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United Cement Industrial Company

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United Cement Industrial Company

Leading the Green Cement Transition in Saudi Arabia’s Western Region

A Company Built for the Transition

United Cement Industrial Company (UCIC) was established in 2013 and began production in 2016 from its state-of-the-art facility in Al-Sadiya, Makkah Province, situated along the Laith Old Road in the Western Region of Saudi Arabia. In less than a decade of operations, the company has built a total production base of approximately 15 million tons by end of 2024, established an 18 to 20 percent market share in the western region, and positioned itself as the leading producer of green cement in the Kingdom. That last claim is not marketing language. It is a production reality: over 40 percent of UCIC’s output is green cement, giving the company a product portfolio that is structurally aligned with where the Saudi construction market is heading, rather than where it has been.

This article examines how UCIC has built that position, and what it means for the broader sector.

Green Cement Leadership

A Strategic Production Choice

UCIC produces four cement types: Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), Pozzolanic Portland Cement (PPC), Sulfate-Resistant Cement (SRC), and a finishing cement (Taameer). The SIRI certificate issued in December 2025 covers all six product variants across both bulk and bagged formats, confirming that the company’s digital and quality management systems apply consistently across its full product range.

The commitment to green cement, with over 40 percent of total production dedicated to lower-carbon PPC and finishing cement variants, is not an aspirational statement. It is the current production reality of the plant. PPC achieves its lower carbon intensity by replacing a portion of clinker with pozzolanic materials, thereby reducing both the thermal energy demand and the process CO2 associated with clinker production. At a scale of 2 million tons per year of installed capacity, with cumulative production already exceeding 15 million tons, UCIC’s green cement output represents a meaningful contribution to the decarbonization of the construction materials supply chain serving Jeddah, Makkah, and the broader western and southern regions.

The company has also pursued operational improvements that reduce emissions across the production chain through lower dependence on high-carbon materials, substitution with more efficient industrial alternatives, and continuous process refinement in kiln operations and thermal management. UCIC’s kiln systems and thermal processing operations incorporate advanced combustion optimization technologies that reduce specific fuel consumption while maintaining high clinker quality, delivering simultaneous gains in cost efficiency and emissions intensity.
One of the more distinctive dimensions of UCIC’s environmental program is its leadership in plastic cement bag innovation. The company has been among the pioneers in the Kingdom in adopting innovative approaches to polypropylene cement bag design and material science, reducing the environmental footprint of packaging and improving the life-cycle assessment profile of its products. In an industry where packaging waste is a persistent environmental challenge at distribution points, this focus on downstream sustainability signals a breadth of environmental thinking that extends beyond the kiln to the customer interface.

The company has complemented these production-level initiatives with an afforestation program around its industrial site, improving local air quality and enhancing the environmental profile of the facility’s immediate surroundings. These green belt investments reflect an understanding that industrial sustainability is not limited to emissions from the stack. It encompasses the full environmental context of the plant’s operation within its community.

Renewable Energy

The Tarshid Solar Partnership

A particularly significant development in UCIC’s sustainability agenda is the formal agreement signed with Tarshid, the Saudi National Energy Services Company, for the development of a solar energy project at UCIC’s Al-Lith Governorate facility. Under this agreement, Tarshid will develop and implement renewable energy solutions designed to reduce the plant’s reliance on grid electricity and fossil-based power inputs, directly reducing Scope 2 emissions and lowering the overall energy cost per ton of cement produced.

This partnership is strategically important for two reasons. First, it connects UCIC to the national energy efficiency and renewable energy infrastructure that Vision 2030 is building, positioning the company as an active participant in the Kingdom’s energy transition rather than a passive beneficiary. Second, it establishes a repeatable model. A solar energy project successfully implemented at one facility creates the template, the operational experience, and the financial case for extension to other parts of the plant or to future capacity expansions.

The solar project also aligns directly with UCIC’s broader strategic intention: to be recognized as a role model in green cement production, specifically by demonstrating that the transition to renewable energy inputs is technically and commercially viable in the operating context of a cement plant in the western region of Saudi Arabia.

Digital Transformation

SIRI Certification and the Smart Factory Model

UCIC received its official SIRI (Smart Industry Readiness Index) certification in December 2025, with an emblem score of 2.82 across a scope covering all six of its cement product variants. The certification was issued by the International Centre for Industrial Transformation (INCIT) and is valid for two years, subject to ongoing assessment against the 16 dimensions of the SIRI framework spanning process, technology, and organization.

A SIRI score of 2.82 reflects a plant that has moved beyond basic digitization and is operating with integrated digital systems capable of data-driven decision making, with a clear transformation roadmap toward more advanced automation and intelligence capabilities. For a company that only began production in 2016, achieving this level of digital maturity within less than a decade of operations reflects an organizational culture that has treated technology investment as a strategic priority from the beginning rather than a legacy system retrofit.

The digital transformation program at UCIC has delivered a manufacturing environment where operational data flows in real time to support process decisions, where administrative and commercial workflows are automated to reduce manual processing time and error rates, and where management visibility into plant performance is continuous rather than periodic. This infrastructure raises operational efficiency, reduces waste in both energy and materials consumption, and provides the data foundation required for the predictive maintenance and process optimization programs that deliver the next tier of performance improvement.

UCIC’s digital journey also demonstrates the compounding relationship between digital capability and sustainability outcomes. A plant with accurate, real-time energy consumption data can optimize combustion parameters more precisely. A plant with predictive maintenance intelligence reduces unplanned stoppages that generate energy waste and quality variance during restart cycles. Digital capability and environmental performance are not parallel tracks. At UCIC, they are the same track.

Operational Excellence

Energy, Maintenance, and Circular Economy

UCIC has achieved leading performance on specific electrical energy consumption for its product range, positioning itself among the most energy-efficient cement producers in the western region. This performance reflects the deployment of advanced kiln and grinding system technologies, combined with the operational discipline that comes from a relatively young plant managed with modern industrial standards from the outset.

The maintenance strategy deployed at UCIC has delivered a meaningful reduction in unplanned stoppages and improved production continuity. Advanced maintenance approaches, supported by condition monitoring and predictive analytics, have lowered failure rates, extended equipment service life, and reduced the cost and production impact of maintenance interventions. The result is a more reliable and predictable production operation, which benefits both cost efficiency and the consistency of product quality delivered to customers.

The circular economy principles applied within UCIC’s operations extend the sustainability logic beyond emissions reduction to resource utilization. Where industrial by-products can be reintegrated into the production process, the company pursues those pathways, converting potential waste streams into productive inputs. This approach simultaneously reduces raw material demand, lowers disposal costs, and improves the overall resource efficiency of the plant.

Saudization and Local Content

Sustained Platinum Performance

UCIC has maintained Platinum tier classification under the Nitaqat Saudization program since its establishment, a record of sustained commitment to national workforce development that is particularly noteworthy given the company’s young operational age. Maintaining Platinum status from the outset, rather than achieving it after years of incremental improvement, reflects an organizational design decision that embedded localization as a foundational principle rather than a compliance target.

Local procurement has exceeded 80 percent of total purchases, reinforcing the domestic supply chain and contributing to the national economy’s industrial development objectives. This level of local content is above the sector average and reflects deliberate supply chain management decisions that favor domestic suppliers where quality and delivery standards are met.

The combination of Platinum Saudization and high local content positions UCIC as a company whose contribution to Vision 2030’s economic diversification and human capital development objectives extends well beyond its product range. The western region’s cement market is one of the most strategically important in the Kingdom, serving Jeddah, Makkah, and the entire Hajj and Umrah infrastructure. UCIC’s investment in national talent and domestic supply chains strengthens the economic resilience of that market.

Strategic Position

The Golden Years Ahead

UCIC’s CEO Mohammed Almatrafi has articulated a clear demand outlook: the period ahead represents the “golden years” for the Saudi cement sector. The 2034 FIFA World Cup, Expo 2030, Central Jeddah development, the Red Sea Project, NEOM, and Qiddiya are all driving sustained construction demand in the regions that UCIC serves. With a market share of 18 to 20 percent in the western region, a product portfolio already heavily weighted toward green cement, a certified digital maturity framework, and a solar energy program underway, UCIC is positioned to capitalize on that demand from a platform of operational and environmental leadership.

From FCI’s perspective, what UCIC demonstrates is that a well-designed industrial strategy, executed consistently from the first day of operations, can compress the transformation timeline significantly. UCIC did not spend its first decade operating a conventional cement plant and then launch a sustainability program. It launched with a sustainability orientation built into its production model and has been refining and extending that model ever since.

The result is a company that is, by several meaningful measures, among the most advanced green cement producers in the Kingdom today, and one that is investing systematically in the capabilities that will sustain that position as the market’s expectations continue to rise.

 

Southern Province Cement Company

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Southern Province Cement Company

Redefining Industrial Leadership Across Three Plants in Saudi Arabia’s South

A Multi-Site Transformation at Regional Scale

Southern Province Cement Company (SPCC) operates at a scale and geographic complexity that distinguishes it from most producers in the Kingdom. With three production facilities spanning Jazan on the Red Sea coast, Bisha in the heart of the Asir highlands, and Tihama in the coastal lowlands, the company manages one of the most geographically dispersed cement operations in Saudi Arabia. Combined clinker production capacity across the three plants exceeds 8.7 million tons per year. In 2024, total clinker production reached approximately 6.3 million tons, delivered against a backdrop of sector-wide demand softness and intensifying competition.

What makes SPCC’s story significant for the sector is not scale alone. It is the coherence and ambition of the transformation agenda being executed across all three facilities simultaneously: a five-year strategy approved in August 2023 covering operational excellence, digital transformation, decarbonization, and local content development, structured around the requirements of Saudi Vision 2030 and the Kingdom’s net-zero commitment by 2060.

The Decarbonization Agenda

From Product to Process

SPCC’s approach to carbon reduction addresses the problem at both the product and process levels, which is the right sequencing for a company at this stage of transition.

On the product side, the company has commenced production of Green Cement (GU Cement and PPC), both of which carry the Saudi Quality Mark and reduce carbon intensity through lower clinker ratios. More significantly, the company has developed a low-carbon cement variant (3LC) by reducing clinker content to 61.5 percent, one of the most aggressive clinker substitution ratios currently being produced at commercial scale in the Kingdom. The company has also set a specific and time-bound target: a 25 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2028, aligned with international environmental benchmarks and Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 carbon commitments.

Supporting the transition on the product side is the establishment of a Green Footprint Committee, chaired by the Executive Vice President of Operations. This committee oversees a comprehensive afforestation strategy with a plan to plant 500,000 trees between 2025 and 2030, beginning in 2025 as part of the company’s commitment to carbon offsetting and environmental rehabilitation across its operational regions.

On the process side, SPCC is executing a structured program to replace liquid fuel with natural gas across the Jazan and Tihama facilities by 2028, eliminating heavy fuel oil from those plants entirely. This is not an incremental adjustment. It is a fundamental shift in the thermal energy model of two major production facilities. The company has also initiated studies on alternative fuel utilization including refuse-derived fuel (RDF) and complementary solutions, and has commissioned a Product Life Cycle Assessment to measure carbon emissions at every production stage, which will underpin the company’s planned Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) certification program.

The Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) system at the Jazan plant is already operational, capturing thermal energy from kiln exhaust and converting it into usable electricity, with capacity of 15 MW. Studies are underway to extend WHR implementation to the Bisha and Tihama plants, which would deliver significant energy cost and emissions reductions across the full operational footprint. The company is also developing solar energy projects at its facilities and is exploring concentrated solar power (CSP) solutions in collaboration with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, with the long-term objective of reducing fossil fuel dependency across all three sites.

Digital Transformation

The SIRI Second Assessment

SPCC’s digital transformation journey is documented through two formal SIRI assessments, conducted under the Smart Industry Readiness Index framework. The second assessment, completed in 2025, evaluated all three plants independently and found that each had achieved digital performance results above the first assessment baseline, reflecting genuine progress across the transformation dimensions rather than isolated gains at a single facility.

The digital roadmap is structured around six priority dimensions: vertical integration, horizontal integration, shop floor automation, shop floor intelligence, enterprise intelligence, and facility intelligence. Each dimension has defined transformation initiatives with specific expected use cases, and together they constitute a comprehensive upgrade of how the three plants operate, communicate, and make decisions.

The most significant technology implementation is the deployment of SAP S/4HANA as the enterprise resource planning backbone, replacing the legacy SAP ECC6 system. This is more than a software upgrade. SAP S/4HANA enables real-time operational data visibility, automated production confirmation, live inventory tracking for semi-finished and finished products, actual production cost calculation, and maintenance alerts triggered automatically when process deviations are detected. The integration of the plant control system (FLS ECS) directly with SAP S/4HANA means that production data flows seamlessly from the kiln floor to the enterprise management layer without manual intervention, creating the information infrastructure required for data-driven operations management.

Vertical integration extends further through SAP Analytics Cloud for interactive management dashboards, SAP Ariba for digital procurement and invoice management with direct bank integration, and a digital document management system with QR code-enabled electronic document tracking. These components collectively transform the company’s administrative and commercial operations alongside the plant-level improvements.

On the shop floor, the automation roadmap targets the expansion of the Autopilot system, including machine learning-based process optimization and AI-powered predictive maintenance. Condition monitoring sensors are being installed across critical assets at all three facilities to enable predictive maintenance strategies that catch equipment degradation before it translates into unplanned stoppages. Root Cause Analysis systems are being deployed to build a centralized database of recurring problems and their verified root causes, enabling pattern recognition and faster resolution over time. The horizontal integration workstream is connecting the company’s systems digitally with key suppliers and customers, reducing manual paperwork, improving order processing speed, and enabling real-time supply chain visibility.

Cement mill productivity has already improved toward 8 to 10 percent above previous levels at the Jazan plant, and production line improvements at the Bisha and Tihama facilities are contributing to enhanced energy efficiency and reduced emissions intensity. The Jazan plant’s actual production in 2024 represented 106.77 percent of its design capacity, a clear indicator of the operational gains being achieved through this combined technology and process improvement program.

Circular Economy and Industrial Partnership

One of the most strategically forward-looking initiatives in SPCC’s 2024 program is the tripartite industrial partnership signed with the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, represented by Jazan City for Primary and Downstream Industries, and Solb Steel Company. The agreement was signed under the patronage of the Chairman of the Royal Commission, with senior representation from the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources.

The partnership is designed to transform industrial by-products from Solb Steel, specifically steel slag, into supplementary cementitious materials that can be incorporated into SPCC’s cement products. This is a textbook circular economy application: a material that was previously a waste cost for the steel plant becomes a carbon-reducing input for the cement plant, lowering the clinker factor in SPCC’s products while simultaneously reducing industrial waste disposal volumes in the Jazan industrial zone.

The collaboration areas extend beyond slag utilization to include data and analytics exchange for production efficiency, joint development of eco-friendly production solutions, and coordination of logistical and storage services within the industrial city through the port. For SPCC, this partnership is strategically significant on two dimensions. First, it provides a locally sourced, cost-competitive supplementary cementitious material to support the clinker ratio reduction targets embedded in the green cement roadmap. Second, it positions SPCC as a collaborative industrial partner within the Jazan industrial ecosystem, reinforcing the company’s regional leadership role beyond the cement sector.

Governance and Local Content

Building the Institutional Base

SPCC’s transformation is supported by a governance infrastructure that is being strengthened in parallel with the operational and digital agenda. In 2024, the company obtained ISO 37000 certification for corporate governance and ISO 31000 certification for risk management, placing it among a small number of Saudi industrial companies to hold formal accreditation against both governance and risk management international standards. These certifications are not procedural achievements. They reflect the implementation of an integrated framework covering internal policies, codes of conduct, anti-corruption and whistleblowing mechanisms, authority matrices, and risk registers that are reviewed quarterly and linked to strategic performance indicators.

The risk management program is comprehensive and structured. The company deploys Risk Matrix analysis, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), and Bowtie Analysis for preventive scenario planning. A phased Cybersecurity Executive Program is underway through 2027, covering infrastructure hardening, business continuity systems, SCADA security, and ultimately a Zero Trust architecture supported by AI-based digital forensics tools.

On local content, SPCC holds a Local Content Certificate at 48.87 percent as its first-phase achievement, with a strategic target of 60 percent set in alignment with Public Investment Fund objectives. In 2024, 125 of 159 newly registered suppliers were local, and the SAP Ariba system has been activated for digital procurement management, improving transparency and processing speed across the supply chain.

The Saudization rate reached 59.69 percent in 2024, with 657 employees completing specialized training programs totaling 14,627.5 hours, averaging 22 hours per employee. In occupational health and safety, the company recorded a dramatic improvement in performance: the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate fell from 7.4 in 2023 to 1.9 in 2024, and actual incidents at all factories dropped from 10 to 5. Emergency and evacuation plans achieved 100 percent implementation in collaboration with Civil Defense, and an advanced electronic incident reporting system was activated, reducing risk handling response time and near-miss incident rates.

The New Jazan Production Line

Investing in the Next Generation

The Board of Directors has approved a new production line at the Jazan facility, with a design capacity of 5,000 tons of clinker per day, incorporating the latest cement manufacturing technologies with a specific focus on energy efficiency and carbon emission reduction. Commercial operation is targeted for Q1 2026. This investment reflects SPCC’s confidence in the long-term demand trajectory of the Jazan and southern Red Sea region market, supported by Vision 2030 infrastructure programs and the expanding industrial base in the Jazan Economic City. Financed through a ten-year Islamic financing facility from the National Commercial Bank at SAR 649 million, the new line will position SPCC’s Jazan plant as the most modern and energy-efficient facility in its operational portfolio.

What This Means for the Sector

From FCI’s perspective, SPCC represents the challenge and the opportunity of executing a multi-plant transformation at regional scale. The company does not have the luxury of concentrating its transformation investment in a single showcase facility. Everything it does must work across three plants, in three different geographic contexts, with three different production profiles and infrastructure starting points.

The fact that all three plants achieved improved digital maturity scores in the second SIRI assessment, rather than a single plant pulling ahead of the others, is the most important signal in SPCC’s transformation story. It means the program is being implemented as a system rather than as a pilot. Combined with the governance certifications, the industrial partnership model with Solb Steel, the green cement product development, and the fuel transition roadmap, SPCC is building the foundation for a genuinely low-carbon, digitally capable multi-plant operation that will serve the southern and southwestern regions of Saudi Arabia for the next generation.

The scale of what is being attempted is matched by the clarity of the roadmap being used to attempt it.

City Cement Company

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City Cement Company

From Vision to Verified Impact

A Company That Decided to Go First

In an industry where the default posture is to wait for regulation before acting, City Cement Company made a different choice. Since its establishment in 2005, the company has consistently moved ahead of the market on sustainability, not because the rules required it, but because its leadership concluded that being early was a source of competitive advantage rather than a cost burden. That posture, sustained across nearly two decades, has produced a body of verified, quantified results that now stands as one of the most comprehensive sustainability records in the Saudi cement sector.

The 2024 performance snapshot captures a company in strong forward motion. Net profit grew 76 percent to SAR 144 million. Revenue reached SAR 521 million. Cement sales rose 31 percent to 2.84 million tons. And yet the financial growth was matched step for step by environmental progress: clinker factor reduced to 89.9 percent, dust emissions cut by 50 percent from the 2021 baseline, total energy efficiency improved 12.6 percent against 2022, and zero waste sent to landfill across the full reporting year. These are not trade-offs. They are outcomes of the same integrated operating model, executed consistently across the full business.

Decarbonization

Attacking the Problem at Its Source

City Cement’s approach to carbon reduction is notable for its willingness to address the hardest part of the cement emissions problem rather than working around it. The dominant share of cement’s CO2 footprint comes from two sources: the fuel used to heat kilns, and the chemical calcination of limestone into clinker. Fuel switching helps with the first. Reducing the clinker factor is the only way to address the second. City Cement has pursued both with equal seriousness.

On the fuel side, the company operates one of the most sophisticated alternative fuel programs in the Kingdom. In 2024, the Marat plant ran on nine alternative fuel types simultaneously, achieving an average thermal substitution rate of approximately 11 percent across both production lines, with Line 2 reaching 11.45 percent. The fuels include refuse-derived fuel (RDF), tire-derived fuel (TDF), spent pot liner from aluminum production, carbon black, and other industrial and agricultural waste streams. Green Solutions for Environmental Services, City Cement’s wholly owned waste management subsidiary, produced 23,304 tons of alternative fuels in 2024, a 6 percent increase from 2023, providing a vertically integrated and cost-competitive supply of fuel inputs that simultaneously diverts waste from landfill.

 

The company’s longer-term target is a 40 to 45 percent thermal substitution rate, a level that would place it among the most advanced alternative fuel users in global cement manufacturing. The infrastructure to support that trajectory is already being built through the partnership with the Saudi Investment Recycling Company to develop a large-scale RDF facility in Riyadh.

On the clinker side, the company has reduced its clinker factor to 89.9 percent in 2024, down from the 2021 baseline, through a combination of additive optimization, product reformulation, and the commercialization of its Green Finishing Cement. That product contains more than 42 percent supplementary cementitious materials and emits just 579 kg of CO2 equivalent per ton, which is 34 percent less than conventional OPC. In 2025, SCM expansion initiatives saved over 106,450 tons of clinker, with a further 2.92 percent reduction target confirmed for 2026. Looking further ahead, the establishment of Nizak Mining Company and its joint venture with Next Generation SCM and Denmark’s CemGreen to produce calcined clay using modular CemTower technology represents the next structural step: securing a domestic supply of low-carbon clinker substitutes at commercial scale.

The cumulative emissions result: total CO2 per ton of cement has moved from 681 kg in 2021 to 676.9 kg in 2024, with Scope 1 specific intensity (combustion and calcination combined) at 723 kg CO2 per ton of cement and Scope 2 at 67 kg CO2 per ton of cement.

Energy Performance

Numbers That Exceed Their Own Targets

City Cement’s energy efficiency trajectory is one of the clearest quantitative stories in the article series. The company set an internal target of a 4.5 percent reduction in energy intensity by 2026. By 2024, it had already achieved a 12.6 percent improvement against the 2022 baseline, surpassing the 2026 target by nearly three times and with two years still remaining.

The specific power consumption for cement production fell from 125 kWh per ton at baseline to 112.8 kWh per ton in 2024, a 12.72 percent reduction driven by cement mill optimization, improved roller press feeding, and process automation. Thermal energy consumption for clinker production reached 811.8 kcal per kg of clinker, a 2.79 percent improvement from baseline, achieved despite the lower calorific value of alternative fuels relative to conventional heavy fuel oil. That these gains were delivered while increasing alternative fuel substitution reflects the quality of the combustion management and process control at the Marat facility.

The Waste Heat Recovery system generated over 16 megawatts of clean electricity in 2024, providing a meaningful offset to grid electricity demand. Kiln reliability reached 99.7 percent, an improvement of nearly 8 percent from 2021, supported by AI-based monitoring and proactive maintenance programs. Line 2 operated at 379 tons per day above its design capacity, and Cement Mill A exceeded 1 million tons of annual output, both reflecting the productivity gains embedded in the current operational model.

Digital Transformation

The Intelligence Layer

City Cement ranked first nationally in the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI), recognizing its leadership in Industry 4.0 adoption across the Saudi manufacturing sector. That recognition reflects a digital journey that began in 2020 with IT infrastructure modernization and has progressed steadily through ERP implementation in 2022, SIRI certification in 2023, and a suite of advanced digital deployments in 2024.

The Factory White-Box project, which won the Microsoft Intelligent Manufacturing Award (MIMA) 2025 Middle East in the Sustainability Category, delivers deep real-time process visibility across production lines and utilities, translating sensor data into prescriptive insights that operators and managers can act on immediately. The AI-driven Expert Optimizer achieved a 7.35 kWh per ton reduction in power consumption, generating approximately SAR 1.3 million in energy savings in 2025 alone.

The 2024 digital agenda included the launch of a real-time environmental monitoring platform integrating continuous emissions monitoring, air quality sensors, and energy consumption data into a unified knowledge management system. The ZATCA Fatoora integration was completed on schedule, linking the SAP system to the national tax verification platform. The weighbridge system was connected to SAP for synchronized inventory tracking. Quality lab operations were digitized through Phase 1 of the Digital Quality Strategy, including LIMS integration and digital audit traceability, producing a 25 percent reduction in manual documentation time.

Looking ahead, City Cement is preparing to deploy a digital energy management system using machine learning algorithms to optimize consumption patterns, and an automated ESG reporting platform to further accelerate sustainability disclosure. The digital infrastructure is not treated as a support function. It is positioned as a core enabler of the company’s decarbonization and operational excellence agenda, which is precisely the integration that makes SIRI rankings meaningful.

Operational Excellence

Discipline Behind the Numbers

The production data from 2024 reflects an operation being pushed toward its performance limits with careful engineering discipline. Clinker output was 2,443,619 tons. The bypass dust recycling program recovered approximately 120 tons per day and reintegrated it into production, contributing to the zero waste to landfill performance achieved across the full year. 100 percent of solid waste was treated through approved channels.

Maintenance transformation continued in 2024 with the establishment of a centralized preventive maintenance team, the launch of condition-based monitoring across critical assets, and SAP integration for digital maintenance planning. Blue-collar workforce skills and utilization improved by 28 percent through a structured upskilling program. Kiln Line 2 achieved an OEE improvement from 58 percent at baseline to 106 percent in 2024 and a Mean Time Between Failures improvement of 612 percent, the result of successful total productive maintenance deployment. Quality external non-conformities fell 25 percent, complaint resolution time dropped 20 percent to 8 days, and the unresolved customer complaint rate reached zero percent.

The supply chain function underwent a parallel transformation, with local procurement representing 76 percent of total spending, procurement from local suppliers exceeding SAR 150 million, and warehouse inventory value reduced by 39 percent through consolidation and digital tracking. Zero contract terminations related to corruption or non-compliance were recorded.

Transparency as an Institutional Commitment

City Cement published its second annual sustainability report in 2024, prepared in accordance with GRI Standards 2021 and the IIRC Integrated Reporting Framework, with third-party limited assurance provided by DCarbon Global. The company was the first cement producer in Saudi Arabia to obtain Environmental Product Declarations for all three primary products, OPC, SRC, and Green Finishing Cement, verified under ISO 14025 and registered with the International EPD System with validity through 2028.

The governance framework that supports these disclosures is structured and active. The Board of Directors held six meetings in 2024 with high attendance. The Sustainability Committee, operating under direct Board authority, oversees ESG integration, KPI monitoring, and regulatory compliance across all sustainability dimensions. The Audit Committee’s responsibilities explicitly include ESG risk review alongside financial oversight. Zero regulatory complaints, zero confirmed corruption incidents, zero monetary fines, and zero customer privacy violations were recorded in 2024.

On the social side, 435 employees received a total of 1,629 training hours. Lost-time injury rate was reduced by 41 percent. Recordable accidents fell by 20 percent. Zero work-related fatalities or ill-health incidents were recorded. Female participation in the workforce rose from 1.4 percent in 2023 to 3.5 percent in 2024, with female hiring under 30 years old increasing 160 percent. Community investment reached SAR 1.3 million across health, community development, culture, heritage, education, and sports programs, including disability empowerment programs benefiting over 3,000 children in Marat Governorate.

What This Means for the Sector

From FCI’s perspective, City Cement’s 2024 sustainability report represents the most comprehensively documented sustainability performance in the Saudi cement sector to date. The data is specific, third-party assured, and organized against internationally recognized reporting frameworks. The performance covers the full value chain: from raw material sourcing and alternative fuel production through manufacturing, logistics, and community impact.

More importantly, the trajectory is consistent and accelerating. City Cement is not reporting a single breakthrough year. It is reporting the cumulative output of a strategy that has been executed with disciplined continuity since at least 2017, when alternative fuel utilization stood at 2.74 percent. That consistency is what makes the results credible and the model instructive.

The company’s CEO Majed Al-Osailan sits on the Future Cement Initiative’s leadership, and City Cement’s experience is directly informing the standards, frameworks, and policy recommendations that the FCI is developing for the sector as a whole. The work being done at the Marat plant is not just a company story. It is becoming the reference point against which the rest of the Saudi cement industry’s transition will be measured.

Arabian Cement Company

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Arabian Cement Company

71 Years of Industrial Heritage, Now Pointed Toward a Decarbonized Future

The Weight of Being First

Arabian Cement Company carries a distinction that no other producer in Saudi Arabia or the broader Gulf region can claim. It was the first cement company established in the Kingdom, founded in Jeddah in 1957 under the patronage of King Saud bin Abdulaziz. Over 71 years of continuous industrial operation, ACC has expanded from a 2,000 ton per day clinker facility to a plant at Rabigh capable of producing 12,200 tons of clinker per day across two modern production lines. It has survived market cycles, regulatory transitions, and structural shifts in the competitive landscape. That institutional resilience is the starting point for understanding what ACC is now attempting: a structured, phased transformation toward a fundamentally different production model, one that is lower in carbon intensity, more digitally intelligent, and more operationally disciplined than anything the company has operated before.

The transformation is not framed as a response to external pressure. It is framed as a strategic choice, grounded in four interconnected pillars: sustainability, decarbonization, operational excellence, and digital transformation. Each pillar has its own logic, but the company’s position is that they are mutually reinforcing. Decarbonization without operational excellence is inefficient. Digital transformation without a sustainability target lacks direction. The four pillars only deliver their full value when they are pursued together, and ACC’s 2026 to 2030 roadmap is built on exactly that premise.

Starting From a Clear Baseline

One of the more disciplined aspects of ACC’s transformation approach is the commitment to starting from a documented, specific baseline rather than from aspirational language. The company’s 2026 indicators provide the quantified starting point against which all future progress will be measured.
ACC’s current CO2 intensity stands at 884 kg CO2 per ton of clinker, with a clinker factor of 85.7 percent. Thermal energy consumption is 818 kcal per kg of clinker, and electrical energy consumption for cement production is 101 kWh per ton. These numbers define the challenge precisely. They tell the company and its stakeholders exactly where performance stands today, what the gap to best-in-class looks like, and which levers carry the most decarbonization potential.

The clinker factor is particularly significant. At 85.7 percent, it represents the share of clinker in the final cement product. Every percentage point of clinker replaced with lower-carbon supplementary materials reduces both the thermal energy demand and the process CO2 intensity of the product. This makes clinker factor reduction the single highest-leverage variable in ACC’s decarbonization equation, and it is central to the company’s stated pathway forward.

The Decarbonization Pathway

Four Levers, One Direction

ACC’s decarbonization strategy is built on four connected levers. The first is reducing clinker dependency through a deliberate shift in product mix toward lower-carbon cement types. Portland Pozzolana Cement, Limestone Portland Cement, and GGBFS-based products are all positioned as core to the company’s future portfolio, each offering a meaningful reduction in clinker-to-cement ratio while meeting the performance requirements of the Saudi construction market.

The second lever is improved energy efficiency across the thermal and electrical dimensions of production. With heat consumption at 818 kcal per kg of clinker and electrical consumption at 101 kWh per ton of cement, there is defined headroom for improvement. The process expert systems and energy reporting tools in the digital roadmap are specifically designed to surface the efficiency opportunities that exist within current operations.

The third lever is a strategic shift toward greater reliance on grid electricity. As Saudi Arabia’s grid continues to incorporate larger shares of renewable generation, a cement producer with higher grid dependency and lower captive fossil fuel generation will carry a structurally lower Scope 2 emissions profile. ACC’s direction of travel on this dimension aligns with the Kingdom’s broader energy transition trajectory.

The fourth lever is the expansion of the lower-carbon product portfolio described above, which addresses both the clinker factor and the product-level carbon intensity simultaneously. Taken together, these four levers constitute a coherent decarbonization pathway, not a collection of standalone projects.

The Digital Roadmap

Infrastructure for Execution

ACC has described digital transformation explicitly as the practical execution model for its sustainability and decarbonization goals. This framing is important. It positions digital investment not as a technology objective in itself, but as the operational infrastructure required to achieve the performance targets that the transformation agenda demands.

The 2026 to 2028 digital roadmap is structured and phased. It covers six capability domains: plant data management, energy reporting, process expert systems, dispatch optimization, intelligent maintenance, and management reporting tools. Each domain addresses a specific performance gap identified in the current operating model.

Plant data management creates the data foundation on which everything else depends. Without clean, consistent, and accessible plant data, neither energy reporting nor process optimization can deliver their intended value. Energy reporting tools provide the visibility required to track consumption against targets in real time, enabling faster intervention when performance deviates from plan. Process expert systems bring the kind of model-based optimization to kiln and mill operations that consistently deliver reductions in specific energy consumption and emissions intensity across the plants that have deployed them.

Dispatch optimization addresses logistics efficiency, reducing the idle time, excess fuel consumption, and delivery unreliability that characterize less optimized cement distribution operations. Intelligent maintenance moves the plant from scheduled and reactive maintenance toward predictive approaches that extend equipment life, reduce unplanned downtime, and lower maintenance cost per ton. Management reporting tools close the loop by ensuring that operational data reaches decision-makers in a form they can act on, rather than remaining trapped in plant-level systems.

The SIRI assessment conducted in 2023 provides an independent external baseline for ACC’s digital maturity. The assessment placed the company with zero dimensions in the bottom performers range, 10 in the broad middle range, and 6 at best-in-class level globally. Shop Floor Connectivity and Facility Connectivity both achieved Band 5 (Scalable), the highest possible rating, reflecting the strength of ACC’s plant automation and real-time communication infrastructure. The priority dimensions identified for further development were Vertical Integration, Shop Floor Intelligence, and Leadership Competency, which map precisely onto the capability gaps that the 2026 to 2028 digital roadmap is designed to close.

Operational Excellence

The Performance Foundation

ACC is explicit that operational excellence is not a consequence of digital transformation. It is a precondition for it. Process stability, maintenance discipline, equipment reliability, and consistent plant operation are the foundation on which digital systems deliver their intended value. A plant with unstable process conditions, frequent unplanned stoppages, and inconsistent product quality will not benefit from expert system deployment until the underlying operational fundamentals are addressed.

This sequencing reflects an experienced operational judgment. ACC has operated at industrial scale for over seven decades. The understanding that technology adoption requires a stable operational base is not a theoretical position. It is a practical lesson drawn from long experience in cement manufacturing. The transformation roadmap builds on this understanding by positioning operational excellence improvements alongside, and in some cases ahead of, the digital deployments that follow.

The Rabigh plant’s highly automated production infrastructure, with full DCS control from raw material reclaiming through to finished product dispatch and Oracle OPM integration across all enterprise functions, provides the operational platform on which the next phase of transformation will be built. The delivery performance of 30 minutes from truck-in to truck-out for professional customers reflects the operational efficiency already embedded in the plant’s logistics model.

Governance and ESG Reporting

The Institutional Backbone

ACC’s sustainability transformation is supported by a governance framework that is among the most rigorous in the Saudi industrial sector. The company has published its third annual GRI-aligned ESG report, covering performance against Global Reporting Initiative Core standards and all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Its nine-member Board of Directors achieves 56 percent independence, with all committees reporting 100 percent attendance in 2024. The Corporate Governance Excellence Award has been received for five consecutive years from 2019 through 2023, evaluated against more than 200 listed companies on the Saudi Stock Exchange.

The Saudization rate of 54 percent, classified within the Platinum tier of the Nitaqat program, reflects the company’s commitment to national workforce development. Employee satisfaction stands at 88.84 percent, and training investment reached SAR 925,000 in 2024 across 200 training hours. Local procurement reached 78 percent of total purchases in 2024, up from 72 percent in 2023, reinforcing the company’s contribution to the domestic economy.

The transparency standard ACC holds itself to includes disclosure of compliance gaps as well as achievements. The four environmental permit violations received in 2024 due to delayed renewal submissions are disclosed fully in the ESG report, along with the corrective actions taken. This level of transparency, disclosing what went wrong as clearly as what went right, is precisely the credibility standard that makes ESG reporting meaningful to external stakeholders.

What This Transformation Signals for the Sector

ACC enters its transformation journey from a position of institutional strength. It owns its raw material resources across limestone, clay, gypsum, pozzolan, and iron ore. It operates a highly automated, fully DCS-controlled production facility. It has a governance structure capable of holding leadership accountable to long-term commitments. And it now has a documented baseline, a defined roadmap, and a clear set of performance targets against which progress can be tracked.

From FCI’s perspective, ACC’s approach reflects something the sector needs more of: a transformation agenda grounded in operational reality rather than aspirational positioning. The baseline KPIs are specific. The roadmap is phased and sequenced. The four strategic pillars are genuinely connected rather than loosely parallel. And the decarbonization levers, clinker factor reduction, energy efficiency, grid shift, and lower-carbon product expansion, address the real sources of cement’s carbon footprint rather than peripheral variables.

The Kingdom’s oldest cement company is making a deliberate choice to be among the ones that define what comes next. At 71 years of operation, that choice carries weight.

Yamama Cement Company

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Yamama Cement Company

Redefining What Industrial Efficiency Means in the Saudi Cement Sector

The Starting Point

A Different Kind of Question

Most sustainability narratives in the cement industry begin with a target: a carbon reduction percentage, a renewable energy commitment, a net-zero horizon year. Yamama Cement Company’s story begins with a more fundamental question, one that is harder to answer and more consequential when answered well. The question is not simply how much to reduce, but how to embed sustainability so deeply into the operating model that efficiency and environmental performance become the same thing.

That question has guided Yamama’s transformation over recent years, producing results that are measurable, structural, and increasingly difficult for competitors to replicate quickly. The company has built a case study in integrated industrial change: one where product innovation, digital intelligence, energy management, and human capital development are not parallel workstreams but a single, coherent direction of travel.

GREEN PLC

Turning Product Strategy into a Carbon Statement

The most visible expression of Yamama’s sustainability commitment is the development and commercialization of its GREEN PLC product line, a lower-carbon cement engineered to reduce the carbon footprint per ton of cement produced. The company has targeted a carbon intensity of below 650 kilograms of CO2 per ton, a threshold that positions GREEN PLC meaningfully below the carbon profile of conventional Portland cement production in the Kingdom.

This is not a niche product or a pilot offering. It is a strategic repositioning of Yamama’s product portfolio toward the low-carbon building materials market that Saudi Arabia’s construction pipeline, driven by Vision 2030’s giga-projects and urban development programs, will increasingly demand. The decision to develop GREEN PLC reflects a clear-eyed reading of where the market is heading and a commitment to leading that transition rather than responding to it.

What makes this product decision strategically significant is that it forces upstream discipline. Delivering a consistently lower-carbon cement at commercial scale requires tighter control over clinker quality, mix design, and production process stability. The product, in other words, pulls the entire operation toward higher standards. It does not sit separately from operational excellence. It demands it.

Digital Transformation

From Data Collection to Decision Intelligence

Yamama’s operational transformation is anchored in a comprehensive digital upgrade that has materially changed how the plant operates, monitors its assets, and makes decisions. The shift is from a reactive and planned maintenance culture toward a predictive, data-driven operating environment, where equipment health is continuously monitored and potential failures are identified before they generate downtime.
The company deployed AI and IoT-based predictive maintenance technology across its cement mills and critical rotating equipment, installing wireless vibration and ultrasonic sensors that feed continuous condition data into cloud-based AI analytics platforms. The outcome is a 48 percent increase in the number of assets under active digital monitoring, a 15 percent reduction in unplanned downtime, and a threefold improvement in the accuracy and timeliness of fault prediction.

The practical significance of these numbers is substantial. In a cement plant operating at scale, an unplanned stoppage of a mill or kiln drive does not just affect output for that shift. It triggers a cascade of scheduling disruptions, energy waste during restart cycles, and quality variation that takes time to stabilize. Reducing the frequency and duration of such events through predictive intelligence creates compounding value: more consistent production, lower maintenance cost per ton, and a more predictable cost base overall.
The implementation approach is also instructive. Yamama chose a wireless, cloud-based architecture that allowed deployment in 15 days, without major shutdowns, hot work, or integration into core IT systems. This kept security exposure low and allowed the reliability team to expand their monitoring program to a significantly larger asset base without proportional increases in headcount. It is a pragmatic model for scalable digital transformation in an operating plant environment.

Beyond maintenance, the digital transformation has accelerated decision-making across the operational layer. Real-time data access has reduced response time to operational anomalies, simplified control room operations, and created a continuous improvement feedback loop that management can act on immediately rather than in the next planning cycle.

Energy Efficiency

The Compounding Impact of Systematic Improvement

Energy management at Yamama is not treated as a standalone cost reduction program. It is positioned as a core operational discipline with direct implications for both financial performance and carbon intensity. The company has pursued a systematic efficiency improvement program across its production operations, targeting the specific energy consumers that account for the largest share of total consumption.

The results reflect the cumulative effect of multiple coordinated interventions rather than any single project. Electrical energy consumption for cement production has been reduced by approximately 15 percent, a reduction that, at Yamama’s production scale of 6 million tons of clinker capacity annually, translates into a significant absolute reduction in energy cost and associated emissions.

The energy efficiency program is directly linked to the digital transformation described above. Assets operating with bearing faults, poor lubrication, or mechanical imbalance consume disproportionate energy before they fail. The predictive maintenance program, by catching these conditions early, reduces energy waste as a secondary benefit. This is the kind of system-level linkage that distinguishes a genuinely integrated transformation from a collection of separate initiatives.

Saudization and Human Capital

Building the Workforce the Sector Needs

Yamama’s transformation agenda extends beyond equipment and processes. The company has made a deliberate investment in building Saudi national capability across its technical and managerial workforce, with a Saudization rate of 75 percent of total employment. This figure reflects not just regulatory compliance but a considered strategic investment in the human infrastructure required to sustain long-term operational excellence.

This matters for the sector as a whole. The cement industry’s transition to digital operations, lower-carbon products, and continuous improvement cultures requires a workforce that can manage complex systems, interpret data, and drive change from within the organization. Yamama’s investment in national talent development is building exactly that capability, and doing so in a context where the technical roles being filled are more demanding than the generation before them.

The company’s leadership has been explicit about this connection. Automation and digitization are not positioned as replacements for skilled people. They are positioned as tools that elevate what skilled people can accomplish. That framing shapes how training, career development, and operational responsibility are structured within the company.

The Larger Significance

A Model Built to Scale

From FCI’s perspective, what Yamama Cement has built is not just a successful plant-level transformation. It is a replicable model for how a regional cement producer navigates the transition to a more sustainable and competitive industrial position.

The model has three defining characteristics. First, it is integrated: product innovation, digital capability, energy efficiency, and workforce development are connected and mutually reinforcing rather than siloed programs competing for budget and attention. Second, it is evidence-based: every initiative is tracked against specific performance indicators, and the results are transparent enough to inform decisions about where to invest next. Third, it is scaled to commercial reality: Yamama is not a pilot project or a greenfield facility. It is a large-scale, multi-decade operating company that has transformed itself from within.

The cement sector in Saudi Arabia and across the region is at a point where the gap between companies that have made this transition and those that have not will begin to widen materially, both in cost competitiveness and in access to markets that are increasingly requiring documented carbon performance from their supply chains. Yamama Cement’s trajectory positions it well on both dimensions.
The journey is not complete. No industrial transformation of this scope ever is. But the direction is clear, the results are real, and the model is one that the sector can learn from.

Future Cement Initiative at Cemtech MEA 2026 | Riyadh

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At Cemtech MEA 2026, the Future Cement Initiative (FCI) proudly co-hosted a global convening of cement leaders from 35+ countries, united around a defining challenge of our time: transforming the cement sector.

Key moments and insights: Science-Led Strategy

Prof. Bassam Dally presented how FCI’s research at KAUST is advancing next-generation low-carbon cement systems, integrating innovation in engineered and indigenous materials, to directly support Saudi Vision 2030 and Net Zero 2060. Deep engagement with regulators, producers, and FCI Board members reinforced the urgency of scaling science into policy and practice.

Technology at Scale
The exhibition demonstrated deployable solutions across the cement value chain, including carbon capture and utilization, alternative binders and SCMs, AI-enabled process optimization, Industry 4.0 digitalization, and alternative fuels, collectively redefining efficiency, resilience, and emissions intensity.

Industrial Transformation
A technical site visit to Yamama Cement’s 9.285 MTPA integrated plant showcased how large-scale modernization, energy optimization, and process upgrades are reshaping the region’s production landscape.

The MENA region is not reacting to the global energy transition; it is engineering it. Through aligned collaboration between KAUST, PIF, and cement industry partners, FCI remains confident that net-zero cement production in Saudi Arabia can be achieved and replicated globally.

 

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Future Cement Initiative Annual Workshop 2025

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During the latest Future Cement Initiative decarbonization workshop in December, Dr. Sarathy presented focused on carbon capture pathways for the cement sector. He examined oxyfuel combustion as a route that increases CO₂ concentration in kiln flue gas and improves capture performance. He showed how full and partial oxyfuel systems align with cement kiln chemistry and support high capture rates. He positioned these systems as practical options for industrial decarbonization because they produce concentrated CO₂ streams and reduce separation effort. His analysis placed emphasis on solutions that scale while preserving process integrity.

He also outlined progress from ongoing experimental programs in Europe. These programs demonstrate that oxyfuel conditions enhance CO₂ separation efficiency and simplify downstream purification. Collaborative initiatives such as AC2OCem are refining first‑ and second‑generation oxyfuel designs for retrofit and new‑build cement plants. Their work achieves gains in oxygen integration, calciner operation, and CO₂ avoidance cost. Pilot‑scale validation confirms these improvements. These developments strengthen the relevance of Dr. Sarathy’s research for FCI partners who seek evidence‑based decarbonization pathways grounded in current industrial practice.

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View Photos – December 9

The role of future cement in low-carbon buildings

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Future Cement Initiative
Webinar – 1

Date: Wednesday, 1 October 2025

Time: 3:00 – 4:30 PM

Format: Virtual (3 short talks + Q&A)

OBJECTIVE

Engage stakeholders in an educational discussion on the role of future cement in shaping low-carbon structures in Saudi Arabia. The webinar will also address alignment with the Saudi Building Code (SBC), Saudi Standards (SASO) and cement innovations.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Building consultants, contractors, cement and concrete manufacturers, government agencies, engineering professionals, and other industry stakeholders.

AGENDA

Opening Remarks from moderator:
Dr. Ahmed Ajabnoor,  Sustainability Council – Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources (MIM)

  • Green Building: Cement and Concrete Innovations
    Speaker: Mr. Steven Hale – Director, Engineering Innovations (NEOM)
  • Implications of Saudi Building Code on Future Cement Manufacturing
    Speaker: Assoc/Prof. Ali S.Alqarni – Chairman of Civil Engineering Department – King Saud University
  • Cement standards and the mechanism of introducing new products
    Speaker: Eng. Ahmed Alkhathlan – Director of Construction and Building standards Dept.(SASO)

Q&A Session – Interactive discussion with attendees and speakers.

CITY CEMENT: A BEACON IN THE DESERT

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Global Cement (GC): Please can you introduce City Cement Company?

Majed Al Osailan (MAO): City Cement was founded by Mr Ahmed Bin Omar Al-Abdullatif. His family has been in business for 60 years, mainly in textiles. Mr Ahmed initiated the greenfield project to foster national development while creating economic value and diversifying the family’s business.

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