2022 - INTERCEM's Year in Review

So, the end of the year is here again – it has been a record-breaking year for INTERCEM with more than 1,500 delegates participating at meetings in Madrid, Dubai, Chicago, Istanbul, and Houston.?

In the final week before Christmas, you will find the INTERCEM team sitting amongst packing boxes and bags for recycling as we clear the office in Wallington before we move to our new headquarters down the road in Epsom in time for the New Year.?

Packing up the office we are surrounded by papers, brochures, and souvenirs of past trips and INTERCEM events. It is nostalgic, reflecting on past conferences and this year’s events - especially in the context of recent history with covid, lockdowns, travel bans and the like. INTERCEM returned from our Covid hiatus last September (a full year before many other events) with meetings in Cyprus and the USA before the New Year and a near-full programme in 2022 – only INTERCEM Asia was missing from our full pre-pandemic schedule.

In Europe, it is easy to be nonchalant about Covid and forget how different things are now from the start of the year. Last December and January, fears about the new Omicron variant were high, with talk about restrictions being reimposed and travel and events once again being affected. It was against this background that the first meeting of the year took place in Madrid – with masks mandatory and windows wide open despite the January weather.

At the Forum, the talk was of volatile freight rates and vessel availability but also the impact of new IMO regulations (EEXI and CII) and the CBAM (the Carbon Boarder Adjustment Mechanism). Topics we visited again in Chicago at INTERCEM Shipping Americas and will be addressing about through the next year too, as both cement and shipping sectors tackle their carbon footprints.

After the INTERCEM Shipping Forum, INTERCEM Dubai was next. Ahead of the conference – having not visited the region in 2021, and with worries about travel and testing etc., at the forefront of our thinking – I headed out early to the Emirates, spending six weeks in this incredible city to ensure everything was ready for our delegates. However, as we approached the meeting restrictions were lifted, travel became easier without PCR testing or arrival forms and access from more countries was possible. The timing was impeccable, and the number of attendees grew and grew as we approached the conference dates. In fact, we had to re-submit our paperwork for the event licence two times for the capacity to be increased!

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In the end, a record audience of 450 delegates joined us at Jumeirah Emirates Towers, the biggest-ever attendance at an INTERCEM meeting in Dubai. Following this fantastic turnout, our meetings in Istanbul and Houston also saw their best attendances since the 2008 economic crash with industry colleagues keen to meet, network and do business after being unable to travel and being stuck behind a desk for so long. After two fallow years, live events across the board have experienced a bumper 12 months.

INTERCEM 2022 in Istanbul attracted 500 delegates from 50 countries and was the best-attended INTERCEM meeting in more than 15 years.

As at all our meetings this year, there was much to discuss. From the tail-end of the Covid pandemic has come a series of new crises - economic, military, geopolitical, societal, and political. There is increasingly more information for industry leaders to factor into their decision-making - including industry trends and legislative and commercial changes. There is uncertainty about what 2023 holds in store, as the war in Ukraine continues to impact the price of energy and raw materials and inflation and possible recession (in the UK it is already confirmed). Perhaps most importantly, the cement industry in 2022 continued to move toward its net-zero commitments. Dubbed the “Decade to deliver” in the GCCA roadmap, this period will define how the industry will be perceived and how cement will be manufactured well beyond the next twenty or even thirty years. In the meantime, INTERCEM will continue to bring you all the information you need to make informed decisions for your company and to help you strengthen networks across the world.??

Although the INTERCEM team is small, it takes hundreds of people working hard to deliver our events from the contractors who put up the exhibition to all the hotel staff and our sponsors, speakers, and exhibitors. A huge thank-you to everyone who has made our 2022 programme possible.?

Thanks also to the 1,500+ people who participated in INTERCEM meetings in 2022 and made this such a memorable year.

I wish everyone a Happy Christmas and New Year. We look forward to seeing you in 2023 with events in Greece, UAE, USA, and Singapore – with more to be announced soon!