Cement sales in Lanzarote fell by 4% in 2021 compared to 2020, in which record figures were recorded despite the pandemic in the construction sector.
Specifically, 72,061 tons of cement were sold in Lanzarote throughout last year, compared to 75,284 the previous year. These data continue to be higher than in 2019, before the pandemic, when a total of 62,365 tons were sold.
According to data from the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics, collected by the Lanzarote Data Center, the island recorded cement sales data higher than in 2020 during the first four months of the year. In January 2021, 5,129.2 tons of cement were sold on the island, 3% more than in the same month of 2020, while in February 5,767.4 tons were sold, which represented an interannual increase of 16%.
On the other hand, during the month of March 8,590.8 tons of cement were sold in Lanzarote, 63% more than in the same month of 2020, this being the largest percentage increase of the entire year. In April, 6,060.4 tons were sold, 47% more than in the same period of the previous year.
If we compare these first four months of 2021 with 2019, and despite the important data for the month of April, 1,107 fewer tons were sold in Lanzarote, since the sum of the first four months of 2019 totals 26,654 tons, compared to 25,547 last year.
From May onwards, sales began to fall
The year-on-year percentage of cement sales began to decrease from the month of May, breaking an upward trend since April 2020, marked by the start of confinement. However, the decrease in cement sales was a single-digit percentage in May, June and July, with reductions of 8, 4 and 6 percent respectively.
However, the month of August recorded the highest percentage of year-on-year decrease, reaching up to 31% less than in 2020. Specifically, in this month of 2021, 5,339 tons of cement were sold, compared to 7,812 in 2020. However, even in this month a higher figure was sold than in 2019, when only 5,066 tons were sold.
The months of September and October continued to decline compared to the previous year, with percentages of 17 and 24 percent respectively, with October being the only month with a figure lower than 2019.
In the penultimate month of the year, Lanzarote managed to sell 5,535 tons of cement, while in December 4,761 tons of cement were sold, the lowest figure of the entire year, compared to 6,054 in 2020. In this case, and despite being a fairly low figure, it is still higher than in 2019, since in December of that year only 3,698 tons were sold.
