The Mineral Products Association criticises UK Government's plans on construction materials

It says the plans overlook the aggregates, cement and concrete needed for sustainable homes and infrastructure.

The Mineral Products Association (MPA) notes that the Steel Strategy from the Department of Business and Trade – currently being consulted upon – mirrors many of issues facing UK cement producters.

While DEFRA's updated Timber in Construction Roadmap is highlighted as disproportionately partisan towards wood, 'despite reiterating its intractable shortcomings'.

Furthermore, says the MPA, the Green Paper for the forthcoming Industrial Strategy highlighted eight key sectors, but overlooked that all of them require minerals and mineral products, especially advanced manufacturing and clean energy.

It notes that the UK cement industry faces many of the same issues as UK steel producers, such as uncompetitively expensive energy costs and the threat of carbon leakage to deindustrialisation.

The MPA has written to Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds MP to make the case for UK cement to have similar consideration before it is too late.

'Cement was recently identified as the UK’s most vulnerable sector to carbon leakage, which effectively shifts emissions to countries with weaker climate policies. We’re not in the same position as steel, yet, but we’re on the same trajectory, with the same uncompetitive industrial energy costs,' asserts Dr Diana Casey, MPA Executive Director for Energy and Climate Change.