Eran Siev, Chairman of the Renovation Contractors Association (Photo: Yanai Ditch)
Eran Siev, chairman of the Renovation Contractors Association, is reacting for the first time to the closure of the cement plant in Har-Tov, and claims that the closure of the plant could cause severe harm to the State of Israel in general and the construction industry in particular.
We will remind you that the Har-Tov cement plant in Beit Shemesh was closed for good two days ago (Monday, 1/30) after finding it difficult to compete with cement imported from abroad, mainly from Turkey, which is significantly cheaper.
Although the owners of the factory warned of the situation that could result, the Ministry of Economy decided not to impose a levy on the import of cement, which ultimately led to the announcement yesterday of the closure of the factory and the reaching of layoff agreements with its 60 employees, including those who have worked there for over 40 years.
Siv points out that "cement is one of the main and basic components in the renovation and construction industry, the State of Israel must not be dependent on other countries for this product, and therefore must preserve and encourage the local industry."
"The local cement has been the hallmark of the renovation industry for decades and should not be harmed, because during a global crisis or wars we can find ourselves without cement at all, which is a positive basic product for the industry."
"If there is no local production", Siv claims, "the suppliers abroad will take advantage of this and raise the prices drastically".
Illustration (photo: ShutterStock)
Some data: the cement market in Israel requires about 11 million tons per year, in Israeli production and as part of imports (9 million tons per year in bulk + 2 million tons per year in sacks).
The Har-Tov plant produced about one million tons a year - a third of the amount produced by the Nesher plant.
Now, about 7 million tons a year comes from importing cement, and only 4 million tons a year from Nesher's plant, which shows that today we are already in a situation where we are dependent on the world market.
It will be recalled that the floating levy was completely abolished during Eli Cohen's term as Minister of the Economy.
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