French cement major, Lafarge Group, aimed to raise the share of ready mix concrete (RMC) in its sales basket in india from around 4-5 per cent now, as this would allow for more advanced construction projects, bring down time required and aid absorption of latest technology.
“The demand for concrete was limited by the largely manual processes still used in most projects, but its use would allow projects that were unthinkable a few years ago”, said Bruno Lafont, global chairman and chief executive officer of Lafarge. Giving examples, he claimed the 4km Millau Viaduc in France, using only concrete towers instead of traditional steel piers, or the Seonyu bridge in South Korea using only 5cm thick slab of concrete instead of huge structures, proved that rapid technological development was making concrete the most suitable construction material globally.
The share of concrete was as high as 40 per cent in Malaysia and 10 per cent even in Egypt. Lafont said while demand had shrunk appreciably in markets like USA, UK and Spain, markets like china were witnessing less than expected, but nonetheless positive, growth. Lafarge, which bought the market leading Indian concrete business of Larsen & Toubro in 2008, expected sales growth to continue in india as well. However, it would now focus on greenfield plants instead of acquisitions as this option made more business sense today in view of cost and quality considerations, said Lafont and Uday Khanna, chief executive officer of Lafarge India. Lafarge had entered india through the acquisition of the Tata Steel’s cement business and had grown mainly through acquisitions since then.
In contrast, Lafont and Khanna said Lafarge would continue to stick to its global strategy of building regional clusters of cement units in every country it operated to minimize logistics costs and maximize margins.