Cemex US volumes boosted by mild weather

Cemex said it may have recorded strong growth in US cement volumes in the first two months of the year helped by good weather.

"The first two months of the year have been great; demand nationwide has been up in excess of 20 per cent YoY," Maher Al-Haffar, vice president of corporate communications and investor relations, told Reuters in an interview.

"A very important driver is the fact that we had fantastic weather in the first quarter and last year in the first quarter we had particularly cool weather. March continues to be very good weather as well, but we need to be very cautious not draw any conclusions."

Al-Haffar said Cemex boosted its prices by US$5/t in January mostly in the US Midwest. The company is expected to intitate another increase of between US$5-6 for April, effective in a larger number of US markets.

Yesterday, Cemex said in a statement to the Mexican stock exchange that it will pre-pay MXP2.62bn (US$203.88m) in local debt plus one month of interest payments on 9 April.

Source: Reuters