Economic analysis of the European cement industry.

Summary We present a methodology to assess the profitability of a capital intensive industry over a business cycle and to make projections of profitability for different investment strategies under various hypothetical scenarios for environmental and competition policies. The methodology is applied to the European cement industry over the period 2004‐2012 (Part I) and over the next 10/15 years (Part II) using publicly available data, interviews of financial analysts and industry experts.