Ukrcement calls for European production standards

The introduction of European standards for cement production in Ukraine would help to restrict opportunities for producing and distributing counterfeit products in the market, according to Roman Skilsky, CEO of Ukrcement, the country’s cement association.

"We declare that from 1 January 2017 we, as the sector, could switch to production and testing of cement under new standards. We believe that the new standards would help to cut off, or at least narrow the opportunities for companies producing counterfeit products," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

Skilsky said that large construction materials retail chains allow the sales of counterfeit cement in their stores. The most obvious sign of counterfeit products is wrong labelling of cement bags.

"The wrong labelling is a first signal of counterfeit products in the package. First, buyers should be attentive when there is no information about the manufacturer on the package. There are such cases everywhere, even in large chains," he said.

He said that after the recent monitoring of the packaged cement market finished late 2015, Epicenter and Nova Linia retail chains took measures to remove wrongly-labelled products from their stores.