Gujarat Ambuja boost sales, new plant set for October commissioning, India

Gujarat Ambuja Cements Ltd, India’s third-largest cement maker, said higher exports boosted the company’s August sales by six per cent on year, despite a weeklong truckers’ strike and the monsoon season.

"We were expecting a negative growth in the August sales numbers due to the strike and seasonal factors. But good exports helped us tide over those problems," the company’s executive director Anil Singhvi said.

India’s largest cement exporter said its August cement sales totaled 1Mt, compared with 950,000t in the year-ago period.  Although Singhvi didn’t specify how much cement was exported in August, he said the company’s exports grew 10 per cent on year in the fiscal first quarter.  Gujarat Ambuja’s current fiscal year ends in June 2005.

"Exports now contribute 15 per cent of our revenue. I’m confident they will grow to 20 per cent of our revenue in the current fiscal year," said Singhvi.  Gujarat Ambuja’s revenue in the previous fiscal year totaled INR19.68bn rupees according to a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange.
 
GACL’s  recently concluded an agreement with National Thermal Power Corp  buy 36,000tpa of fly ash that will be utilised for the manufacture of blended cement. As a result, the company has now decided to build a new grinding plant with an installed production capacity of 1.2Mta.

In the first phase, that is tentatively scheduled to commence in October 2004, GACL will set up 600,000 tons of grinding capacity which will subsequently be increased to 1.2Mt by December 2006. The new facility, to be sited at Dadri in western Utar Pradesh, is expected to cost about $22,000,000 to build.

According to Suresh Neotia, GACL Chairman, the tie up with NTPC underlines his company’s commitment to save the environment by promoting an effective and efficient use of fly ash.

Meanwhile, ACC has said its cement shipments in August rose 5.6 per cent to 1.25Mt from 1.18Mt in the same month a year earlier.  It said production rose 3.3 per cent to 1.21Mt from 1.17Mt a year earlier.