APO CEMENT CORP. announced it will be increasing the price of its cement products by P20 per bag, citing higher production cost due to the continued suspension of its partner firm’s quarry operations after the landslide in the City of Naga two months ago.
The cement manufacturing firm also announced that it will be closing down its cement terminal in Davao, and suspending the operation of one of its two kilns in Cebu.
With the Cebu plant anticipating a decreased output, Apo Cement will also implement a reduced workweek to decrease its fixed costs and expenses.
Apo’s recent move came more than a week after it announced that it will temporarily lay off up to 30 percent of its regular employees and 40 percent of its contractual workers from its plant in the City of Naga.
In a statement, Apo Cement spokesman Chito Maniago said that as a way to partially recover the increase in its production costs, it intends to implement a price increase on its cement products.
A hardware retailer based in Cebu disclosed to SunStar Cebu the current prices of Apo Cement products: Masonry costs P168 per sack; Apo Premium costs P195 per sack; Apo Portland costs P203 per sack; and Apo Pozzolan is at P190 per sack.
Maniago said Apo decided to implement additional measures to deal with the continuing challenges of having to source raw materials from different regions in the country and overseas in order to produce cement.
Along with the closure of its Davao cement terminal, Maniago said that the company is indefinitely suspending the operation of one of its two kilns in Cebu.
The kiln is the heart of the cement manufacturing operations and is the main equipment utilized to produce clinker, the main component for cement. The Davao terminal, on the other hand, holds and dispatches 25,000 bags on a daily basis, Maniago said.
“As much as the company commits to support the government’s massive infrastructure program, Apo Cement has no choice but to also indefinitely suspend the operation of one of its kilns in Cebu,” Maniago said.
Apo continues to call upon the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for a “decisive, reasonable and fair” action on the company’s situation.
The company reiterated that based on DENR’s Oct. 22 findings, the landslide that occurred near the plant in Barangay Tina-an was due to natural causes.
The same findings were also supported by Apo Cement’s private geology experts based in the country, the United States and Mexico, he added.
But in the Oct. 22 report, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) found that quarry operations, including those made by Apo’s sister firm Apo Land and Quarry Corp. (ALQC), and other human activities contributed to the landslide that occurred on Sept. 20.
During a post-hazard assessment, MGB also found that ALQC had no disaster preparedness plan specifically for landslides “because the potential occurrence of landslides was not identified as a risk.”
The MGB recommended that ALQC temporarily stop its operations and it can only resume once necessary studies from experts are undertaken and appropriate mitigating measures are installed. (JKV with JOB)