Thaindian News

Kolkata, June 27 (IANS) The M.P. Birla Group flagship Birla Corporation is planning to invest around Rs.1,025 crore over the next one and a half years for expanding cement and power capacity, a top executive of the company said Monday.

“Currently we have a capacity of producing 7.5 million tonnes (mt) of cement. After capacity expansion, it is expected to touch 9.3 mt by March 2012,” Harsh V.Lodha, chairman of Birla Corporation, told reporters on the sidelines of 91st annual general meeting of the company.

“The progress of work on the 1.2 mt brownfield project for increasing the capacity at Chanderia (Rajasthan) and 0.6 mt capacity addition at Durgapur (West Bengal) is satisfactory and the projects are likely to be commissioned by November-December 2011,” he said.

The expansion projects relating to replacement of old cement ball mills, one at Satna (Madhya Pradesh) and the other at Chanderia, for increasing the cement grinding capacity and ensuring power saving were also progressing satisfactorily, he said.

He said with a view to optimize on the logistic costs, it was proposed to install a grinding-cum-packing plant with a capacity of 7.5 lakh tonnes per annum at Kota (Rajasthan).

Lodha said the cement sector had witnessed massive capacity additions of over 100 mt during the past three years, which had resulted in significant pressure on price realisation and also on capacity utilisation during 2010.

“Demand in the market grew at a rate of five percent. We are hoping that it will grow at eight to ten percent this year,” he said.