The Global Cement Industry

Book excerpt: Cement is one of the most basic building materials in the global construction industry. Nevertheless, although it occupies an important role in construction, its characteristics in the global sense are still relatively unknown. The findings in this book reveal, for example, that the manufacture of cement is predominantly capital intensive; that the production and distribution of cement is a highly vertically integrated trade; that the major cement producers resort to large scale price cutting when there are production surpluses; that geographical affinity can determine the flow of the global cement trade; and that the global demand for cement is erratic, and more.