ACC Cement has announced a capital expenditure plan of Rs 6 billion for the coming financial year, according to CEO and Managing Director, Neeraj Akhoury. He was speaking at the company’s Annual General Meeting. Akhoury said that the outlay will be "used for various projects."
The company reported a profit of INR 6.04 billion for the year ending 31 December 2016, up from Rs 5.87 billion in 2015 and registering a growth in profit of 2.9 per cent. Revenue stood at Rs 11.27 billion, down by 5.39 per cent since last year at Rs 11.91 billion.
Total sales declined from 23.62 million tonnes (MT) in 2015 to 22.99 MT in 2016, a drop of 2.7 per cent.
The cement major suffered from low capacity utilisation in the past year, reaching just 75 per cent. While production took place at levels above 85 per cent of capacity in the northern, central and eastern regions, excess capacity in the south dragged down the average capacity utilisation.
On the reported merger talks between ACC Cement and Ambuja Cement, Akhoury said that as of now, the two companies were operating as independent legal entities with separate Boards, and "no such discussion" has happened at the Board level.