Sales of the cement industry have exceeded their pre-pandemic position. The contribution of exports to total cement sales, which continued to increase last year, was considered to be the main driver. The Indonesian Cement Association (ASI) recorded that total cement sales in 2021 will reach 77 million tons. This achievement slightly increased by 0.96% compared to the 2019 realization of 76.2 million tons and an increase of 6.94 percent from the 2020 position of 72 million tons. "The export program is progressing rapidly, increasing (about) 25% this year (2021) which is 11.6 million tons compared to last year (2020) of around 9.2 million tons," said ASI Chairman Widodo Santoso in an official statement, quoted on Wednesday. (26/1). The main destination country for national cement exports is Bangladesh or as much as 45% of the total volume. The next export destination countries are the Philippines (11%), China (9%), Australia (9%), and Taiwan (6%). Meanwhile, national cement consumption recorded an annual increase of 5.9% to 66.21 million tons. This realization is still lower than the 2019 achievement of 69.99 million tons. As is known, the pandemic has hit the domestic cement industry and made the national cement consumption shrink by 10.4% to 62.72 million tons in 2020. Although export performance rose 44% on an annual basis to 9.27 million tons, the total sales of the cement industry in 2020 slumped 5.8% to 72 million tonnes.
The main driver of the improvement in domestic cement consumption was an increase in consumption in Java by 5.5 percent to 35.69 million tons. This growth in Java is important because about 55% of national consumption comes from this island. In addition, cement consumption growth was also driven by an increase in consumption in Sulawesi Island by 20.1 percent to 6.44 million tons. This increase in consumption was supported by demand in Central Sulawesi and West Sulawesi due to strategic infrastructure projects, such as the Trans Sulawesi road and smelter construction projects. "The increase in domestic consumption is dominated by an increase in (cement for) property of 10.2%, while infrastructure is only 2.75% of total domestic consumption. The development of national economic growth is quite promising, for 2022 it is estimated that the increase in domestic cement consumption is around 5 %," said Widodo. In 2021, Widodo said that there will be two new factories operating in 2021, namely PT Semen Imasco Asiatic (Semen Singa Merah) in East Java and PT Semen Grobogan in Central Java.
Thus, the total installed capacity of the national cement industry will increase by 5 million tons to 116 million tons. In other words, the condition of the oversupply of the national cement industry is now increasing to 45 million tons in 2021. This is because the average cement sales can only reach around 70 million tons per year. "ASI together with all its members sincerely request that the government immediately issue a written regulation regarding no new factory construction permits so that the continuity of the cement industry's performance can be guaranteed," said Widodo. coal recently. According to him, coal is an important component in the export sales of the cement industry. So far, export performance has contributed about 15% of total sales. As a result, Widodo assesses the effectiveness of the implementation of the coal DMO to be important to maintain export performance which in turn maintains the level of utilization of the national cement industry.
