Global Cement News

UAE: Everest Industries, a leading Indian manufacturer of building solution products, plans to set up a fibre cement board plant in the UAE as part of its global expansion strategy. The new plant, which will produce about 72,000t/yr of fibre cement, will be set up through a wholly-owned subsidiary company of Everest Industries in Mauritius. Everest Industries has already won approval from its board of directors for the new UAE venture.

India: Holcim and Lafarge have begun an internal process in India to identify the assets that must be divested to adhere to the requirements of India's competition regulator, the Competition Commission of India.

Both companies are running processes to identify the plants and operations that are not linked to their strategic global plans. The process will also look at consolidation of operations and processes, which will lead to strategic alignment of both the companies in India to create a future-ready organisation with uniform processes.

In India, Lafarge, which has around 5Mt/yr cement capacity, is dwarfed by Holcim with a capacity of 47Mt/yr through its subsidiary companies Ambuja Cement and Associated Cement Companies (ACC), cornering roughly 12% of the 350Mt/yr Indian cement market. Aditya Birla Group's UltraTech is India's largest cement maker with a 62Mt/yr capacity.

India: Jaiprakash Associates Limited is selling its 2.1Mt/yr capacity split grinding plant at Bhilai, Chattisgarh to Shree Cements Limited for an enterprise value of US$293.
The deal is expected to be completed in October 2014.

Bhilai Jaypee Cement Limited is a joint venture between Jaiprakash Associates, which holds 74% stake in the unit and the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), which holds 26%. The cement plant, which has revenues of US$130m/yr, has US$97.5m of debt. After adjusting for this, the equity value of the deal is US$179 – 195m.

Egypt: Egypt's National Company for Construction and Development (NCCD) plans to build its own cement plant as the price of locally-produced cement is high, according to NCCD's chairman Mahmoud Hegazy. The new plant will cover the cement requirements of NCCD's subsidiaries. The state-run firm is currently evaluating the best timing for the project.

India: In response to local concerns over the open-filling of fly-ash, an NTPC-owned thermal power plant in Kahalgaon, Bihar will install bagging machines for its fly-ash production. The facility provides fly-ash to cement makers in the northeast and is setting up six packing machines filling a total of 4800bags/hr or 4000t/day. The facility had been warned by the pollution control board, which has asked NTPC to deposit US$16,243 as security against the prescribed environmental measures. The board has said that the plant will be closed if it continues to violate the 'norms' by open-filling the sacks.