India: Shree Cement plans to build a 1Mt/yr integrated plant at Daistong, East Jaintia Hills District, in Meghalaya. The project has an estimated cost of US$194m and it will be paid for via internal accruals and debt. The plant is forecast to be built by March 2028.
Iran: The Bandar Khamir cement plant in Hormozgan has been targeted in a drone attack. The unit remains operational and no disruption was caused to the supply chain, according to the state-run Mehr News Agency and the Türkiye-based Anadolu Agency. The deputy provincial governor reported that no casualties occurred in the incident. The ongoing war between the US, Israel and Iran started in late February 2026.
India: Cement plants in Ahmedabad have reportedly waived the fee for accepting spent sulphuric acid. Chemical plants produce about 2000t/day of spent sulphuric acid and 1500t/day of this is accepted by local cement companies, according to the Times of India newspaper. The cement plants were previously charging US$5 – 15/t depending on the quality and acidity level of the spent acid. Under the new agreement the chemical companies will now only have to pay transport costs. Cement companies were reportedly persuaded to cut the gate fee due to a sharp rise in sulphur and sulphuric acid prices and a tighter supply of spent acid. Global sulphur prices have been adversely affected by the ongoing war in Iran.
India: Germany-based Qlar has opened a test centre for pneumatic conveying in Bangalore. It is the company’s first test centre in Asia. The 539m2 site is intended to analyse the conveying of a wide variety of materials, including cement and fly ash. It includes a 680m conveyor line to allow for the testing of dense-phase applications.
The company says that its customers will be able to have materials evaluated under real-world conditions at the test centre. After an initial laboratory characterisation, the materials are tested in full-scale conveying setups to assess their behaviour at different feed rates, pressures and venting conditions. Qlar will then determine process‑specific conveying parameters such as required conveying pressure, air demand, conveying velocity and achievable throughput ranges. These results will then be used to support companies in the design of their systems and provide a technical basis for project planning and evaluation.
‘With the new test centre, we are creating a service that provides our customers with early project security and transparency,’ says Rajesh Pathak, Managing Director of Qlar India. ‘In addition to the existing test centre for material grinding, the pneumatic conveying tests offer our customers in Asia a testing environment that is unique in this form and size.’
