Mohamed Hegazy

With an industrial network of four production facilities, Suez Cement Group has established itself as Egypt’s leading private cement producer and distributor of the highest quality cement and ready-mix concrete.

What are Suez Cement’s main activities?

Suez Cement Group comprises a wide industrial network of four integrated plants—two of which, Tourah and Helwan, are by far the oldest cement plants commissioned in Egypt, inaugurated in 1927 and 1929, respectively—as well as a web of subsidiaries manufacturing and distributing ready-mixed concrete. Suez Cement was established in 1977, and the group has a nominal cement production capacity of around 12MTPA. Since commissioning, Suez Cement has manufactured and distributed the highest-quality cement and ready-mix concrete, its products have been used to build some of Egypt’s most recognizable landmarks. Suez Cement’s industrial network affords it a degree of local and international exposure unmatched by competitors for its comprehensiveness and longevity. The group’s team of professionals pursue continuous innovation, providing customers at home and abroad with a suite of services that differentiates the group’s offering. Suez Cement is majority owned by the Heidelberg Materials, making it part of a family of organizations that represents one of the world’s largest building materials companies.

What are the key values that drive Suez Cement Company’s business operations?

We have several values. First, we think and act in the long term because we need solutions that last. We offer reliable and sustainable materials and aim to be the leader that turns our industry CO2 neu-tral once and for all. Second, we want to unleash innovation, as our future needs creativity. Inventiveness knows no hierarchy, and we encourage our employees to own innovative projects and push it. Then, we want to get our customers ex-cited. Our future needs strong players, and one of our values is to become bet-ter partners for our customers, such that their success is our success. We solve their problems even before they arise.

How does Suez Cement differentiate itself from its competitors in the market?

Since commissioning, Suez Cement Group has manufactured and distributed highest quality cement and ready-mix concrete, enjoying a wide range of products from typical types of cement to more sophisticated special types, name-ly, high slag, pozzolanic, limestone, and masonry cement. Suez Cement is the first cement producer in Africa to obtain the environmental product declaration (EPD) certificates, which is an inter-national certificate confirming that its products are environmentally friendly, awarded for all the four of the special types of cement: slag cement (CEMIIIA 42.5N), pozzolanic cement (CEMII BP 42.5N), limestone cement (CEMII AL 42.5N), and masonry (MC 12.5X). Suez Cement Group
is always pushing its lim-its and exceeding its targets with regards to CO2 emissions reduction. Currently, our CO2 emissions per ton of cement ranges around 600kgCO2/Tcem, which is around 20% below our emissions level two years ago and around 25% below the current Egyptian industry’s average, targeting to further achieve 30% reduction by 2025.

How is Suez Cement working to meet the growing demand for affordable housing and infrastructure development in Egypt?

We are continuously investing our re-sources, expertise, and know-how to innovate and develop new products that are not only environmentally friendly but also have better specifications and lower cost, as mentioned above.

How does Suez Cement approach sustainability and environmental responsibility in its operations and supply chain?

Our motto is the same as our parent company Heidelberg Materials, which is “Building a more sustainable future.” Challenges like climate change and resource scarcity mean that the produc-tion and use of heavy building materials must evolve, which is why are transforming our business to address these challenges and are placing sustainability at the core of what we do. Suez Cement Group of Companies has identified key areas to reducing its envionmental footprint and has taken several positive and effective actions aims at reducing CO2 emissions from its manufacturing processes in Egypt such as the use of waste heat as an alternative source of energy; reduction of clinker to cement ratio, thus producing green cement and finally the use of alternative and biomass fuels; and the use of alternative raw materials..