GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Ce­ment prices are set to in­crease by sev­en per cent from Feb­ru­ary 17, which is al­most a year to the day since it was last in­creased.

The in­crease in the price of bulk ce­ment, how­ev­er, takes ef­fect on March 5. The price hike was con­firmed yes­ter­day by a spokesper­son from the coun­try’s lone ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­er, Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL).

This means that ce­ment prices will in­crease for a fifth time since De­cem­ber 2021 and the in­crease is ex­pect­ed to be from around $3.60 to $4, ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s cal­cu­la­tions.

The spokesper­son said the price ad­just­ment will ini­tial­ly be on the ce­ment bags while the in­crease on the bulk ce­ment will come at “a lat­er date.”

Re­gard­ing the cu­mu­la­tive in­crease in the price of ce­ment, an in­dus­try source said, “If the sev­en per cent price in­crease in ce­ment is across the two ce­ments pro­duced by TCL, the cu­mu­la­tive in­crease in price over the last 38 months is ap­prox­i­mate­ly Pre­mi­um Plus - 45 per cent; and Eco ce­ment 32 per cent.”

The last time TCL in­creased prices was Feb­ru­ary 19, 2024.

The com­pa­ny had then not­ed that due to the con­tin­u­ous in­fla­tion that af­fects the in­dus­try and oth­er eco­nom­ic sec­tors, it had be­come nec­es­sary to ad­just the price of ce­ment by $3 per sack. This took the price of the 42.5 kilo­gramme (kg) bag of Pre­mi­um Plus ce­ment to $57.38 VAT-in­clu­sive, while Eco Ce­ment in 42.5kg sacks rose to $52.88 VAT in­clu­sive.

“This de­ci­sion is un­avoid­able to cope with the es­ca­lat­ing costs of nat­ur­al gas, raw ma­te­ri­als, spare parts, and oth­er es­sen­tial in­puts, which have risen sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the past year. We have con­tin­ued to in­vest in en­hanc­ing our ef­fi­cien­cies, up­grad­ing our tech­nol­o­gy, and op­ti­mis­ing our process­es to min­imise the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of our op­er­a­tions.

“How­ev­er, these ac­tions are in­suf­fi­cient to mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive ef­fect of in­fla­tion on our busi­ness. De­spite this price ad­just­ment, Trinidad & To­ba­go still re­tains the most com­pet­i­tive price of ce­ment in the Cari­com re­gion,” TCL had ex­plained then.

TCL had al­so in­creased prices on March 20, 2023, by five per cent for Eco ce­ment and eight per cent for pre­mi­um plus.

At that time, the com­pa­ny said, “Ce­ment prices are in fact set to be mar­gin­al­ly ad­just­ed, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion some of the ris­ing cost fac­tors with which TCL is faced.”

In Au­gust 2022, prices went up by $2.08 for eco ce­ment, in­creas­ing it to $43.65, and $3.54 for pre­mi­um ce­ment, which went to $47.83.

In De­cem­ber 2021, TCL raised the price of a 42.5kg bag of Eco ce­ment by eight per cent to $43.71 VAT-in­clu­sive, and by 15 per cent to $46.56 VAT-in­clu­sive for a pre­mi­um of the same weight.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to sev­er­al hard­ware own­ers yes­ter­day, but they said they had not re­ceived “any­thing of­fi­cial as yet,” al­though they “have been hear­ing ru­mours of a price in­crease.”

Mex­i­co’s Ce­mex group is TCL’s largest share­hold­er, with a 69.83 per cent stake in the ce­ment pro­duc­er. Last year’s hike an­nounce­ment prompt­ed cab­i­net to sus­pend the im­port quo­ta on ce­ment to open the lo­cal mar­ket to com­pe­ti­tion, not­ing that TCL had raised ce­ment prices in De­cem­ber 2021 by 15.6 per cent; 7.0 per cent in Au­gust 2022; 5 per cent in March 2023; and 7.6 per cent in Feb­ru­ary 2024.

How­ev­er, the waiv­er was not enough to en­cour­age TCL’s last ma­jor mar­ket com­peti­tor, Rock Hard Ce­ment, back to the lo­cal mar­ket. Rock Hard with­drew from T&T on Sep­tem­ber 17, 2021, af­ter los­ing a le­gal bat­tle with the Gov­ern­ment.

TCL re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $210.6 mil­lion for the nine months end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, which was a 24.4 per cent in­crease over the same pe­ri­od in 2023.