R-Infra to commence cement production by month-end

Five years after its inception, Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (R-Infra) would start producing cement from its grinding facility in Maharashtra this month and will soon start selling it in the open market under the brand Reliance Cement.

“We will produce cement from our grinding unit, which will start now. We will buy clinker from others and do the grinding part. We will also bag them,” said Lalit Jalan, chief executive officer, R-Infra. The first batch of Reliance-branded cement would be out by month-end.

The Butibori grinding unit, which has a capacity of 600,000 tonnes per annum, is linked to the Mukutban project in Maharashtra.

R-Infra already has a distribution network ready, and the cement produced from the Mukutban unit would be distributed around the Nagpur area in Maharashtra. The company would also set up a cement production plant using fly ash as input, with a capacity of 5 million tonnes (mt). It would commence complete production in 2013-14.

The company has been working on another cement plant as well, with 5-mt capacity at Maihar in Madhya Pradesh. The blending unit for this integrated unit would be at Gondavali, and a grinding unit at Rae Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh.

R-Infra said the financial closure for the Maihar project had been achieved and land acquired. It had also placed orders for major equipment for the plant. The project was in the construction phase and was expected to be commissioned in the third quarter of 2014.

Both these plants would use fly ash from power plants of its sister company, Reliance Power Ltd. While the cement plant in Maharashtra would be supplied fly ash from 600-Mw Butibori power plant, the Madhya Pradesh plant would get its raw material from the 4,000-Mw Sasan ultra mega power plant.

The company had set up Reliance Cementation in 2007, which was was originally part of Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL). The portfolio came to R-Infra after RNRL merged with Reliance Power. It was later renamed Reliance Cement Co, which is now a subsidiary of R-Infra.

Jalan said they were not worried about the slowdown in construction. “Cement is growing very well. Valuations are at an all-time high. Many villagers are using cement to make concrete houses. The sector is growing at eight per cent,” he said.