KIEV, Aug. 1 ??“ By the end of 2007 Podil Cement, or Podilcement in Khmelnytsky region, is planning to switch to using coal to power its furnaces, significantly cutting the cost of its cement, the company's commercial director, Anatoliy Dehtiariov, told Interfax-Ukraine.

According to Dehtiariov procurement tenders for a program to make the switch to coal have already been held, and construction is now underway. Commenting on the decline of cement production in H1, he said: "nothing scary has happened. Consumption dynamics have slowed, but have not fallen to zero. The dynamics cannot be very high constantly, and those that we have previously had, which were of up to 20-25%, had to go down sooner or later."