Russia May Finish Off The Belarusian Cement Industry
- 11.08.2025, 9:17
The Russian Federation proposed to introduce anti-dumping duties.
There is an oversupply of cement on the Russian market, which has led to producers switching to shorter working weeks. Another of their proposals is to introduce anti-dumping duties against importers, the largest of which is Belarus.
The largest Russian cement producer "Tsemros" said that cement imports to Russia should be limited to 1.5 million tons per year. Since October 1, the company has been forced to switch to a four-day working week.
The company explains the decision by the continuing decline in cement consumption in Russia and the growing share of imports.
As RIA Novosti reports, against the backdrop of this situation, the industry association Soyuzcement suggests introducing a number of protective measures in the Russian market, including anti-dumping measures for up to five years with the possibility of repeated extensions. According to the organization, the main foreign suppliers of cement to Russia are Belarus, Kazakhstan and Iran. Imports from China and Vietnam have also increased.
"It is indicative that from 2019 to 2024, the total capacity of the Russian consumption market grew by less than 16%, with imports of construction material almost tripling. By the summer of this year, the trend had reached a threatening scale for the industry: cement imports from Belarus, Iran and Kazakhstan, despite the obvious deterioration of the situation, continued to rise. Their current volume is commensurate with the full coverage of six or seven Russian regions or two or three cement plants with cement, and this is at a time when Russian enterprises in conditions of under-utilization are switching to a part-time working week mode and stopping production," - the press service of "Cementros" drew attention.
In the company's opinion, in the current realities "foreign manufacturers, selling millions of tons of cement to the Russian market, in fact, without attracting attention "skim the cream" from the monetary measures adopted in 2020-2023 by the government and the President of the Russian Federation to support the construction industry, the main beneficiaries of which, according to the idea of the authorities, should have been domestic manufacturers."
"On the short-term horizon, a fair solution is to fix the volume of cement imports to the levels observed before the introduction of preferential mortgages, namely a ceiling of 1.5 million cement products per year, which will help load our own domestic capacity by at least 2 million per year. For full long-term planning of investment and production activities, timely modernization of production facilities, predictability of government policy, unconditional achievement of plans for commissioning of 120 million square meters of housing per year, fixed in strategic planning documents, as well as stimulation of construction of concrete roads, are also extremely important," according to "Tsemros".
They expect that if the negative scenario is implemented, cement consumption in Russia in 2025 may decrease by 10-15% compared to 2024, when the consumption of cement in the country will be reduced by 1.5 million square meters per year.