Cement statistics for October 2011

Another part of our puzzle, cement sales were released yesterday afternoon after the market closed. These are released by the South African Cement and Concrete Institute. And as they point out, the CMCI collects this data from the following cement producers: Pretoria Portland Cement, Lafarge, AfriSam, NPC-Cimpor, Ash Resources, Sephaku Ash and Ulula Ash. So, all the majors submit their data to the folks who aggregate it and kindly we get this data delivered to our inboxes every month. Here goes, for the month of October there was a third consecutive month of over one million tons sold. 10.3 percent better than the same month last year. BUT, slightly worse than last month. The year to date figure suggests that we are around 2.9 percent ahead of last years weak number. The more important number (for me anyhow) to look at is the moving annual total, which compares the last 12 months to the 12 months prior to that. And that shows an increase of 2.3 percent. Here are a couple of graphs to help you with this data.

There was however one less selling day in October versus September, and on an average sales per day basis this is the best month since August 2009. Check out the graph of daily volumes to get an idea of the trend:

Last month I said the following after having seen the numbers: "perhaps the bottom has passed (I am calling it) and demand is starting to improve. In fact September is a record sales month for the whole of this year, last year and the year before. Is that enough of a sign that "things" are indeed starting to get better? Let's call it." The trend certainly seems intact and judging from the price action in PPC yesterday post their iffy numbers, Mr. Market probably is in agreement that we have bottomed and are starting to look better. Check out the monthly year on year comparison and see how "things" have improved, admittedly the base is much lower, but this is telling you that it looks better out there: