In 2024, the national cement industry continued to show a grim situation of "weak demand, low price and sharp decline in efficiency". According to statistics, the production capacity of the whole industry is less than 53%, the overall profit is cut in half year on year, and most enterprises have issued pre-loss announcements. However, in distress, an enterprise with only 2500 tons of clinker production line per day has grown against the trend and become a bright spot in the cold winter of the industry.
removal should be strictly in accordance with existing policies. The Catalogue of Industrial Structure Adjustment (2024 edition) clearly States that the encouragement category is mainly aimed at "projects that are conducive to the conservation and intensive use of natural resources and the green and low-carbon transformation of industries, helping to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutralization; projects whose energy efficiency after transformation reaches the benchmark level in the latest edition of Benchmarking and Benchmarking Levels of Energy Efficiency in Key Industrial Areas"; Among them, the encouraged category of building materials industry includes "cement raw materials substitution and collaborative disposal technology"; the restricted category is "new dry process cement clinker production line below 2000 tons/day (excluding) (except special cement production line)". In addition, in October 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission and other five ministries and commissions issued the Action Plan for Promoting Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction through Strict Energy Efficiency Constraints in Key Metallurgical and Building Materials Industries (2021-2025), which proposed to "guide the orderly withdrawal of inefficient production capacity by giving full play to the role of binding indicators such as energy consumption and emissions"; In June 2023, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments issued the Benchmarking Level and Benchmark Level of Energy Efficiency in Key Industrial Areas (2023 Edition) (Development and Reform Industry [2023] 723), pointing out that "for projects with energy efficiency lower than benchmark level, enterprises should be guided to carry out technological transformation or elimination of energy saving and carbon reduction in an orderly manner." Projects that cannot be completed on schedule will be eliminated. In terms of policy guidance, the energy efficiency level and carbon reduction effect of cement enterprises are clearly required, and the social responsibilities of enterprises such as using solid waste fuel substitution and co-disposal of waste in cement kilns are also encouraged. Therefore, the direction of policy guidance is to eliminate inefficient and high-carbon production capacity that does not contribute to social responsibility. Capacity
removal should prevent "one size fits all" based on the size of the production line. China Building Materials Federation also mentioned in its 2021 publication entitled "Guiding the orderly withdrawal of inefficient production capacity in accordance with the law and regulations to prevent the wrong tendency of" one size fits all "and" campaign carbon reduction "that" small-scale production lines should not be simply equated with backward production capacity ". Of the 28 cement enterprises in the list of energy efficiency "leaders" of key energy-using industries in China in 2020, 5 have cement clinker production lines of 2500 tons per day or less, while some relatively large-scale production lines are not included. Therefore, it is not sufficient to simply use the scale as the basis for dividing backward production capacity. Globally, the clinker production of cement kiln line in Europe is mainly concentrated in the production capacity below 2000 tons per day, accounting for about 57%. Taking Germany as an example, the annual clinker production capacity is about 23.9 million tons, the cement production capacity is about 32 million tons, and the average scale of new dry process kilns is about 2600 tons per day (data from the article "Overview and Enlightenment of Alternative Fuel Development in German Cement Industry" by Engineering Technology Branch of China Silicate Society). Learning from the European experience, it shows that the small kiln line can make great achievements by adopting advanced technology and equipment, improving the level of production management and making its energy efficiency reach the advanced level. The article also analyzes from a technical point of view that the energy efficiency level of the production line is not necessarily related to the scale of the kiln line. "It is an important way to reduce the energy consumption and carbon emission level of the industry by utilizing the existing cement kilns, absorbing the solid waste and co-disposal characteristics of the surrounding cities and towns, adapting measures to local conditions, taking cement enterprises as the functional standard of the city and playing the role of" city purifier ". From the point of view of compliance, it is also against the industrial policy orientation of the competent authorities to simply and roughly eliminate production lines on a large scale. The scale of
production capacity should match local conditions and demand. Under the goal of "double carbon", the cement industry, as a "big carbon emitter" (accounting for 7% of the global total emissions), is facing unprecedented environmental pressure. The author finds that for every 10% increase in single-line capacity, carbon emissions per unit product can be reduced by 2% -3%, but the total emissions will increase by 5% -8% due to the expansion of scale. If we blindly expand production capacity, it will directly impact the regional "carbon budget" balance. At the same time, the cement product market has strong regional attributes, when enterprises build super-large-scale production lines, they often need to compete for the market across regions, which not only intensifies the price war, but also leads to the waste of social logistics costs. Taking a new 12,000 tons/day production line of an enterprise as an example, the author estimates that the theoretical production cost is 10% lower than that of the 5,000 tons/day production line, but the actual logistics cost increases by 18% due to the need for long-distance transportation to cover a wider market; at the same time, the complexity of the equipment increases exponentially, and the annual maintenance cost increases by 50 million yuan. This phenomenon of "diseconomy of scale" is particularly significant when the transportation radius exceeds 300 kilometers, which leads enterprises to fall into the dilemma of "high productivity, low income". In the stock market with declining demand, it is more suitable for miniaturized and flexible production lines. Therefore, according to the actual situation of resource distribution, transportation consumption, market capacity and regional economic differences, it is more conducive to the healthy development of local cement enterprises to formulate capacity withdrawal policies according to local conditions. Still taking Huaxin Wanyuan as an example, the production line matches the local market demand, the kiln operation rate is nearly 90%, and its cost, consumption and emission are maintained at a good level. Imagine that if the clinker production capacity of the production line is 5000 tons per day, the operation rate will drop to 45%, the cost, consumption and emission will rise sharply, and the market competitiveness will be lost.
To sum up, under the background of tightening resource constraints, upgrading environmental protection requirements and reshaping market structure, the old logic of "big is good" has become unsustainable. In the future, intellectualization and low-carbon will become the new coordinates of high-quality development of cement industry, and reasonable control of production capacity scale is the first key to open this change.
Finally, whether the conditional regional market can explore the merger of cement enterprises, reduce the main body of market operation, and change from policy to capacity to enterprise's independent decision-making to capacity, the "industry standard" will further exchange and discuss with industry experts.
