Displaying items by tag: JSW Cement

India: India's 'core industries,' including cement, steel and fossil fuels, employ just 8% women across the total workforce. The Free Press Journal has reported that gender equality body UN Women found the proportion of women to be as low as 3.9% at UltraTech Cement. JSW Cement owner JSW Group employs 5.3% women. Meanwhile, Holcim, which left the Indian market in September 2022, operates with a 13% female global workforce.

Cement companies joined in celebrations of International Women's Day on 8 March 2023.

UAE: The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE) and Emirates RDF have signed four memoranda of understanding (MOU) with Fujairah Cement Industries, JSW Cement, Lafarge Emirates and Star Cement to use alternative fuels produced by the Emirates RDF in the Umm Al Quwain Emirate in their manufacturing operations.

Emirates RDF’s plant treats and transforms municipal solid waste (MSW) from Umm Al Quwain and the emirate of Ajman into refuse derived fuel (RDF). The ministry said in a statement that MOUs are part of its support for integrated waste management projects that treat waste and transform it into economic resources in line with the Ministerial Decree No. 98 of 2019 on using RDF in cement factories. Cement plants in the UAE will be encouraged to meet 10% percent of their total thermal energy needs using RDF.

Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, Minister of Climate Change and Environment, said, “The participation of the private sector is a main pillar of the UAE’s green economy transition and the adoption of circular economy methods, the foremost of which is integrated waste management. The signing of the agreements with a group of leading cement factories in the country to partially use alternative fuel in their operations is a high-impact step within our efforts to implement integrated waste management and reduce harmful emissions.”

India: JSW Cement has announced a planned US$389m investment in the construction of a new integrated cement plant in Madhya Pradesh and a grinding plant in Uttar Pradesh. Together, the plants will have a cement capacity of 5Mt/yr.

The Economic Times newspaper has reported that JSW Cement's acquisition of Springway Mining has given it access to 106Mt of new limestone reserves, with a mining lease until 2065.

India: India Cements has agreed to sell Springway Mining to JSW Cement for US$57.9m. Springway Mining is currently building an integrated cement plant in Damoh, Madhya Pradesh, with dedicated limestone reserves in nearby Panna.

India Cements has received US$45.4m-worth of its payment for the business, and expect to receive the outstanding US$12.5m by 31 December 2022.

India: JSW Cement is 'closing in' on an acquisition of some of India Cements' assets in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Business Standard newspaper has reported that JSW Cement beat an offer by UltraTech Cement for the Rajasthan assets.

India Cements began construction of a new 3Mt/yr cement plant with a dedicated limestone mine in Madhya Pradesh in 2022. In May 2022, it announced that it was contemplating a land sale in order to reduce its debt. India Cements ended the 2022 financial year with debt of US$369m, up by 1.4% year-on-year from US$364m at the close of the 2021 financial year.

India: JSW Cement has taken a loan of US$48.9m with which to finance its planned 47% capacity growth to 25Mt/yr from 17Mt/yr. MUFG Bank India provided the loan subject to sustainability-linked criteria. Press Trust of India News has reported that the producer’s subsidiary Shiva Cement is in the process of establishing a US$183m 1.36Mt/yr clinker plant and 1Mt/yr grinding plant in Odisha’s Sundergarh District.

Fuels procurement and costs have been weighing on the minds of Indian cement producers since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Two news stories this week show some of this. The first concerns recent imports of petcoke from Venezuela. The second covers the closure of captive power plants due to domestic shortages of coal.

At the same time, as the financial results for cement companies for the first quarter of the Indian 2023 financial year have been released, one constant has been hefty hikes in power and fuel costs. Graph 1 below gives a rough idea of the jump in costs major producers have been contending with. One point to note is that, possibly, the larger cement companies may have been better at slowing down the cost inflation from fuel. However, the prevalence of waste heat recovery installations and alternative fuels usage may also be a factor here. Finally, the company approved to buy Ambuja Cement and ACC, Adani Group, also runs India’s biggest coal trader. It will be interesting to see in the medium term how this might affect the fuel costs for its new cement division.

Graph 1: Comparison of Power & Fuel costs for selected Indian cement producers in first quarter of 2022 and 2023 financial years. Source: Company financial reports.

The Venezuelan story demonstrates the greater lengths that Indian cement producers are now going to secure fuel supplies. Reuters reports that cement companies imported at least 160,000t of petcoke from the South American country between April and June 2022 and that more was on the way. JSW Cement, Ramco Cements and Orient Cement are among them. The Venezuelan oil industry has been under US economic sanctions since 2019 but byproducts such as petcoke are not covered by this. Its petcoke has apparently been discounted by 5 - 10% below the price of US alternatives.

Indian cement producers have been prepared to risk US sanctions further by importing coal from Russia. The Business Standard newspaper, using data from Coalmint, reported that Russia became India’s third largest source of coal imports, at 2.06Mt, in July 2022. Before the war it was the sixth-largest source of coal to the country. Again, Reuters covered how cement companies were doing this in July 2022, when it revealed that UltraTech Cement had used India-based HDFC Bank to purchase coal using Chinese Renminbi, not the US Dollar as is more common for international purchases of commodities. In a conference call for the release of its first quarter results, UltraTech Cement’s chief financial officer Atul Daga confirmed the purchase and described it as “opportunistic.” He added that, “If something more surfaces, we will pick it up.” As the data for July 2022 shows, it may or may not be UltraTech Cement that is buying Russian coal right now but other parties in India certainly are.

Some of the wider economic implications about India buying Russian coal in the face of US and European sanctions include whether any retaliation might be forthcoming and a general sign that the dominance of the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency is not guaranteed. The former seems doubtful given the size of India’s markets. Yet if the sanctions against Russia drag on then a shift in the global economic status quo becomes more likely, especially if opportunistic purchases become regular ones.

The situation facing captive power plants illustrates one more turn of the screw on energy costs for industrial manufacturers. 30% of captive power plants in India are reportedly closed due to the high cost of coal or an inability to even import it. Although it is worth noting that it is unclear whether, proportionally, more or less of these are serving cement plants. As N Srinivasan, the vice-chairman and managing director of India Cements told the Business Standard newspaper, “Most of our plants have coal based captive power generation. The cost of captive generation is now more than the grid cost. Hence, we shut down all captive power units and resorted to grid power.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast in July 2022 that Indian coal demand would grow by 3% year-on-year to 1.16Bnt in 2023 due to expanded electrification and economic growth. In its view, global coal demand will be driven principally by China but also by India to a lesser extent. However, unhelpfully, it added that uncertainty was also rising with ongoing developments in the war in Ukraine having a prominent effect. This is unlikely to assist Indian cement producers and their fuel buyers who will be asking themselves: how long will the current situation last and can the prices be passed on to consumers? There is one small silver lining in the current group of economic storm clouds hanging over cement producers at least. The second quarter of the Indian financial year is monsoon season, when economic activity slows down. It won’t slow the trend down but it may reduce the fuel bill a little.

India: JSW Cement has dedicated a new temple at its Ankur commune in Salboni, West Bengal, to the goddess Maa Kali. The Orissa Diary newspaper has reported that architecture firm Dulal Mukherjee and Associates designed the temple in the 17th century Bishnupur style. The place of worship is made of locally sourced terracotta.

JSW Cement spokesperson Anushree Jindal said "JSW Cement believes in collaborating with local communities to empower them for a better future. I feel blessed and privileged to have facilitated the creation of a pious, safe haven of worship for the local community in Salboni."

India: Cement producers and analysts say that a government cut to fuel duty may reduce the price of cement. The reduction may be minimal but it will stand out amongst inflation on other input costs for cement production, according to sources quoted by the Business Standard newspaper. Shree Cement hopes to pass on any reduction in costs from transportation to consumers but UltraTech Cement and JSW Cement are yet to announce a price cut. Most cement producers raised their prices by 8% month-on-month in April 2022 with a similar increase expected in May 2022.

India: UltraTech Cement has taken legal advice for its planned bid for Holcim's Indian business and says that it will volunteer to divest 15Mt/yr-worth of cement assets in order to accelerate the Competition Commission of India (CCI) approval process which would follow on from the acceptance of any offer. The Economic Times newspaper has reported that UltraTech Cement has filed five long form merger notifications for acquisitions of this type since 2013. These included its purchases of Binani Cement and Century Cement, and of Jaypee Group's Gujarati cement assets.

The Financial Express newspaper has reported that fellow contender Adani Group has offered 'more than' US$10bn for the assets, while JSW Group plans to offer US$7bn. BusinessLine Online News has reported that a fourth company, steel producer ArcelorMittal, has also held initial talks with Holcim over the assets.

In considering possible competition issues arising under any future deal, the CCI will factor in planned and upcoming cement capacity. In Gujarat, where Holcim India subsidiaries ACC and Ambuja Cements operate 6.8Mt/yr-worth of capacity, Adani Group plans to build a new 10Mt/yr cement plant at Lakhpat.