Cemex UK sales on the slide
Cemex has said that sales across all its products in the UK will be down this year, according to reports from Construction News, UK.
The firm said that poor weather in the first three months of this year meant demand for its cement and ready mixed concrete on sites had fallen away. Only aggregates continued to hold up.
This gloomy news was compounded by the revelation that Cemex expects cement sales to be down by around five per cent and ready mixed by about seven per cent throughout the remainder of 2008. Aggregates will drop by two per cent.
The UK president of the company said fewer business days in the first quarter had also contributed to the slide – last year’s accounting period for the first three months ran into April while Easter and the accompanying two Bank Holidays was early this year.
This saw cement sales slip six per cent and ready mixed fall seven per cent.
Gonzalo Galindo said: "Demand is being affected by a slowdown in private new housing work, repair and maintenance and industrial sectors." Cemex is ploughing more than UK£65m into its businesses in 2008 and it will open a new blended cement facility at Tilbury in Essex later this year.
Published under Cement News
