Displaying items by tag: UltraTech Cement

India: ThyssenKrupp Industries India has reported information on recent orders with UltraTech Cement, Shree Cement and Hills Cement.

Its Polysius division has secured an order from UltraTech Cement for the design, engineering and supply of two 10,000t/day pyro processing lines with Polycom rolls for raw materials grinding.

Shree Cement has ordered pyro processing equipment including a Polytrack clinker cooler for a new cement plant at Guntur in Andhra Pradesh. ThyssenKrupp Industries India noted that it was the “maiden plant order” from Shree Cement and of “great strategic importance to us.”

Hills Cement has also made a first order with ThyssenKrupp. In this case it has requested pyro processing equipment including a clinker cooler for the second production line at its plant in Meghalaya.

India: Holcim subsidiaries ACC and Ambuja Cements, along with Dalmia Cement, Shree Cement, UltraTech Cement and 15 other Indian cement producers, have violated antitrust laws through price collusion and supply restriction, a Competition Commission of India (CCI) investigation has uncovered. Reuters News has reported that regular price rises in the Indian cement market were the outcome of collusion between producers, which set target prices by district and carried out twice weekly inspections of participant companies’ operations. Senior executives from ACC and UltraTech Cement, among other companies, served as state-wide coordinators. They planned and carried out their deception by means including messaging platform WhatsApp.

ACC and UltraTech Cement, along with ACC’s fellow Holcim subsidiary Ambuja Cements, declined to comment, however Holcim said “The Indian companies are managing this matter responsibly and we expect them to continue to do so accordingly."

India: UltraTech Cement plans to increase its installed cement production capacity to 154Mt/yr by the beginning of the 2026 financial year on 1 April 2025. The increase represents a composite annual growth rate of 10% from 115Mt/yr at the start of the 2023 financial year. The Economic Times newspaper has reported that the producer plans to carry out the expansion in two phases.

Indian domestic cement consumption is forecast to continue growing by 5% year-on-year over a five-year period to July 2027.

India: UltraTech Cement increased its sales by 28% year-on-year to US$1.9bn in the first quarter of its 2023 financial year, from US$1.48bn in the first quarter of the 2022 financial year. The company’s net profit during the quarter was US$198m, down by 7% year-on-year from US$213m in the first quarter of the 2022 financial year.

Dow Jones Institutional News has reported that UltraTech Cement recorded increased cement demand in June 2022 and forecasts full-year year-on-year consumption growth nationally. The producer said that state-backed investment in infrastructure and industrial development will support high housing demand momentum, while pressure will remain on its profitability due to high costs.

India: The Indian Ministry of Mines and Indian Bureau of Mines have awarded UltraTech Cement Five Star ratings for 10 limestone mines across India. Assessment took place within the Indian mining Sustainable Development Framework, which quantifies sustainability, efficiency, land use and resettlement, besides other social impacts.

India: UltraTech Cement has declined to pay US$126m for a 3Mt/yr cement plant in Uttar Pradesh which it acquired from Jaiprakash Associates in 2017. The Economic Times newspaper has reported that the acquisition was part of a US$2.05bn deal covering 21.2Mt/yr-worth of cement capacity across six cement plants and five grinding plants. With environmental clearances pending on the Uttar Pradesh plant, the companies had agreed to a delayed final payment for the US$126m asset, to be made on 30 June 2022. UltraTech Cement says that it is unwilling to pay for the plant ‘in the present circumstances,’ given that the required clearances are still lacking. The group is reportedly seeking a revaluation of the plant down to US$78.3m.

Coolbrook has been in the news recently with collaboration deals struck with Cemex and UltraTech Cement. First the Finland-based company officially launched its Roto Dynamic Heater (RDH) technology with a memorandum of understanding signed with Cemex in May 2022. Then, this week, it signed a similar agreement with UltraTech Cement.

The specifics of either agreement are unknown but the target is clearly to build an industrial pilot of an electric kiln – or something like it - at a cement plant. Coolbrook says it has run a pilot of its RDH technology in Finland. Further tests are now scheduled to continue for two years starting from September 2022 at the Brightlands Chemelot Campus at Geleen in the Netherlands. Commercial scale demonstrations are scheduled from 2022 with the hope of commercial use from 2024. Links with Cemex and UltraTech Cement seem to suggest progress. At the same time Coolbrook will be testing its RotoDynamic Reactor (RDR) technology, which promises to electrify the steam cracking process used in plastic manufacturing.

Publically available details on the RDH technology are light. In its promotional material Coolbrook says that it can achieve process temperatures of up to around 1700°C. This is crucial to achieve full clinker formation in a cement kiln. Reaching this temperature with non-combustion style kilns, such as solar reactors, has previously been a problem. Notably, Synhelion and Cemex said in February 2022 that they had managed to produce clinker using concentrated solar radiation. Retrofit possibilities and compact equipment size are also mentioned in the promotional material for the RDH. The former is an obvious attraction but size of equipment footprint is increasingly emerging as a potential issue for cement plants looking to reduce their CO₂ emissions. Rick Bohan from the Portland Cement Association (PCA) presented a summary of the potential and problems of emerging carbon capture and utilisation/storage (CCUS) technologies for cement plants in the US at the Virtual Global CemCCUS Seminar that took place on 14 June 2022. He noted that installing CCUS equipment makes cement plants start to look different (more like petrochemical plants in the view of Global Cement Weekly) and that they may require more space to install it all.

Coolbrook hasn’t been the only organisation looking at kiln electrification. The installation with the most available information on kiln electrification has been the Decarbonate project, led by the VTT, formerly known as the Technical Research Centre of Finland. The project has built a pilot rotary kiln with a length of 8m inside a shipping container. It has a production capacity of around 25kg/hr. The system reportedly uses fixed radiant heating coils around the kiln, surrounded by insulation materials. Early results presented to the 1st Virtual Global CemPower Seminar in late 2021 were that the kiln started up, sufficient calcination was occurring and the system was operated continuously for three days at a temperature of 1000°C with no problems reported. Further research was scheduled to carry on into 2022 with longer trials planned for three different materials.

HeidelbergCement’s subsidiary in Sweden, Cementa, completed a feasibility study on implementing electrified cement production at its Slite plant in 2019. It then said that it was conducting further study with electricity producer Vattenfall as part of CemZero project. This consists of three projects running to 2025. Namely: heat transfer with plasma in rotary kilns; direct separation of carbon dioxide from calcination of carbonate-based raw materials in the production of cement clinker and burnt lime; and carbon dioxide-free products with electrified production - reactivity of cement clinker with secondary additives. HeidelbergCement has since announced plans to build a full scale 1.8Mt/yr carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant at the Slite cement plant by 2030.

How this would fit with any kiln electrification plans is unknown. However, one attraction of moving to an electrical kiln, for all of the projects above, is to cut out the 40 – 50% of a cement plant’s CO₂ emissions that arise from the fuel that is burnt. Taking a kiln electric also makes CO₂ capture easier. Much of the remainder of the CO₂ released comes from the decomposition of limestone during calcination when clinker is created. Substitute out fossil or alternative fuels and the flue gas becomes much purer CO₂.

It is early days for cement kiln electrification but progress is happening both commercially and scientifically. The next step to watch out for will be the first pilot installation at a cement plant. One point to finish with is a comment that Rick Bohan made at the IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Industry Technical Conference that took place in May 2022: carbon capture is expected to double a cement plant’s energy consumption. Kiln electrification is one potential route for cement production to reach net zero. CCUS is another. If one or both occur then a low carbon future could be a high energy one also.

Watch out for Global Cement’s forthcoming interview with Coolbrook in the September 2022 issue of Global Cement Magazine

For more on CCUS, download the proceedings pack for the Virtual Global CemCCUS Seminar 2022

For more on Synhelion and Cemex read the interview in the December 2020 issue of Global Cement Magazine interview

India: UltraTech Cement has entered into a collaboration with Finland-based Coolbrook to implement the latter’s roto dynamic heater (RDH) electric kiln technology in Indian cement plants. RDH technology uses renewable power to heat kilns to up to 1700°C.

UltraTech Cement managing director Kailash Jhanwar said “UltraTech is a forerunner in utilising renewable energy in its manufacturing operations. We are constantly looking at opportunities to improve process efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our operations.” Jhanwar concluded “We believe that our collaboration with Coolbrook will help to further accelerate the decarbonisation of our operations.”

Coolbrook executive chair Ilpo Kuokkanen said “India is one of the most important potential markets for Coolbrook, as we want to make a global impact on CO₂ emission reductions. Cooperation with India’s largest cement producer UltraTech is a significant step in our strategy to decarbonise heavy industry processes globally. UltraTech is also an excellent addition to our comprehensive and responsive partnership ecosystem spanning across leading industrial actors, academic institutions, and the public sector.”

We return to India to discuss a potential fight that may be brewing in the cement sector. Competition between UltraTech Cement and Adani Group started when the latter won the race to buy Holcim’s cement assets in the country in May 2022. However, the rivalry stepped up a notch this week when UltraTech Cement responded by approving a US$1.7bn investment for expansion.

The leading Indian producer announced that it was committing the funds towards increasing its cement production capacity by 22.6Mt/yr. This will include a mixture of expansions to existing sites and building new plants such as new integrated units, new grinding units and new terminals. UltraTech Cement currently has a previous round of expansion that is set to be completed by the end of the 2023 financial year. Commercial production at the newly announced projects is forecast to start by the end of the 2025 financial year. The company finished off by saying that the upgrade projects would maintain its position as the third largest cement producer outside of China, with its total production capacity rising to 159Mt/yr.

Unusually for these kinds of press releases though, UltraTech Cement made of point of doing the calculation for any readers who might want to know how much this new capacity might cost. It is US$76/t. Adani Group didn’t do this when it said it had agreed to buy Ambuja Cements and ACC from Holcim but, unsurprisingly, it cost more, at least US$94/t based on the cash figure Holcim released for the deal. Note that Adani Group has valued the acquisition at US$10.5bn, which would put the capacity cost up to US$150/t. Other zingers in the press release included Kumar Mangalam Birla’s quote that his company held, “... a deep and nuanced understanding of the market dynamics of the cement industry.” Both of these additions to the statement suggest that UltraTech Cement is making a point about its new competitor.

Bloomberg has framed the actions of UltraTech Cement and Adani Group in the cement sector as a brewing corporate battle between old and new money. Both Kumar Mangalam Birla, chair of Aditya Birla Group - the owner of UltraTech Cement, and Gautam Adani were in the top 10 of the Forbes list of the richest people in India in 2021. Birla comes from inherited wealth, although he has undeniably expanded UltraTech Cement greatly during his tenure as chair. Adani is self-made. Cement is just part of the empires of both men but one risk to UltraTech Cement is just how fast an expansion-driven competitor with concerns in power generation and logistics might decide to try to shake up the cement sector.

It is interesting at this early stage to glimpse part of the potential strategies both cement companies may be employing. Adani Group is in the process of buying its way into the cement sector at a relatively high price for capacity. UltraTech Cement is responding by building new capacity at a lower price. Research by Kotak Institutional Equities cited in the Bloomberg article suggests that Adani Group could increase its 70Mt/yr capacity up to 100Mt/yr at US$80 – 90/t. This would cost up to around US$2.5bn but it’s not impossible. Kotak also reckons UltraTech Cement can eke out around US$3 – 4/t more in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) compared to the existing Ambuja Cements and ACC assets. Adani Group might be able to cut this gap down through creating synergies by further merging the two companies.

This adds to the feeling that UltraTech Cement is in a stronger position as the incumbent market leader. Yet risks abound in the current inflationary conditions and even less is certain if Adani Group is prepared to invest heavily enough. After all, UltraTech Cement had a production capacity of only 23Mt/yr in 2010. Less than a decade later it became India’s largest cement producer. It is now Adani Group’s next move in the battle of the cement billionaires.

India: UltraTech Cement plans to invest US$1.67bn to expand its cement production capacity to 160Mt/yr. This corresponds to a capacity cost of US$76m/Mt/yr. The Business Standard newspaper has reported that the investment is part of parent company Aditya Birla’s planned US$9.91bn spending package to expand existing capacities and enter new sectors, including paints, via its subsidiary Grasim Industries. The investments will affect both its Indian operations and those overseas.