth curve. With large space and fast growth, the installed capacity of PV in the cement industry is currently 1 GW, accounting for 0.2%, and is expected to exceed 7 GW in 2030. In terms of
overseas development, the pace of domestic enterprises going out accelerated in 2023, and overseas clinker production capacity expanded to 64.65 million tons, an increase of 35%. Huaxin, West and Red Lion have expanded significantly, and overseas contributions have increased. In the future, there will still be room for growth in blank areas such as Africa and the Middle East, and enterprises with strong strength will choose opportunities to speed up the pace of going to sea.
