Lucky Cement to establish 1.2Mta Samawah grinding plant

Lucky Cement Ltd of Pakistan is planning to set up greenfield clinker production facility in southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, according to Irfan Chawala, the ompany's CFO in information sent to Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

Lucky Cement plans to set up a 1.2Mta clinker line in Samawah as a step to becoming self-sufficient in terms of clinker production in the country.The US$109m project will be carried out as a joint venture with an existing local partner and is subject to all regulatory and statutory approvals required under the law. The new plant aims to start commercial production from 4Q19.

Lucky Cement signed a joint venture agreement for setting up a cement grinding plant in Basra, Iraq, in 2012. The plant capacity was increased through brownfield expansion project last year, which was completed in December 2017. With the addition of the new capacity of 0.871Mta the total capacity of the cement grinding unit has now increased to 1.742Mta.

July 2017-March 2018 results
Lucky Cement Ltd has earned an after tax profit of PKR9.8bn (US$700m) during the nine months of July 2017-March 2018 as compared to PKR10.42bn (US$744m) earned in the same period of the previous financial year.

During the nine months of 2017-18 under review, company achieved an overall gross sales revenue growth of 7.1 per cent as compared to the 9MFY16-17. It was pointed out that during the period, per tonne cost of sales of company increased by 16.9 per cent as compared to the same period last year. The increase was mainly attributable to increase in coal and other fuel prices.

Lucky Cement says it recorded local sales growth of 10.9 per cent to reach 5.10Mt during 9MFY2017-18 as compared to 4.6Mt during same period last year. Exports stood at 0.74Mt during this period, falling from 0.93Mt in the equivalent period of the previous financial year.