Century Textiles to complete cement expansion by March 2013

Century Textiles and Industries's Rs 2,000-crore upgradation and expansion programme to increase cement capacity is expected to complete by March, 2013, the company said in its annual report for 2010-11 here.

The orders have been placed for the main plant and machinery for the grinding unit with a capacity of 1.5 million tpa at Sonar Bangla Cement at Sagardighi in West Bengal. The grinding unit is expected to be operational by September, 2012. The total outlay is estimated at Rs 425 crore.

The expansion of 2.8 million tpa cement manufacturing capacity at Manikgarh Cement in Maharashtra will be operational by the March, 2013, it said.

The total outlay of Manikgarh Cement project is estimated to be about Rs 1,600 crore. After ongoing upgradation and expansion, the total cement manufacturing capacity of the company will stand increased to 12.8 million tonne per annum.

The company's all the cement units have operated at optimum levels and achieved capacity utilisation of about 98.74% as against industry capacity utilisation of about 75%.

During FY11, the company has produced 77.02 lakh tonne of cement as compared to 75.83 lakh tonne in the previous year. Due to unfavourable market conditions, the profitability of the cement division had been adversely affected, the company said.

Going forward, the company plans to make continuous efforts to increase productivity and hold down or reduce costs, conserve energy and improve quality.

The company said that the availability of coal against linkage is only 50-60% necessitating procurement of coal from the market/e-auction route at substantial premiums.

The recent steep hike in coal prices by Coal India and withdrawal of exemption of excise duty on input items will increase cost of production of cement substantially.

The poor availability of wagons, increase in crude oil prices and power tariffs and high incidence of taxes and cess are matters of concern for the cement industry and the company, it said, adding that the hardening of interest rates may also adversely affect demand from the housing sector.