Holcim assures normalized cement supply after holidays

NORZAGARAY, Bulacan , Philippines  — Global cement giant Holcim has assured that the supply of cement in the market will normalize after the Christmas holidays.

Ed Sahagun, sales manager of Holcim’s cement plant here, made the assurance that cement supply will be back to normal soon as repair works on their machine have been completed and would operational before Christmas.

The Holcim official insisted there is no shortage in the supply of cement in the market, even as trucks had lined up in their factories waiting to be loaded for days. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) earlier confirmed a shortage mainly due to the rush to complete large government infrastructure projects to avoid the election ban.

Bobby Sajonia, Holcim’s vice president for operations, said they were just conducting preventive maintenance on their milling machine, thus the need to shut down one of their mills that reduced their production capacity to half. This led to trucks hauling cement to form a long line in front of their Norzagaray plant since last week.

“Its just normal to have 100 to 200 trucks lining up in our factory because our production capacity is 200,000 bags per day,” he said.

The same was echoed by Apolonio Placido, the plant’s manager for logistics, saying that trucks hauling cement to different destinations used to stay on their parking lot for while, even if they are already loaded as they are avoiding the truck ban in Metro Manila.

Due to the lack of supply, the retail price of bagged cement has skyrocketed. The DTI said the shortage started two weeks ago.

“The cement shortage is already a national concern,” said Rhine Aldana, the DTI provincial director in Bulacan, noting that they have validated the supply problem as hardware and other store retailing cement in Bulacan reported limited stocks.

Aldana said the production of Holcim and Republic Cement factories in Bulacan remain normal as they produce at least hundreds of thousands of bags a day. But those were not enough as trailer trucks that used to haul bagged cement have already lined up at the two factories in Norzagaray town.