US Cement Industry Experiences Healthy Growth in Expansion Activity

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The following is an advisory by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Inc.; Houston, Texas). According to the United States Geological Society (USGS), cement consumption in the U.S. has increased by 3 to 5% every year for the past six years and is currently at about 111 million tons per year. To keep pace with demand, the U.S. imports roughly 25% of its cement from foreign sources. These factors have sparked an unprecedented era of expansion for U.S. cement producers, as they try to meet continually increasing demand. Almost every cement producer in the U.S is at some stage of planning or constructing new capacity, states Joseph Govreau, Metals & Minerals Group Manager at Industrialinfo.com. This trend should continue for the next few years until demand levels off and new capacity comes on line.

There are currently 117 cement plants in the U.S. with design capacity of approximately 100 million tons per year of total capacity. According to the USGS, current capacity utilization is about 85% to 90%; however, this is a misleading figure, because most of these plants are running at full capacity for most of the year. They are shutdown once or twice a year for rotary kiln and grinding mill maintenance. Consequently, these plants are running at near capacity, and are producing about 86 million tons per year of available cement for the market.

Industrialinfo.com has identified 19.3 million tons per year of new capacity expected to come online in the next 2 to 4 years. Of this new capacity about 6.4 million tons per year is already under construction and the remaining 12.9 million tons per year is in the planning and engineering stage. Notably, Holnam Incorporated (Dundee Michigan), the U.S. subsidiary of Holcim Limited (Switzerland), has recently completed 2.6 million tons per year of new capacity at its plants in Utah, Colorado, and Texas. Holnam is also in the process of constructing one million tons per year of new capacity on the East Coast and is planning to build the world's largest cement plant on a 2,600 acre site along the Mississippi River.