Lafarge’s first quarter cement off by 4.1%

The Lafarge group turnover rose by an underlying 1.9% to EUR  2,945m in the first three months of the year, with the contribution from cement being 2.1% higher at EUR 1550m.  Including sales to the downstream operations, that represents a gross 52.6% of the total.  Cement shipments in the period amounted to 24.1Mt, an underlying decline of 4.1% and some 2% below the level of the corresponding period last year.
 
European cement deliveries declined by 0.5Mt to 7.9Mt, with western Europe showing a 4% reduction 6.6Mt and eastern Europe showing a 13% drop to 1.3Mt, while the external European cement turnover was 4.0% lower at €531m, with a further €50m going into the downstream businesses.  Some of the countries worst affected by the weather effects were Germany, where domestic deliveries fell by 37.0%, and Serbia with a 30.4% decline, while the 25.1% volume reduction in Poland also reflects high shipments in the early part of last year to beat the VAT increase.  A 15.2% drop in Greece follows the end of the Olympic boom.  Domestic deliveries in the United Kingdome were down by 10.9% and in France by 4.5%. Spain, which was unaffected by the bad weather in much of the rest of Europe saw volumes increase.  Further east, domestic deliveries rose by 17.1% in Romania and by around 5% in the Ukraine.