Releasing the figures in a financial statement, Chinese cement and clinker producer DongWu said the national cement industry in H1 saw increases in both sales volumes and prices. However it added that the H1 2019 growth rate is lower than that for the first half of 2018.
DongWu says that growth in demand and compression in supply mean that the country’s cement and clinker stocks are at a medium-low level overall, ensuring that cement market prices are still at an "historically good" level.
It added: "Although the market pattern of strong demand in [the] south and weak in [the] north has not changed, the prices and supply and demand in the northern region represented by Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and the surrounding areas have improved significantly compared with last year."
Real estate investment in China saw an increase of 10.9% compared with H1 2018, driven by the growth of new construction areas and areas already under construction.
The central and local governments introduced measures that enabled the gradual recovery of infrastructure investment in H1 (particularly in the transportation segment) as compared with the end of last year.
These measures meant that national demand for cement was better than expected with a year-on-year increase of more than 5%. Growth was higher in the northern regions than in the south, according to Chinese industry news site dcement.com.
In H1 the average price for Portland (PO42.5) cement in China was RMB435 (€55.42) per tonne, a 4% year-on-year increase of RMB17 (€2.17) per tonne.
DongWu said that the general increase in both sales volume and price in China’s domestic cement industry in H1 meant that its group sales volume and operating income in the period both increased from H1 2018. In the first half of 2019, the group recorded profits from the cement segment of around RMB38.4m (€4.9m).
