India: UltraTech Cement, a subsidiary of the Aditya Birla Group, has started a US$297m capacity expansion project with the help of International Finance Corporation (IFC), the multilateral lending arm of World Bank Group. About US$100m of the project comprises loans from the IFC.

The proposed project comprises a brown field expansion at UltraTech's operational integrated plant in Chhattisgarh and the investment for the necessary infrastructure to support the expansion. In a recent statement IFC said that the project is a key component of the company's cement capacity expansion strategy in the eastern part of India. Located on 389 hectares of land, existing operations were commissioned in 1995. The existing facilities and ongoing expansion include expanding the clinker capacity up to 6.5Mt/yr, the cement line up to 6.5Mt/yr and taking a coal-fired captive power plant up to 80MW.

Currently, UltraTech has 12 integrated cement manufacturing plants, 15 grinding units, five bulk terminals and more than 100 ready mix concrete plants spanning India, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka with a capacity of 52Mt/yr