JOIN US JSW Cement, a part of the JSW Group, plans to start two more greenfield grinding units each in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu as part of its game plan to reach its cement and clinker capacities to 20 million tonnes per annum by 2018.
In an interaction with Deccan Herald, JSW Cement Director and CEO Anil Kumar Pillai said the company is expecting green shoots from demand side in the current fiscal and will gain pace in the next fiscal.
“The government’s new infrastructure-led industrialisation game plan will really boost the cement demand. Already analysts predict a double-digit GDP growth rate which give 15 per cent hike in cement demand,” said Pillai.
He said the greenfield projects in these two states is part of JSW Cement’s Rs 9,000-crore investment plan. “Each of these projects will have an investment between Rs 350 crore to Rs 400 crore. In Tamil Nadu, we identified one location at Tuticorin and the other will be near Puducherry. It will take 36 months to commission these units. Funds for these projects will be raised via internal accrual and bank borrowings,” he said.
The company CEO said JSW is scouting for land in West Bengal and will announce the details soon. The company has production plants in Vijayanagar and Bellari (Karnataka), Dolvi (Maharashtra), and Nandyal in Andhra Pradesh. The company has achieved 55 per cent of its production capacity in the last fiscal and produces portland slag cement (PSC), portland pozzolana cement (PPC) and grounded granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) cement.
“In the last fiscal, we produced 3.2 million tonnes of cement and set a target of 4.2 million tonnes in the current fiscal. We are expecting to achieve 65 per cent capacity utilisation once growth momentum gains in the third and fourth quarter,” he said.
When asked about the pricing of cement in the country, he said it should be determined by the market forces. “We want to build the JSW Cement brand as a an aspirational and premium brand. Here trade sales via distribution channels and institutional customers comprise 65 per cent and 35 per cent respectively. We are educating the consumers and have decided to allocate a corpus of Rs 3 core for advertisements,” said Pillai.
Brushing aside industry rumours that JSW Cement was in the race for acquiring French major Lafarge’s cement assets located in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, Pillai stated the company was open to inorganic growth and will not go for exports.
To another query, he said the company is installing a 10 megawatt (mW) energy producing unit from waste gas in Nandyal.
“JSW Cement has committed an investment of Rs 100 crore for this project and it will be commissioned within 12 to 14 months,” he said.