Recently, our CEO Fernando A. González held a webcast to reflect on CEMEX’s strategic priorities and reveal how these will change over the year ahead.  He confirmed that we have made considerable progress since 2013, including significantly de-risking our balance sheet, reducing our total debt and generating substantial free cash flow – which has helped improve our operating efficiency and credit rating.

However, there is still work to do and as such the priorities have adjusted – CEMEX’s focus will now be on:

• Health & Safety
• Customer Centricity
• Innovation
• Sustainability
• EBITDA growth towards investment grade

One CEMEX is no longer a priority as this is embedded into our business model; CEMEX is now evolving its global networks to become truly customer focused, which will see our mindset change to making the customer the driver of the business.

This is a mindset which will help return CEMEX to investment growth – alongside our targeting of metropolitan areas with the highest potential. Growth will be driven by focusing on core products, urbanization solutions and CEMEX Ventures.

Fernando also praised the business’s commitment to Health & Safety, which saw fatalities reduce by 80% since 2010 and 96% of operations achieve zero LTIs & fatalities in 2019. Now, the emphasis is on health and wellbeing – such as the introduction of Cardi-O as we look to improve the heart health of ourselves and our colleagues.

Sustainability is a key driver for CEMEX in 2020 and beyond, as society demands urgent answers to climate change. CEMEX has pledged to reduce CO2 emissions by 35% by 2030, and to achieve net zero CO2 emissions in concrete by 2050.

Fernando confirmed that managing CEMEX as a global company is what makes us stand out from others – we can apply our learnings and successes to other geographical locations and in turn strengthen operations there.  By focusing on the identified strategic priorities we can all help to make CEMEX a strong and successful business across the world.