FiinGroup is pleased to introduce Vietnam Cement Market Report 2020, the first and most comprehensive issue on Vietnam cement industry. This report presents a board range of topics, both sector-specific and crosscutting market issues.

What’s New? The growth momentum of Vietnam cement industry in 2019 has slowed down significantly for both domestic and export market. Despite the slowdown in sales growth, local cement manufacturers managed to achieve an improvement in profitability with EBITDA margin from 16.3 percent in 2018 to 16.9 percent in 2019 thanks to good cost management & the increase in retail cement price.

This 2020 issue provides the latest information on current supply – demand situation in Vietnam cement sector with the in-depth analysis on key growth drivers, outlook for 2020 as well as forecast analysis until 2030. Especially, the analysis on retail bagged cement price for PCB30 and PCB40 by region and key brands is also included in this report.

Below are the most critical findings in our eighth issue:

1. Domestic cement sales volume edged up only 1.5 percent in 2019, much lower than the figure of 7.0 percent of the previous year. By region, cement sales volume in the North and Central grew at 3.2 percent and 2.2 percent in 2019 while the South recorded negative growth rate of -0.7 percent due to slow and tightened licensing process for new property projects.
2. Clinker & cement export activities experienced an increase for four consecutive years; however, the growth momentum has been slowing down to 7.1 percent. Clinker export volume witnessed a fall due to the slump in clinker volume by Bangladesh buyers while cement export continued to record a remarkable increase by 29.8 percent thanks to the strong demand from China in 2019.
3. Designed capacity of Vietnam cement industry is expected to surge in the next 4 years with the aggressive expansion by local private players including Tan Thang, Thanh Thang, Long Thanh and Vissai. Especially, the year 2021 is expected to witness a significant increase in cement supply sources thanks to the completion of 5 large projects.
4. VICEM and foreign owned players continued leading the market with 60% of domestic sales volume in 2019. Leveraging the leading position, VICEM achieved high utilization rate of 80%, which is higher than foreign-owned players’ average figure in 2019.
5. FiinGroup assesses the domestic market with a moderate outlook with the Government’s respond to reduce negative impact of the Covid-19 on the economy (credit & fiscal package, acceleration in public investment disbursement, etc.) and expected improvement in residential real estate launches in the second half of 2020. However, limited financing sources for real estate developers remain the key challenges. Meanwhile, export markets are assessed with a negative outlook due to limited demand from key export markets namely China and Bangladesh.
6. Cement industry recorded an improvement in profitability thanks to good cost management & the increase in retail cement price. In 2019, the increase of coal price and electricity tariff by 3.8 percent and 7.5 percent, resulted in an incline by 2.6 percent and 2.0 percent in production cost of clinker and cement, respectively. Meanwhile, on average, retail cement price was up by 3.3 percent in 2019, higher than the increment in clinker & cement production cost, contributing to the improvement of profitability of cement players.