Displaying items by tag: India

India: 30% of plants in India’s 78GW captive power plant network have temporarily closed due to high coal prices. 40GW-worth of capacity (55%) is coal-fired, with an annual consumption of 200Mt/yr. The Business Standard newspaper has reported that total Indian coal imports fell by 10% to 23.8Mt in July 2021 from 26.3Mt in June 2021. Deliveries of coal to non-power sector consumers fell by 33% year-on-year at the beginning of August 2021. The Indian Cement Manufacturers Association (CMA) and nine other national industry associations have contacted the government to urge the formation of policies for the equitable distribution of available coal.

India Cements has imported two shipments of Russian coal for use in cement production. The company’s power and fuel costs rose by 54% year-on-year in the first quarter of its 2023 financial year, which began on 1 April 2022. Its vice-chair and managing director Narayanaswami Srinivasan said “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.”

India: Grasim Industries recorded consolidated sales of US$3.52bn in the first quarter of its 2023 financial year, up by 41% from first-quarter sales of US$2.5bn a year previously. Dow Jones Institutional News has reported that the group’s cement business contributed a net profit of US$402m, down by 8.8% year-on-year from US$441m.

India: UltraTech Cement has received US$94.6m-worth in commitments on a planned sale of its commercial papers. Reuters News has reported that the papers will reach maturity in November 2022.

Oman: Ghose Jotirmoy Pratul Krishna has resigned as the chief executive officer of Raysut Cement. The company will announce the appointment of his successor from mid-August 2022. In a statement the cement producer said that recent news circulating on social media had nothing to do with it or its subsidiaries and that the situation referred to a time before the executive joined the company in late 2017. It added that its current CEO was currently in Oman. Ghose was previously the managing director of Binani Cement in India.

India: Gujarat Sidhee Cement has stopped production at its Sidheegram cement plant in Gujarat for at least one week. The producer will use the suspension for repair and maintenance of the plant.

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: Birla Corporation recorded US$279m in consolidated sales in the first quarter of its 2023 financial year, which began on 1 April 2022. The figure corresponds to a 25% year-on-year increase from the producer’s first-quarter 2022 financial year sales figure. The Times of India newspaper has reported that Birla Corporation more than doubled its cement production capacity utilisation. The producer’s net profit dropped by 56% year-on-year to US$7.78m from US$17.8m in the first quarter of the 2022 financial year.

India: Dalmia Bharat sold 6.2Mt of cement in the first quarter of its 2023 financial year, up by 27% year-on-year from 4.9Mt in the first quarter of its 2022 financial year. Its sales revenues also rose by 27%, to US$417m from US$327m. The growth failed to translate into increased profitability, however, with the company recording a profit after tax of US$25.9m, down by 27% from US$35.3m.

Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Managing Director and CEO Mahendra Singhi said “I am pleased with our performance this quarter. Our sustained efforts on operational efficiencies and cost rationalisation have enabled us to mitigate the adverse impact of inflation and deliver our lowest total cost of production. Our capacity expansion projects are on track, and we have added 2Mt/yr of clinker capacity and 1.1Mt/yr of cement capacity, which takes our cement capacity to 37Mt/yr. We remain firm on our Carbon Negative Roadmap, and during the quarter have installed 41.4MW of renewable energy infrastructure.”

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: India imported 2.03Mt of coal from Russia in July 2022, making the widely sanctioned nation its third largest source of coal that month. The figure represents a 10% month-on-month increase from 1.85Mt-worth of Russian coal imports in June 2022. The Economic Times newspaper has reported that the single largest importer of thermal coal in July 2022 was UltraTech Cement, with 170,000t.