Displaying items by tag: India

India: Sagar Cement has ordered a MVR 5000 C-4 vertical roller mill for cement grinding at its Dachepalle plant in Andhra Pradesh. The new unit has a drive power of 3870kW, and will produce 210t/hr of ordinary Portland cement. The investment follows the installation of a mill of the same size at the site in 2018. The project is being executed in collaboration with Gebr. Pfeiffer (India) and Gebr. Pfeiffer (Germany), with Pfeiffer’s Noida-based engineering team providing full design and support.

India: Ambuja Cements has commissioned a 4Mt/yr brownfield expansion of its clinker unit at Bhatapara, Chhattisgarh. The company confirmed the new capacity is fully operational, raising its consolidated clinker capacity to 66Mt/yr. Ambuja Cements has also increased its 2028 financial year capacity target to 155Mt/yr, up from 140Mt/yr, with the additional capacity to be achieved through debottlenecking.

The company will install 13 blenders across its plants over the next 12 months to optimise product mix and raise its premium product cement share. Planned logistics infrastructure upgrades are expected to improve capacity utilisation by 3% over the next two years.

India: Ambuja Cements has appointed Rohit Soni as its chief financial officer (CFO). He succeeds Rakesh Tiwary in the post.

Soni was previously working as the CFO at Adani New Industries since early 2024. Before this, he was the CFO at Adani Energy Solutions from mid-2021. He has also held positions with Vedanta Group, including Chief Procurement Officer and as CFO for various subsidiaries. Soni is a graduate in business and commerce from Annamalai University and has attended the Harvard Business School’s General Management Program.

India: JK Lakshmi Cement will invest US$203m to expand clinker and cement capacity in Chhattisgarh, as it looks to strengthen its position in eastern and central India. The company signed a memorandum of understanding for the project during the Chhattisgarh Investor Connect event on 25 November 2025. JK Lakshmi currently operates 16.5Mt/yr of capacity, and will add 2.31Mt/yr of clinker capacity and 1.2Mt/yr of cement capacity as part of the expansion.

“Chhattisgarh has been central to our manufacturing strategy, and this investment strengthens our ability to serve eastern and central India with reliable, efficient capacity,” said deputy managing director Shrivats Singhania.

India: Building materials producer BirlaNu has announced that it will build a greenfield fibre cement board plant in the Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh. The producer will invest about US$14.2m in the first phase to establish the unit, which is expected to create about 600 jobs, according to local press. The plant will use fly ash from coal-fired power plants.

Managing director and CEO Akshat Seth said “Our new fibre cement board plant in Nellore marks an important milestone in BirlaNu’s expansion journey. It strengthens our manufacturing footprint and generates meaningful employment.”

India: Cement producers saw strong sales in the second quarter of the 2026 Fiscal Year (FY2026), due to steady prices and higher sales volumes. Seasonal weakness and maintenance outages did dent performance, but the overall picture remained positive, according to the Business Standard newspaper.

Centrum Broking said that results pointed to 4 - 5% year-on-year demand growth in the second quarter despite weather-related interruptions. Stronger rural activity and ongoing construction kept consumption buoyant. Meanwhile, JM Financial reported that like-for-like cement volumes grew by 7%. Adjusted for acquisitions, consolidated volumes at UltraTech Cement and Ambuja Cements also rose by 7%, while JK Cement saw a 15.1% increase, driven by capacity increases and a higher capacity utilisation rate.

India: Adani-led Adani Enterprises has reportedly beaten Vedanta in the race to take over the debt-laden Jaiprakash Associates, despite Vedanta placing the highest overall bid in an electronic auction, according to local media.

Jaiprakash Associates is the flagship arm of the Jaypee Group, with interests across cement production, power generation, engineering, hospitality, real estate and sports infrastructure. Its creditors unanimously voted in favour of Gautam Adani-led Adani Enterprises’ resolution plan, as it proposed higher upfront payments. Despite voting for Adani’s plan, some creditors did question the pre-bidding process, which reportedly gave Adani a perfect 100% score across a range of factors to assess its suitability.

India: The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) India said that the cement industry has installed 1.8GW of renewable energy capacity and aims to add 5GW more by 2030, according to Platts. Around 3% of electricity used comes from renewables and 11% from waste heat recovery. GCCA India said that the average alternative fuel thermal substitution rate (TSR) in the sector is approximately 6%, although some plants have successfully achieved TSRs of more than 20%. It also said that there are developments in the installations of hybrid energy systems, which provide 24/7 electricity for the sector.

Blended cement accounts for 73% of production, and India has reportedly begun producing limestone calcined clay cement. Research is also underway into other low-clinker alternatives. According to a March 2025 report by GCCA India and The Energy and Resources Institute, the industry aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. CRISIL forecasts that the sector will add 160-170Mt/yr of grinding capacity between the financial years 2026-2028, which run from April to March, driven by a healthy demand outlook and high capacity utilisation.

India: The Adani Group has announced plans to invest US$1.13bn in Andhra Pradesh over the coming decade, including on developments in cement, data centres, energy and advanced manufacturing. The announcement was made by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) Managing Director Karan Adani at the Andhra Pradesh Investor Summit, where he announced plans for the Vizag Tech Park, a major data centre investment alongside Google.

"We see Andhra Pradesh not as a destination for investment, but as a launchpad for India's next decade of transformation,” said Adani. “The flagship of our commitment is the Vizag Tech Park. This is not just another tech park, it is the foundation of India's digital sovereignty. We are building one of the world's largest hyperscale data-centre ecosystems, in partnership with Google, and powered by green energy.”

Emir Adigüzel warned that cement prices in Europe could triple under current decarbonisation policies. The director of the World Cement Association (WCA) made the comments at a conference in Germany this week. He noted that most of these carbon-related costs will be passed to consumers. His view is that carbon pricing will force price rises across the industry.

That cement prices will rise due to decarbonisation policies is not in itself news. This debate is really about how much and who pays. The WCA's latest analysis asserts that the cement sector will require investment of US$200bn by 2050 to fully decarbonise. Some progress has been achieved so far. Major cement companies reduced carbon intensity from an average of 700kg CO₂/t in 2019 to 640kg CO₂/t in 2023. Adigüzel’s argument is that carbon capture (CCUS) in the cement sector has its place only “if applied correctly.” His view is that these technologies will have a limited effect on global industry decarbonisation as the required investment per cement plant exceeds the capital cost of an entire cement plant. The WCA prefers to promote decarbonisation instead via energy efficiency, alternative fuels, reduced clinker factor and new technologies. That last one includes CCUS but is not limited to it also covering things such as electrification and heat storage. Note today’s news that India-based Adani Cement has ordered a RotoDynamic Heater from Coolbrook. Adigüzel also criticised the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in incentivising non-scheme exporters to reduce their carbon footprint, particularly given the expensive investments required.

Decarbonisation is going to be expensive and CCUS is the priciest part of this. Hence, cement producers are likely to consider taking as many measures as possible before implementing CCUS. That cement companies would pass on these costs to consumers also seems likely. The other obvious outcome is that consumers will simply use less cement where possible. Yet Adigüzel doesn’t address how net zero can be achieved with continuing clinker production without using CCUS. His pricing for CCUS is at the right scale though. As Boston Consulting Group (BCG) pointed out in 2024, the cost of CCUS looks set to increase cement prices from US$90 – 130/t to at least US$160 – 240/t by 2050. As well as the capital costs to build a CCUS unit, this includes the additional energy costs required and the price of transporting the CO₂ to a sequestration site. The first two large-scale Heidelberg Materials CCUS projects in Europe, for example, both connect to government-backed transport and sequestration schemes. BCG went on to posit that decarbonisation trends would create five archetypes of cement plants: export hubs and larger plants close to CO₂ storage sites; former export sites far from storage; import grinding hubs; and stranded assets.

Finally, Carbon Brief reported this week that CO₂ emissions in China continued to stay flat in the third quarter of 2025, suggesting a stable or falling trend since early 2024. The adoption of electric vehicles and declines from cement and steel production contributed to the picture in the latest quarter. Emissions from the production of cement and other building materials fell by 7% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2025. This was attributed to the ongoing real-estate contraction. Note that this decarbonisation trend in China has been created by market trends.

Expect plenty more sustainability stories everywhere over the next few weeks as the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) started this week in Belém, Brazil. The GCCA will be present at a number of events including an update to the Brazil Cement Industry Roadmap on Saturday 15 November 2025

The Global FutureCem Conference on cement industry decarbonisation will take place on 21 - 22 January 2026 in Munich, Germany