Private players eye seven sick Cement Corporation units

Plant location StateCapacity
in lakh tonnesLast date of
production MandharChhattisgarh3.8June,96 KurkuntaKarnataka1.98Nov,98 NayagaonMP4.00June,97 AkaltaraChhattisgarh4.00Dec,96 Charkhi DadriHaryana1.74Aug,96 AdilabadAndhra4.00Nov,98  The corporation has 10 units across the country with a total capacity of 3.84 million tonnes. However, of these 10, only three units are operational, constituting 1.4 mt annually. These closed plants are located strategically with easy availability of raw material.  A L Kapur, managing director, Ambuja Cements, said, "The government should give CCI units to top private cement makers under a management contract. If the units are run successfully, the government can negotiate the prices (of units)."  CCI has plants in Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Assam.  K C Birla, chief financial officer, UltraTech Cement, said, "If the government allows private firms to run CCI units, it will be a good move and we will definitely go for managing these units."  The three functioning units of CCI - in Himachal, Andhra and Assam - are based on dry process technique (preferred currently). Among others, two are based on wet process, four on dry process and one is on semi-dry process. Apart from that, CCI has a grinding unit in Delhi with a capacity of 0.5 mt.  According to A K Saraogi, chief financial officer, J K Cements, though the government had come up with a proposal for its sick units a couple of years back, nothing had happened later.  "At that time, we had submitted our expression of interests for all the north India-based CCI plants. However, if any such proposal comes up now, we will go for all the units of CCI," he said.  An email sent to CCI Chairman and Managing Director A K Srivastava did not yield any response.  The seven plants had stopped production between 1996 and 1998, and since then the units never recovered. These units produced varieties of cements included ordinary portland cement, pozzolona portland cement and pozzolona slag cement.