Producer
CEMEX S.A.B. de C.V.
Global cement company (~100 Mt/yr capacity); one of the largest US cement importers from Mexico. Headquarters affected by 25% US tariffs on Mexican cement (April 2025); major US market presence through domestic plants and imports.
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Cement (~100 Mt/yr)
55%Ready-Mix Concrete
25%Aggregates + Urban Solutions
15%Waste Co-Processing
5%
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Did you know2023
CEMEX is publicly known as a cement company, but their cement kiln co-processing operations make them a major industrial waste disposal service. Cement kilns operate at 1,400-1,500 degrees Celsius — temperatures high enough to destroy most organic compounds, including PCBs, dioxins, and organochlorine solvents. CEMEX co-processes: used tires (replacing coal as fuel while destroying waste), industrial chemical solvents, contaminated soil, municipal solid waste, and agricultural waste. Their Mexican plants co-process over 1 million tons of waste materials annually. This means CEMEX simultaneously produces construction materials (cement) and provides environmental remediation services (hazardous waste destruction). The same kiln that makes the concrete for a US highway also destroys hazardous waste that would otherwise require dedicated incineration facilities. When the US imposed 25% tariffs on Mexican cement imports in April 2025, the tariff was nominally about protecting US cement workers but it also reduced the capacity of Mexican CEMEX kilns — which were also processing waste from US industrial operations under environmental permits — creating an unexpected regulatory conflict between trade policy and environmental services.
CEMEX S.A.B. de C.V. ↗Origin2023
CEMEX was founded in 1906 in Nuevo Leon, Mexico as Cementos Hidalgo by Lorenzo Garza. The company remained regional until Lorenzo Zambrano (grandson, CEO from 1985 to 2014) transformed it into a global company through debt-financed acquisitions: Spain (1992), Venezuela, Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia (1990s), and the landmark $5.8B acquisition of RMC Group (UK ready-mix) in 2005. Zambrano created a repeatable acquisition model: buy a cement company in a new market, install CEMEX management systems (then called the CEMEX Way), reduce costs, and export the digitalization that CEMEX pioneered for ready-mix ordering. CEMEX Go (2017) digitalized cement and concrete ordering years before most industrial companies attempted digital transformation. Zambrano died in 2014 and CEMEX subsequently struggled under the $16B debt load from the 2007 acquisition peak — requiring complex refinancing. The company that pioneered digital transformation in an analog industry was built by debt-financed globalization that nearly destroyed it during the 2008 financial crisis.
CEMEX S.A.B. de C.V. ↗