Cement shipments fell 55% in April and expect annual level similar to 2004

Cement shipments fell 55.1% in April compared to the same month last year and were at the lowest monthly level since the first half of 2003, with just 407,645 tons, the chamber that groups companies in the sector reported today. .

The volume expected by cement manufacturers for all of 2020 is lower than that reached during 2006, after several years of post-convertibility collapse, at the beginning of the century, and the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Portland Cement Manufacturers Association (Afcp) projected a 20.5% year-on-year drop last month, as a result of the cessation of activities due to the coronavirus, but now it preferred to discontinue that estimate “due to the uncertainty of the health situation” .

For now, deliveries last month were 19.7% lower than in March, and thus accumulated 2.3 million tons in the four-month period, 35.5% less than in the same period of 2019.

The collapse of the offices reflected the worsening of the fall in the private and public demand of the housing, road, public works and infrastructure sectors in all the districts of the country.

The companies that make up the Afcp (Loma Negra, Holcim, Cementos Avellaneda and PCR) have an installed capacity of 15.3 million tons per year, 1.27 million tons per month, which in March was only used by 32%, one more step down compared to 39.5% last month.

The collapse of production and cement sales accelerated after the devaluation of the peso in August last year, after the primary elections.

Since then, the recessive situation started in 2018 worsened, when shipments decreased 1% compared to 2017, according to Afcp statistics.

The crisis continued in 2019 with a drop in shipments of 6.1%, to 11.1 million tons, a figure that the Manufacturers Association expected to repeat this year, according to expectations it maintained in January.

This perspective, however, was revised downwards in view of the results of the first quarter, before the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and, now, the Afcp projects a decline to levels not registered in the last 14 years.

The volume of shipments expected by cement manufacturers is slightly lower than that reached during 2006, after several years of post-convertibility collapse, at the beginning of the century.