Displaying items by tag: India

India: The price of imported petcoke has hit a multi-year high in March 2018. Increased demand and a shortage due to maintenance work at refineries has caused the rise in price, according to the Mint newspaper. In November, the Indian Supreme Court temporarily banned the use of petcoke in Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The import duty of the fuel was then raised to 10% from 2.5%.

Deepak Kannan, managing editor of Asia Thermal Coal at S&P Global Platts, said that local demand for petcoke is around 23 – 24Mt/yr but that local supply is only 14Mt/yr. Much of the country imported petcoke comes from the US or Saudi Arabia. Petcoke prices are expected to relax in April 2018 as refineries return to normal operation.

Mexico: Cemex’s chief executive officer (CEO) Fernando González says that the company is nearly ready to start considering acquisitions after a decade of asset sales and debt reduction. He told analysts at a conference in New York that the company will seek shareholder approval in April 2018 to issue new shares to raise capital, which it could eventually use along with debt and cash, according to Dow Jones.

The building materials producer plans to focus on cement operations in large emerging markets and on aggregates in developed markets. Major markets where Cemex doesn't have operations include India and Brazil and it would be interested in targeted these regions. The company has also striven to regain its investment-grade credit rating it held until 2008 when its earnings fell following its US$15.5bn purchase of Rinker.

India: The Fly Ash Council of Maharashtra has asked state power generation company Mahagenco to plan how to give fly ash for free to industrial users. The initiative follows the decision by the state government to adopt its Fly Ash Utilisation Policy, according to the Indian Express newspaper. An official said that the power company would give away fly ash for free within 100km of the plant if it is affordable. The measure was introduced to encourage cement manufacturers and construction companies to use more fly ash by offsetting the transportation cost. At present smaller companies receive the fly ash for no charge.

In 2015 - 2016, Maharashtra used 69% of the fly ash generated in thermal power plants in the state. With an installed capacity of 20,976MW, the state generated 18.6Mt of fly ash during this period, of which 13Mt was used, mostly to make bricks and to build roads. With the new policy the government is targeting a 100% utilisation rate.

India: With a merger of LafargeHolcim subsidiaries ACC and Ambuja Cement on hold, the two companies have proposed entering into a Master Supply Agreement (MSA) with each other with the aims of increasing synergies, reducing operational costs and increasing the companies’ joint sustainability.

This agreement is for supply of cement, clinker, raw materials (including fuel, fly ash, slag, gypsum etc), spare parts and for providing toll grinding services at certain plants. This will be executed through purchase orders, subject to a pricing formula. This will enable each company to optimise the cost of servicing markets by using each other’s plant’s capabilities, maximise the utilisation of assets to generate additional sales for each company and make best use of their joint spare inventory.

India: France’s Vicat plans to spend Euro223m towards upgrading a cement plant and building a new one in India. Group chairman Guy Sidos signed two memoranda of understanding on a recent French business delegation to India, according to the Economic Times newspaper. Vicat’s local subsidiary, Kalburgi Cement, plans to spend Euro140 on an upgrade to its Karnataka cement plant. The upgrade will add 2.25Mt/yr of cement capacity and will be completed by the first quarter of 2023. It also plans to invest Euro60m towards building a new 1.75Mt/yr plant in the Vizianagaram district of Andhra Pradesh. The new plant is scheduled for completion in mid-2022. Once both projects are completed Kalburgi Cement will have a total cement production capacity of 6.75Mt/yr from two units.

India: The government of Haryana is investigating the transfer of around 122 acres belonging to the Associated Cement Companies’ (ACC) closed Bhupendra Cement plant to a Mumbai-based builder. According to Kalka MLA Latika Sharma, the land’s lease said it could only be used for industrial use, according to the Times of India newspaper. However, the builder it has been transferred to intends to build a town. Education minister Ram Bilas Sharma Sharma told the state congress that the Haryana Police had gathered ‘strong’ material on alleged irregularities in the entire issue and the government had decided to get the matter probed by the state vigilance bureau. The Bhupendra Cement plant at Surajpur near Pinjore was originally built in 1937. It was closed in 1997 on environmental grounds.

India: NCL Industries has completed a production capacity upgrade project for both clinker and cement. Commercial operations for the upgrade started on 7 March 2018. The cement producer increased its clinker capacity to 2.6Mt/yr and cement capacity to 2.7Mt/yr in 2017. It operates an integrated cement plant at Simhapuri in Telangana and a cement grinding plant at Kondapalli in Andhra Pradesh. It sells cement under the Nagarjuna Cement brand.

India: Nitin Gadkari, the Minister Of Road Transport And Highways, says that the government is considering taking action against cement producers for cartel activity, according to the ET Now television channel. The sector has faced various claims of alleged cartel-like activity. In early 2017 the Competition Commission of India found seven cement companies guilty of bid rigging and cartelisation and imposed a total fine of nearly US$30m on them. This followed a US$1bn fine levied on ACC, ACL, Binani, Century, India Cements, JK Cement, Lafarge, Ramco, UltraTech, Jaiprakash Associates and the Cement Manufacturers Association in August 2016.

India: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has dropped a complaint against JSW Cement concerning denial of supply of cement. The complaint was made by Kerala-based Ramachandran V, an authorised dealer of JSW Cement, according to the Economic Times newspaper. It was alleged that the cement producer had abused its market position by denying the dealer supply of cement in breach of an agreement. In an order dated in late February 2018 the CCI ruled that JSW Cement did not hold a dominant position in the local market. Subsequently the complaint of abuse of a dominant position was not relevant.

India: The Ministry of Coal has cancelled Jaypee Cement’s coal block at Mandla in Madhya Pradesh citing breach of agreement. In a letter the ministry said that the cement producer was ‘not serious about the development of the coal mine,’ according to the Business Standard newspaper. The ministry has accused Jaypee Cement of switching the plant using coal from the mine without permission and of exceeding the agreed output.

The Mandla coal mine was allocated to Jaypee Cement in March 2015 after a bidding process. At first it supplied Jaypee’s Balaji cement plant in Andhra Pradesh. However, production from the mine switched to the Shahabad cement plant in June 2017 following the acquisition of the Balaji plant by UltraTech Cement.