Displaying items by tag: India

India: Emami Group has chosen Arpwood Capital and Credit Suisse to manage the sale of its cement business. It is seeking a sale value of around US$1bn according to sources quoted by the Business Standard newspaper. However, the company is still deciding the size of the stake it wants to sell. UltraTech Cement was reported to be in talks to buy a stake in Emami Cement in late June 2019.

India: Basant Kumar Birla, chairman of BK Birla Group, has died at the age of 98 in Mumbai. He is survived by his grandson Kumar Mangalam Birla, the head of Aditya Birla Group, the owner of UltraTech Cement, amongst many other family members, according to the Times of India.

Part of the influential Birla family of industrialists, Basant Kumar Birla originally started working at Kesoram Industries before turning the business into a conglomerate with concerns in cement, engineering, medium-density fibreboards, pulp and paper, rayon, shipping, tyres, tea, chemicals and other sectors. BK Birla Group reported a turnover of US$2.4bn in the 2018 – 2019 financial year. At present the group now comprises five major companies - Kesoram Industries, Century Textiles & Industries, Century Enka, Mangalam Cement and ECE Industries - and several smaller subsidiaries.

Image of Basant Kumar Birla by Biswarup Ganguly CC BY 3.0

India: The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in Mumbai has approved Dalmia Bharat’s offer for debt-laden Murli Industries, subject to conditions intended to stop the company going into liquidation. The tribunal has given Dalmia Bharat until 12 July 2019 to decide if it wants to proceed, according to the Economic Times newspaper. The conditions include forcing the buyer to reinstate lapsed mining leases related to Murli Industries itself and removing clauses allowing Dalmia Bharat to modify or withdraw its plans at any stage. Dalmia Bharat bid around US$60m to buy Murli Industries’ 3Mt/yr cement plant in Maharashtra in late 2017.

India: Ambuja Cement is looking for ready-mix concrete (RMX) and aggregate assets to buy as part of its growth plans. A company source quoted by the Business Standard newspaper said that it was considering ‘growth options’ in all of its core businesses of cement, RMX and aggregates. Industry analysts have interpreted this as an effort to diversify the business away from dominance by the cement sector. However, expansion in the RMX market is expected to be difficult owing to the lack of local organisation in the market.

The subsidiary of LafargeHolcim has a cement production capacity of 63Mt/yr, including those of ACC. Both Ambuja Cement and ACC use a master supply agreement to coordinate sales, marketing and logistics.

India: Piyush Goyal, the Minister of Commerce and Industry, says that the cement industry has a capacity utilisation rate of 67%. In a written reply to the Indian Parliament, he said that the country had an installed production capacity for cement of around 510Mt/yr and that 337Mt was produced in the 2018 – 2019 financial year.

India/UK: The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) has launched GCCA India. As part of GCCA’s strategic partnership with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development the new office, based in Mumbai, will take over the work of the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) India, which formerly served as the sector’s sustainability alliance.

GCCA India plans to ensure that, from a sustainability angle, innovation in technology and manufacture, and collaboration across the wider built environment, the Indian cement sector can play a key leadership role. It will develop a work program that will focus on the wider global GCCA priorities but with practical application across the Indian built environment.

Kenya: Mombasa Cement has ordered a MVR 3750 C-4 type vertical roller mill from Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer. It will be used to grind cement on the second production line it is building at its integrated Vipingo plant. The mill has a drive power of 2900kW to produce 150t/hr of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). Delivery will be coordinated between Gebr. Pfeiffer’s Indian subsidiary and its headquarters in Kaiserslautern, Germany. No value for the order has been disclosed.

The cement producer has previously ordered two cement mills from Gebr. Pfeiffer. In January 2016 it ordered a type MVR 3750 C-4 vertical mill for the Tororo plant in Uganda. In June 2016 it ordered a Ready2Grind type MVR 1800 C-4 mill for its Vipingo plant. The latest order at Vipingo has the same design as the mill in Uganda.

India: Minister Piyush Goyal, the Commerce and Industry Minister, has confirmed that the Competition Commission of India looking into complaints of rising cement prices. He said that complaints on the had been received about the price of cement and allegations of cartel-like behaviour, according to the New Indian Express newspaper.

India: Credit rating agency ICRA expects that cement demand growth will fall to 7% year-on-year in the first quarter of the 2019 – 2020 financial year from 13% in the previous year. It has blamed this on a slowdown in infrastructure projects due to the general election and resulting labour shortages. However, higher cement prices and lower input costs - including power, fuel and distribution expenses – are forecast to improve profits. Cement consumption is predicted to increase in the third quarter due to housing demand and pickup in infrastructure schemes.

The agency also said that around 18 – 20Mt/yr of cement production capacity would be added in the 2019 – 2020 year. This will be from a variety of integrated and grinding projects. This is below the projected demand growth of 24Mt/yr but overall sector production overcapacity is expected to continue at around 71%.

India: UltraTech Cement is in talks to buy a stake in Emami Cement for up to U$800m. Sources quoted by the Economic Times newspaper say that UltraTech Cement is working with private equity companies, including KKR and Temasek Holdings, on the potential deal. Emami Group is reportedly still deciding whether to sell its entire cement business, a stake or selected assets.

Emami Cement operates a 2.5Mt/yr integrated plant at Risda in Chhattisgarh and a 2.5Mt/yr grinding plant at Panagarh in West Bengal. It acquired a 0.6Mt/yr grinding plant at Bhabua, Bihar in September 2018. In addition, the firm has mining assets in Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and near Jaipur in Rajasthan. Its main markets are in West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. It markets its products under the Double Bull brand.