Birla Corp plans MP cement unit

Birla Corporation Ltd, the flagship company of M P Birla Group, plans to invest Rs 1,200 crore on a 3 million ton cement plant in Madhya Pradesh, near its existing unit at Satna, within two years.

The company recently signed an MoU with the Madhya Pradesh government for leasing a limestone block for the new unit, said R S Lodha, chairman of Birla Corporation, at the company's 88th annual general meeting.

The company needed 2,000 acres, subject to the limestone block. The company had mining rights for 21 million ton of coal as fuel.

The company had power plants at Satna in Madhya Pradesh and Chenderia in Rajasthan.

“At present, the limestone mine has been alloted to someone else but the government is in the process of cancelling the earlier lease,” said Lodha.

The company aimed to increase cement production across its seven plants to 7.5 million ton by June 2009, from around 5.8 million ton now with installed capacity raised to 10.5 million ton by 2011.

Its Durgapur unit, called Durga Hitech Cement, was expected to restart operations soon after labour protests had stopped production since March 2008. Production there last year was 6.11 lakh ton, down 7 per cent from the previous year. The unit extended its MoU with the Durgapur steel plant for supply of granulated slag.

Birla Corporation would shift 1,400 workers from its defunct Soora jute mill in Kolkata city to its Birlapur facility where auto trim division output had dipped from 139173 pieces to about 23379 pieces and the vinoleum division was operating at very low capacity.