Displaying items by tag: Maharashtra

India: Ambuja Cement, part of Switzerland-based LafargeHolcim, plans to commission its upcoming Mundwa cement plant in Rajasthan by September 2021. The plant will have a total capacity of 5Mt/yr, consisting of 3Mt/yr of integrated and 2.0Mt/yr of grinding capacity. The Hindu newspaper has reported that the company aims to achieve 50Mt/yr total installed capacity in the medium term. It said that it is evaluating possible plant upgrades at Bhatapara in Chhattisgarh and Maratha in Maharashtra.

India: Dalmia Bharat subsidiary Dalmia Cement (Bharat) has shifted its recruitment procedures towards hiring more local people in Maharashtra, Bengal, Orissa due to labour shortages throughout the Covid-19 outbreak. The Economic Times newspaper has reported that local labour now makes up a majority of the workforce at multiple cement plants belonging to the company.

Dalmia Bharat group head of human resources Ajit Menon said, "In our Bengal plant, we have 90 - 95% local workers now versus 20 - 25% earlier, while in Orissa it is almost 100% local labour. Covid-19 has accelerated the intake of local workforce.” He added, “This has also given us the opportunity to give employment to people in the locations neighbouring our factories - many of whom are tribal people and are from underprivileged communities."

India: Orient Cement has entered into a share purchase, subscription and shareholder’s agreement with AMPTechnology and AMPSolar Systems. It will acquire a 26% stake in the latter for around US$0.6m. The Press Trust of India has reported that AMPSolar Systems is establishing a 13.5MW solar power plant in Maharashtra, where Orient Cement operates an integrated cement plant.

India: A public hearing over Birla Corporation subsidiary Reliance Cement’s planned 3.9Mt/yr Mukutban cement plant in Yavatmal district, Maharashtra has raised objections against the company’s quarry plans. The Times of India newspaper has reported that the plant is due to source its limestone from a 7.6km² quarry in Korpana, Chandrapur district. Critics say that the company has failed to complete a wildlife management plan, and that the site of the mine lies on a 120km wildlife corridor between the Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary and the Kawal Wildlife Sanctuary in neighbouring Telangana. Reliance Cement said that an environmental report had shown the presence of no scheduled species within 10km of the proposed site.

Maharashtra state wildlife board member and honorary wildlife warden Bandu Dhore said, “Although there is no forest area under the proposed mining site, it acts as a regular corridor as there is forest on either side within 1km. We are pursuing the matter with the forest department and would press it with higher officials to ensure that the precious corridor remains undisturbed. Protection of corridors is a must for conservation of wildlife and hence we are going to raise the demand of re-survey of the project site from the wildlife point of view.”

India: Wonder Cement has launched a new 2Mt/yr grinding plant at Badnawar in Madhya Pradesh. It follows the company’s first grinding plant at Dhule in Maharashtra that was launched in mid-2018, according to the Pioneer newspaper. The cement producer plans to open a third grinding plant at Jhajjar in Haryana to reach a combined production capacity of 13Mt/yr in 2020. The new grinding units have a cost of US$112m.

The National Council for Cement and Building Materials (NCB) International Seminar is running this week in New Delhi and this gives us a good opportunity to take a snapshot at the world’s second largest cement industry.

Data from the Ministry of Commerce & Industry shows comfortable cement production growth of 4.4% year-on-year to 255Mt in the first nine months of 2019. As graph 1 shows there was higher production growth in 2018 but this followed a decline in 2017, due to partly to the government’s demonetisation policy. October 2019 confirms a trend of falling year-on-year growth from August 2019 onwards following a peak growth rate in mid-2017.

Graph 1: Indian cement production in the first nine months of the year, 2015 – 2019. Source: Indian Ministry of Commerce & Industry.

Graph 2: Year-on-year change in monthly Indian cement production, 2017 – October 2019. Source: Indian Ministry of Commerce & Industry.

Analysts like ICRA have blamed the growth slowdown on the general election in mid-2019 and then the monsoon rains. By region in the six months from April to September 2019 it noted a slowdown in demand due to slowing government projects in northern, eastern and central areas. Labour concerns were reported in the north, centre and Gujarat in the west. Raw material shortages were picked up on such as water in Maharashtra and sand in the east and Andhra Pradesh. Positive growth was reported in Kerala, driven by post-flood reconstruction and low-cost housing schemes, and in Karnataka due to general construction activity. Broadly, UltraTech Cement, the country’s largest cement producer, in its November 2019 investor’s presentation, agreed with this assessment. It noted growth in the northern region and declines elsewhere. Like ICRA it too picked up on low cost housing declaring it to be a ‘key cement consumption driver.’

Away from the figures the main news stories have been continued consolidation such as the auction for Emami Cement and UltraTech Cement’s acquisition of Century Textiles and Industries. The sale of the former for plants in east and central regions has been linked to all the major local producers, including those owned by LafargeHolcim and HeidelbergCement. A report in the Hindu newspaper last week quoted a source placing UltraTech Cement and Nirma Group as the frontrunners with a valuation of around US$700m and an announcement at some point in December 2019. Despite UltraTech Cement’s market dominance nationally, its 17% production share in the east is low compared to its presence elsewhere. Nirma Group’s subsidiary Nuvoco Vistas is one of the smaller producers but, notably, it picked up Lafarge India’s assets in 2016.

Investment in new production capacity has continued with announcements from both JSW Cement and HeidelbergCement in recent weeks about expansion plans well into the mid-2020s. This follows planned projects from Dalmia Bharat Cement and Ramco Cement as well as orders from the JK Cement and Shree Cement. This ties into the capacity growth forecasts of around 120Mt over a similar timescale that the analysts were predicting in the middle of 2019. JM Financial, for example, pinned most of this growth on the south followed by the east and north. However, The India Cements said in November 2019 that it was delaying its expansion projects in Uttar Pradesh due to slowing government spending.

As is usual for a country with a low per capita cement consumption, on the national scale, one of the tensions in the Indian cement industry has been the balance between the capacity utilisation rate and the commissioning of new capacity. Its utilisation rate was below 60% in 2018 and a number of producers started reporting the negative effects of higher input and raw materials costs on their financial results. Knowing when to stop and start capacity growth is critical in this kind of environment. Specifically in India’s case curveballs such as government action on pollution and the country’s growing need for imports of coal as well as a burgeoning waste fuels sector are factors to keep an eye on. Finally, general trends such as UltraTech Cement’s focus on the Indian market, despite buying assets outside the country, are also compelling to watch as it chooses to concentrate on just one country. There are parallels here with other similarly-sized multinational that have also been focusing on core markets elsewhere in the globe.

India: Shree Cement has ordered a MVR 6000 C-6 mill from Germany’s Gebr. Pfeiffer. The mill will be used to grind cement at a grinding unit near Pune in the state of Maharashtra. No value for the order has been disclosed.

The new mill will be used to alternately produce 300t/hr of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) at a product fineness of 3100cm²/g acc. to Blaine or 300t/hr of Portland Pozzolana Cement (PPC) containing as much as 35% of fly ash at a product fineness of 3500cm²/g acc. to Blaine or 180t/hr of ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBFS) at a product fineness of 4500 cm²/g acc. to Blaine. The mill will come equipped with a 6700kW drive.

Gebr. Pfeiffer SE will supply the core components of the mill and the gear unit from Europe and its Indian subsidiary, Gebr. Pfeiffer (India), will provide the components such as the housing of the mill and classifier, the steel foundation parts as well as the internal parts of the classifier. The Indian subsidiary will also design the plant layout and advise the customer on the equipment he will procure on his own.

Shree Cement has ordered 34 mills from Gebr. Pfeiffer previously. It has recently commissioned a grinding plant in Jharkand that also uses a mill supplied by Gebr. Pfeiffer.

India: UltraTech Cement plans to complete its merger with Century Cement by September 2019. Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla said the company has approval from shareholders, the Competition Commission and stock exchanges, according to the Mint newspaper. However, it still needs permission from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).

The merger, which was first announced in May 2018, is a long running reorganisation of assets belonging to the Birla family. Once complete it is expected to give UltraTech Cement dominance in all regional markets with the addition of 13.4Mt/yr of production capacity in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.

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: Penna Cement has received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for a US$220m initial public offering (IPO). The company intends to use the funds to pay off debts and for general corporate purposes, according to the Hindu newspaper. The cement producer operates four integrated plants and two grinding plants in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Maharashtra that share a total production capacity of 10Mt/yr.