Economy & Market

Demonetisation | Cement industry grinds to a halt

Published

9 years ago

December 31, 2016

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The economy of the country has undergone a churning after demonetisation and the cement industry is no exception to the upheaval. Cement makers, analysts and dealers share their views and strategies on how to combat the aftermath of this game-changing move.

Ambuja kicks off ‘Go Cashless’
Ambuja Cements has embarked on a campaign, ‘Go Cashless’ from December 7th, 2016, for its business partners, to encourage digital options. The company will provide swipe machines and other cashless options with support from ICICI Bank. The bank is providing an exclusive helpline and easy account opening options.

Ambuja claims to be the first cement company to come out with such an option after demone?tisation. Construction and related communities in semi-urban and rural areas deal strictly in cash and have been facing difficulties after November 8th, 2016.

‘Our company is committed to improving the quality of life of all our stakeholders,’ said the company’s Managing Director and CEO, Ajay Kapur. ‘The ‘Go Cashless’ campaign is yet another endeavour empowering the construction community through knowledge transfer. We are successfully seeding innovative thinking at the grass-roots and bringing information and technology to the forefront of all our esteemed business partners.’

Ambuja Cement has, in 20 days, sent out more than over 10,00,000 text messages; 200,000 WhatsApp messages that included a series of short animated clips, and kick-started an educational radio campaign across 17 different stations in New Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and West Bengal. Following the launch in early December, the first leg of the campaign witnessed a series of teaser text messages on problems faced by the cement community post demonetisation. The second leg launched on 17th December included broadcast of educational messages.

The minute-long audio clips give updates on different modes of cashless transactions via cheques, cards (debit/ credit cards) and mobile payments (UPI app) in a simple manner.

These initiatives have helped reach out to over 42,000 partners (retailers, contractors and masons) across India and over 45,000 via radio. Meanwhile, all the company’s dealers are already conducting cashless transactions.

In the near future, a few more similar initiatives will be launched by the company to further empower the construction community across the country.
Source: Business Standard and Cemnet.com

Demand revival will take a year
JM Financial conducted a survey across various markets in the country which have been impacted following demonetisation in November 2016.

The report reveals that cement demand is unlikely to recover for another year. The manufacturers are also facing the heat of increase in price of diesel and pet coke. The eastern region saw a 70 per cent demand decline in November, but demand recovered in the subsequent period to about 70 per cent of the usual levels. The northern and western regions witnessed a 25-50 per cent fall in sales. Some southern regions experienced a decline in the first week of December. It is observed that prices have dropped Rs 10-25 per bag in the northern and western regions. While investors expect things to normalise in three to six months, the impact is enough to postpone the recovery in cement demand by another year or so, according to analysts.

‘We expect demonetisation to have a material impact on the second half of FY17 earnings of cement companies,’ said Abhishek Anand, an analyst at JM Financial.

‘We expect a decline of 5-10 per cent in volume for second half of FY17 and reduce our growth expectation for FY18, as we factor in delayed recovery.’

Stocks of cement companies have fallen 10-30 per cent since November 8, 2016. (Source: ET, JM Financial Services)

Bina Engineer, Director – Finance, Sanghi Industries, spoke to ET Now about the impact of demonetisation on cement demand.

Engineer says that the dispatches have come off by about 10 per cent in the domestic market, particularly in the segment which belongs to the rural individual house builder area. The segment suffered a major setback because the resources and working capital have been blocked suddenly.

In the institutional segment, the volume has been either maintained or it has even improved slightly. So between the two sectors which are major sectors, the house demand has clearly come off and the infra demand has been maintained or slightly improved.

She expects that the situation should improve in about at least two months going forward because most of the demonetisation impact is expected to wear off by December. Cement is a long-term usage commodity where the demand does not disappear; it is not an impulsive demand.

It is expected that housing which currently forms about say 60-65 per cent of the overall demand is going to come down to about 55 over next the three to four years and infrastructure which is about 20 per cent of total demand, is going to go up to about 30 per cent of demand.

On the price front, Engineer said pet coke prices have shot up by almost 50 per cent to 60 per cent and that had clearly had an impact across the industry. This year cement prices have also remained very flat or on the lower side compared to the previous period. Therefore, it has had clear impact on the margin.

She feels that there would be 30-40 per cent reduction in the margin levels across the industry. She further expressed that Q3 was a washout, something similar to the monsoon quarter where demand and prices are quite weak. Engineer also pointed out that fuel and power cost had also gone up for everybody. In Q4, she expects things to pick up. On FY17 as a whole, she expects things to remain stagnant as compared to the previous year. She hopes there will be a pickup from April onwards.

Sanjay Ladiwala, Chairman, Cement Stockists & Dealers Association of Bombay, feels that the retail segment has been severely hurt. There is no uptake from individual house builders and the situation will continue as long as the cash crunch lasts. It is difficult to predict till when it will continue.

However, a double-digit growth is not foreseen for the next couple of months, and then comes the monsoon. Therefore the real growth will come in October 2017. However, Ladiwala feels that the silver lining is that the infrastructure sector is growing pretty well. There is de-growth in the real estate sector, but it consumes only about 20 percent of the total consumption. Infra is growing quite fast, but whether it grows fast enough to take up the slack created by real estate is anybody’s guess, says Ladiwala. He strongly feels that double digit growth has been postponed at least for the next couple of years.
Source: Moneycontrol.com

Economy & Market

TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race

Published

3 days ago

April 27, 2026

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Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology

India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.

According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.

Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.

The Regulatory Push Is Real

The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.

Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.

Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem

Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.

The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.

Engineering a Made-in-India Answer

At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.

Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.

Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.

The Investment Case Is Now

The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.

The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.

The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.

The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.

About The Author

Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.

Concrete

WCA Welcomes SiloConnect as associate corporate member

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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The World Cement Association (WCA) has announced SiloConnect as its newest associate corporate member, expanding its network of technology providers supporting digitalisation in the cement industry. SiloConnect offers smart sensor technology that provides real-time visibility of cement inventory levels at customer silos, enabling producers to monitor stock remotely and plan deliveries more efficiently. The solution helps companies move from reactive to proactive logistics, improving delivery planning, operational efficiency and safety by reducing manual inspections. The technology is already used by major cement producers such as Holcim, Cemex and Heidelberg Materials and is deployed across more than 30 countries worldwide.

Concrete

TotalEnergies and Holcim Launch Floating Solar Plant in Belgium

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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TotalEnergies and Holcim have commissioned a floating solar power plant in Obourg, Belgium, built on a rehabilitated former chalk quarry that has been converted into a lake. The project has a generation capacity of 31 MW and produces around 30 GWh of renewable electricity annually, which will be used to power Holcim’s nearby industrial operations. The project is currently the largest floating solar installation in Europe dedicated entirely to industrial self-consumption. To ensure minimal impact on the surrounding landscape, more than 700 metres of horizontal directional drilling were used to connect the solar installation to the electrical substation. The project reflects ongoing collaboration between the two companies to support industrial decarbonisation through renewable energy solutions and innovative infrastructure development.