Islamabad: Cement shipments fell by 4.75% in February 2022. Total cement shipments in February 2022 were 4.36 million tonnes, compared to 4.57 million tonnes shipped in the same month of the previous fiscal.
According to data released by the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA), the industry’s local cement shipments stood at 3.95 million tonnes in February 2022 compared to 3.96 million tonnes in February 2021, a decrease of 0.17%. Exports fell sharply by 34.18% as exports fell from 616,030 tonnes in February 2021 to 405,489 tonnes in February 2022.
In February 2022, Northern Cement Plant shipped 3.214 million tons of cement in the domestic market, a decrease of 1.95% from 3.278 million tons in February 2021. Southern Cement Plant shipped 740,595 tonnes of cement in the local market in February 2022, an increase of 8.37% from February 2022 and 683,384 tonnes in February 2021.
Exports from the northern mills fell sharply by 78.08%, from 186,595 t in February 2021 to 40,902 t in February 2022. Exports from the South also fell by 15.1% to 364,587 tonnes in February 2022 from 429,435 tonnes in the same month last year.
In the first eight months of the current fiscal, total cement shipments (domestic and export) were 35.78 million tons, down 5.75% from 37.95 million tons in the same period last fiscal year. Further analysis shows that domestic imports of the commodity fell by 0.63% to 31.42 million tonnes from 31.61 million tonnes in the July-February 2021 period, while exports fell sharply over the same period from 6.33 million tonnes in the July-February 2021 period 31.35% to 4.34 million tons.
In the first eight months of the financial year, North’s Mills shipped 26.08 million tonnes of cement domestically, a decrease of 2.74% from the 26.82 million tonnes it shipped between July 2021 and February 2021. Exports from North fell 63.3% to 598,517 tonnes in the July-February period, with exports of 1.63 million tonnes in 2022 compared to the same period last year.
In July-February 2022, domestic shipments from the southern plant were 5.33 million tonnes, an 11.2% increase from the 4.79 million tonnes of cement shipped in the same period last fiscal year. Exports from the southern region, however, fell sharply by around 20.27%, as exports for the first eight months of the current fiscal fell to 3.74 million tonnes from 4.7 million tonnes in the same period last fiscal year.
