Cement sales on the island shot up again in December compared to the same month of the previous year, with a year-on-year increase of 63.4%. In total, 6,054 tons were sold on the island in the last month of the year, compared to 3,698 in December 2019, according to figures released by the Cabildo Data Center.
Lanzarote thus closed a year marked not only by the pandemic, but also by construction, which is one of the sectors that has best withstood the health crisis. However, the same did not happen in the Canary Islands as a whole, where cement sales fell by 1.5% in 2020 compared to the previous year.
In Lanzarote, however, the year's balance left an increase of more than 11%, after eight consecutive months of increases. Only the first four months of the year showed a decline compared to 2019, but the rebound from May onwards more than compensated for that fall.
In January, before the pandemic began, the year-on-year decrease was 22%, while in February it reached 27% and in March 19%. In April, in the midst of the state of alarm and confinement, and coinciding with the period in which the construction sector was also paralyzed, that decline reached 40%. However, from then on it began to skyrocket.
In May it rose to 72.7% compared to the previous month and 17.7% compared to the same month of 2019, while in the following months, the year-on-year increase was 69.3% in June, 9.7% in July, 54.2% in August, 63.2% in September, 30.4% in October, 64.7% in November and 63.7% in December.
This has meant about 70,000 tons of cement sold in a year on the island, which is by far the highest figure in the last decade. Only in 2019 had 60,000 been exceeded, while most years since 2010 had not even reached 50,000, according to the Data Center.
Even in 2015 the figure was 39,986 tons of cement sold on the island and in 2012 it was 31,977, which is less than half of last year.
