Bringing Price Stability to Cement and Clinker Sales in Volatile Markets

A flexible way to help cement and clinker suppliers protect income and plan ahead, even when prices fall or demand softens.

18 Jun 2025

Keep your volumes steady. Protect your margins.

Your plant needs to run efficiently. You know how to keep volumes moving and utilisation high. But that only works when prices hold up. And in volatile markets, that can change fast.

Even after a sale is agreed, market shifts can eat into your margin. Renegotiating every time prices fall is difficult. But waiting it out could mean losing out altogether.

That’s why we help cement and clinker suppliers build stability into their forward pricing. This structure runs alongside your physical deal. It doesn’t change your contract or who you sell to. But it helps protect the income you planned for.

How it works: protect your agreed price

This is a separate commercial agreement, built around the price you want to secure. If prices drop below that level, the agreement pays you the difference. If prices rise, you return the difference. All settled in cash, confidentially, through trusted and regulated parties.

You stay in full control of your operations. If your physical contract isn’t formally indexed, we work with you to find a benchmark and adjustment that reflect your position as closely as possible.

Importantly, even when the index rises and you’re paying out on the agreement, you’re likely selling physical product at the higher market rate, so your overall position can still be positive. This approach helps decouple your margin management from daily operations and allows you to take a longer-term view with confidence.

Here’s a simple example based on 10,000 metric tons of clinker per month:

Month

Index Price

$/MT

Fixed Price

$/MT

Volume

MT

Sellers Adjustment $

Potential Additional Revenue $

Feb 25

43

44

10,000

+10,000

-10,000

March 25

43.7

44

10,000

+3000

-3,000

April 25

46.8

44

10,000

-28,000

+28,000

May 25

45.5

44

10,000

-15,000

+15,000

Why suppliers use it

  • Helps protect margin when demand softens or prices fall

  • Makes it easier to take a long-term view with buyers

  • Supports steady production without margin anxiety

  • Keeps operations and pricing strategies separate

This approach is how many global commodity supplier, from energy to agriculture, have managed risk for decades, sometimes centuries. We’re now tailoring the same principles to cement and clinker.

This isn’t about changing how you sell. It’s about strengthening what you earn from it.

At LMX, we help suppliers explore simple ways to protect the value of their future sales.

If that sounds useful, let’s talk.