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Polish cement producers demand protection of the domestic market from cement imports from Ukraine.
This was stated in a report by Puls Biznesu, LIGA.net reports.
From 2019 to 2023, supplies of Ukrainian cement to Poland increased by more than 1,500%.
In 2020, they amounted to only 32,000 tons, in 2021 they increased to 52,600 tons, in 2022 to 101,700 tons, in 2023 to 340,000 tons.
According to Zbigniew Pilch, chairman of the Polish Cement Producers Association, this year imports are expected to reach significantly more than 500,000 tons, and next year they could even reach 1.5 million tons.
Before the war, Ukraine used 12 million tons of cement annually, but now its use has dropped to 4 million tons.
The surplus is exported mainly to Poland.
The main supplier of cement to the Polish market is Ivano-Frankivskcement, the largest producer in Ukraine.
The publication indicates that the company is currently expanding, its final production capacity should reach 4 million tons per year.
Representatives of the Polish cement sector see this as a threat.
"The uncontrolled flow of cement from Ukraine is unfair competition, since its producers do not bear the costs of the European Union's climate policy, unlike ours. Therefore, we cannot compete with Ukrainian imports. In such a situation, the existence of, for example, a cement plant in Chełm, which is 25 km from the border with Ukraine, would not be justified. As a result, at least 1,300 people will lose their jobs," Pilch said.
The association demands quotas for cement imports from Ukraine.
"Our demand is to limit duty-free imports to the average level of the last three years. If we don't do this, we will soon have to close cement plants," Pilch said.
He believes that this issue should be the subject of discussions during the review of the trade agreement between Ukraine and the EU in 2025.
- Polish business has opened 300 companies in Ukraine in three years of full-scale war.
According to banker Jakub Karnowski from Kredobank, Ukraine can become the same opportunity for Polish companies as Poland was for German companies in the early 90s.
According to the Ukrcement Association, in the first half of 2024, cement production by the enterprises of the Ukrcement Association increased by 24.4% compared to the same period in 2023, reaching a volume of 3,799,070 tons of cement.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, there are more than 15 cement production enterprises in Ukraine.
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