Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, September 05, 2003
Over Half of World's New Cement Plants to be Built in China
The number of newly-built cement plants in China will surpass the total number of new ones to be built in the rest of the world in the coming years, said Intercem (International Cement Conference) CEO Malcolm Shelbourne Thursday.
The number of newly-built cement plants in China will surpass the total number of new ones to be built in the rest of the world in the coming years, said Intercem (International Cement Conference) CEO Malcolm Shelbourne Thursday.
Speaking at the 18th Intercem, Shelbourne said China not only produced one third of the world's cement, but also enjoyed the fastest-growing cement market in the past 10 years, which has created vast room for investment.
Although the Chinese government permits wholly foreign-investedcement companies, foreign investment accounts for only 1.5 percentof the industry so far, while the proportions are 50 percent in developed nations in Europe and North America, 60 percent in Thailand and 80 percent in Indonesia.
China's large-scale cement enterprises will enter the world's top 10 with their fast advancing cement techniques, Shelbourne said, adding that a single Chinese plant can produce the same amount of cement as that of many international plants in differentregions.
Tan Zhongming, president of the China National Non-metallic Minerals Industry Corporation (Group), said at the conference thatChina's cement industry will speed up its restructuring in the next 10 years, because only 20 percent of cement is produced through environmentally-friendly new techniques currently, and theinvestment cost has dropped sharply with the maturing technology.
Statistics show that China, with a total capacity of over 700 million tons, has become the world's largest cement producer since1985. The total value of China's cement industry in the first halfof 2003 reached 82 billion yuan (9.9 billion US dollars), the highest level in recent years.