In the first three months of 2022, the total cement production of TURKÇİMENTO members decreased by 11.7% year-on-year to 14.5 million tons. Domestic sales also decreased by 19.3% to 9.8 million tons in the January-March period. In the first quarter of this year, 31.3% of the cement produced was exported.
Fatih Yücelik, Chairman of the Board of Directors of TÜRKÇİMENTO, said, “The extraordinary increases in energy costs due to the Russia-Ukraine crisis have negatively affected the input costs of cement producers to an unprecedented extent. It is estimated that our production costs will continue to increase due to the prolongation of this crisis. Considering the serious decline in the domestic sales of our sector in the first three months of 2022, except for the Aegean Region, it does not seem possible for us to achieve the growth of around 6 percent in 2021 under current conditions. We remain confident that the Russia-Ukraine crisis will end soon and that the stagnation in the domestic market will improve by the summer. Despite the fact that our exports increased in the first three months, sales in the domestic market need to reach the levels of last year in order for our sector to cope with the cost increases it is experiencing today.”
2022 First Five Months Exports
According to the provisional data of the Exporters’ Associations, total exports of the cement sector increased by 28% in value terms in the January-May period of 2022 compared to the same period of the previous year, from 507 million dollars to 649 million dollars. Total exports, on the other hand, decreased by 1.6% to 12.6 million tons. 7.8 million tons of cement and 4.8 million tons of clinker were exported.