Global Cement News

India: JSW Cement may be planning to launch an initial public offering (IPO) to raise up to US$484m, according to Reuters.

JSW Cement managing director Parth Jindal reportedly said “In 2024, we are planning to take this company public, for which we will be filing the draft red herring prospectus in the next six months. We will be timing the market listing after the national elections.” Parliamentary and state legislative assembly elections are due to take place in September, November and December 2023.

India: JK Cement laid the foundation stone of its upcoming 2.5Mt/yr Prayagraj grinding plant in Uttar Pradesh on 29 August 2023. The plant will cost around US$60m. The company expects to complete the project in the 2025 financial year, which begins on 1 April 2024. This will increase the producer’s grey cement capacity by 11%, to 25Mt/yr. Its ‘medium-term’ capacity goal is a further 20% growth, to 30Mt/yr.

World: Nine new members have joined the Alliance for Low-Carbon Cement & Concrete (ALCCC), a global association of low-CO₂ cement and concrete developers, producers and users, since its launch in May 2023. The alliance has welcomed alternative cement and concrete companies Betolar, 3Béton, CarbonRE, Cemvision, the European Environmental Bureau, Greenmade, Materrup, Nomad and Sublime Systems.

Joren Verschaeve, Programme Manager at ALCCC founder Environmental Coalition on Standards, said “It is great to see that so many actors - particularly innovators from within the industry - are committed to speeding up the decarbonisation of cement and concrete through better standards and policies. We are eager to work with our members and other stakeholders to (finally) help put the right incentives in place for low-carbon cement and concrete solutions.”

US: GCC has ordered pyroprocessing equipment from ThyssenKrupp Polysius for the expansion of its Odessa cement plant in Texas. The upgrade will more than double the plant’s capacity to 1.9Mt/yr, and reduce its CO₂ emissions by 13%. Contractor H&M Construction says that the project will be the third on which it has collaborated on design and construction.

H&M Vice President Casey Rushing said “H&M is proud to have the opportunity to serve GCC as its design-builder on this great project. H&M has a very strong active presence in Texas and a very strong veteran self-perform team that has recently completed with Polysius a near identical pyroprocessing expansion in the Southeast US. We intend to improve on our successes from our previous pyroprocessing lines by executing this project for GCC with superior safety, quality and customer satisfaction.”

India: The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has obtained documents which allegedly show how two people with close ties to the owners of Adani Group invested significantly in the group. Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling traded in Adani Group shares through a Mauritius-based investment fund. The OCCRP reports that Ahli and Chang might be found to have been acting on behalf of Adani promoters. If so, their shareholding would bring insider investment in Adani Group to over 75%. This would potentially indicate stock manipulation under Indian law. Ahli and Changs’ investment management company reportedly paid a company owned by Vinod Adani, the brother of Adani Group chair Gautam Adani, for investment advice.

Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli is a Dubai-based business consultant, who is listed as an officer in a British Virgin Islands-based securities investment firm linked to Adani Group. Meanwhile, China-based Chang Chung-Ling has held positions on the boards of multiple Adani Group companies.

Adani Group replied “Contrary to your claim of new evidence/proofs, these are nothing but a rehash of unsubstantiated allegations levelled in the Hindenburg report. Our response to the Hindenburg report is available on our website. Suffice it to state that there is neither any truth to nor any basis for making any of the said allegations against the Adani Group and its promoters, and we expressly reject all of them."