BEIJING, Jun. 5 (Xinhua) -- China’s cement industry saw 14.708 billion yuan of profits in April, hitting a record high in history. From January to April, profits of the domestic cement industry stood at 33.748 billion yuan, hiking 220 percent year-on-year, the Xinhua-run China Securities Journal reported on Tuesday.
Industry insiders note that the domestic cement industry will enter the demand off-season in June-August. Efforts to limit production such as staggering production are expected to increase and there is limited room for the price decline.
Data of the Digital Cement, a domestic cement information platform, shows that last week the national cement price rose by 0.3 percent from previous week. In terms of the cement inventory, the cement storage capacity rate of key cities last week increased by 0.56 percentage points week on week to 54.31 percent, but representing a year-on-year decrease of 6.75 percent.
In addition, data of the Digital Cement which monitored the cement production in 60 major cities shows that the average operating rate of cement mills nationwide was 69.75 percent, down 0.17 percent week on week.
Recently, local authorities have frequently issued adjustment plans for mines and cement production capacities. The domestic limestone mines will develop from “small-scale, scattered and poorly distributed” mode to the “centralized, large-scale, and normalized” model, which will squeeze the overall capacity of the cement industry from the upstream industrial chain, meaning that the industrial concentration will be a trend and the large-scale cement enterprises will gain greater market shares.
Zhongtai Securities note that China has strengthened the capacity control in the cement industry. The demand off-season is expected not to appear and the prices will likely continue to remain high. In the following three months, the decline in the cement prices will be limited on the whole. (Edited by Hu Pingchao, hupingchao@xinhua.org)
A single purchase
