Economy & Market

Putting Safety ahead of Production

Published

7 years ago

January 8, 2019

admin

Preventive OSH is gaining popularity among cement companies, as that proves to be a business case for them when huge costs and reputation are at stake on the flipside.

Focus on occupational safety and health (OSH) is increasing in India, while it is at a long way to go before it reaches the global best practices. However, cement industry in India, being a highly organised industry, is much ahead of several other sectors, though it is yet to catch up with the best.

Though big organisations are doing better or willing to do even better in safety aspect, the challenge lies in bringing the organisations and enterprises at the bottom of the pyramid – micro, small, and medium enterprises, where awareness of critical importance of occupational safety and health is very low.

International Labour Organization (ILO) Director – General Guy Ryder said during the opening ceremony of the XXI World Congress on Safety and Health at Work on September 3, 2017, at the global level, the impact of not investing in Safety nearly equals to the combined gross domestic product of 130 poorest countries in the world.

ILO also unveiled estimates showing that, worldwide, 2.78 million workers die each year as a result of occupational injuries and illnesses. Of those, approximately 2.4 million are linked to work-related disease. The total cost of illnesses, injuries and deaths was 3.94 per cent of the global GDP, or $2.99 trillion. According to another estimate, the figure is 10-20 per cent of their GDP for Asian nations.

Exposure to dust and high temperatures, contact with allergic substances, and noise exposure can be defined as hazards associated with health; while falling/impact with objects; hot surface burns; and transportation, working at height, slip/trips/falls can be defined as hazards associated with safety.

Manufacturing hazards
While the stages of core processes of cement manufacturing are mining of limestone, limestone crushing/grinding, fuel preparation, burning of raw meal, cement grinding, material handling, packing and transportation of raw material and finished goods, Sanjay Joshi, Chief Manufacturing Officer, Nuvoco Vistas Corp Ltd, classified major hazardous areas into five – Mining of limestone, material handling and rushing/grinding, clinkerisation process, coal handling in clinkerisation process, and uncontrolled fire. (See interview in the following pages)Concrete manufacturing process has its own areas of potential hazard – Inside the concrete plant, where concrete is manufactured; during transport of concrete by "transit mixers" from plant to various construction sites; and at the construction sites where the concrete is delivered by static or mobile pumps, says Prashant Jha, Chief Concrete and Aggregates, Nuvoco Vistas Corp. Ltd.

If one has to classify potential hazards in cement and concrete industries based on the severity of impact, dust emissions are one of the most significant impacts of cement manufacturing and associated with handling and storage of raw materials (including crushing and grinding of raw materials), solid fuels, transportation of materials (e.g. by trucks or conveyor belts), kiln systems, clinker coolers, and mills, including clinker and limestone burning and packaging/bagging activities. Packaging is the most polluting process (in terms of dust) in cement production, says Vinay Pathak, Senior General Manager & Subject Matter Expert – APAC Region, Personal Safety Division, 3M India Ltd.

Harmful gases and vapours, wet concrete, and high heat & thermal effects, particularly in raw mill and preheater tower, hot clinker, precipitator and bypass dust and hot cement, follow dust emissions in these manufacturing processes, besides several physical hazards occurring in the process of movement of goods.

Remedial measures
Given the huge cost OSH accidents or events in manufacturing plants can cause and reputation risk involved, cement manufacturers are taking preventive measures by adhering to compliance measures meticulously to safeguard their employees’ safety and health.

"All the areas in the plants are surveyed and signages have been displayed about the hazard and a safety manual is also provided to the employees. Workers carry out a daily cleaning procedure along with changing of bag filters as per OEMs manual. As a protocol, plant personnel need to wear PPEs, PPS-2 nose mask, earmuffs at high noise areas and aluminium suits in hot zones before carrying any process," says Ujjwal Batria, Chief Operating Officer, Dalmia Cement (Bharat) (See interview) Dalmia cement has also built green zones across the plant vicinity and at different points to minimise the impact on the environment. Water cooler points with rest shelters are provided across all plants and ORS is provided during summer season. Effective control measures help us to achieve our mission of zero harm, Nuvoco claims, while listing the measures they have taken to avoid or control various hazards in mining and transportation, burn injury during clearing of blocked cyclone, and in coal shop, fine coal bin and bag houses. Its concrete plants are established considering engineering and administrative control of all hazards.

As an effective hazard prevention and management strategy, "health and safety policy should be adapted with other policies of the company. Additionally, risk management policy of company should be developed, and risk assessment should be performed regularly and efficiently," says Pathak. 3M is a leading personal protection equipment (PPE) manufacturer for cement and concrete manufacturing plants as well.

Conclusion
There is no doubt that benefits outweigh monetary cost and reputation risk for companies and physical pain and disruption in life of employees. So, it is imperative that companies embrace safe working practices and the mindset shift should happen from "Production first, Safety later" to "Safety-first productivity".

Though the willing bigger companies have mastered the art of internal communication relating to potential hazards, reporting of hazards by companies is yet to be streamlined. To evolve appropriate strategies in OSH, reasonable amount of data is necessary. Regulatory mechanism needs to be tightened to ensure this happens. About a year back, the then Director General, National Safety Council, VB Sant said at a seminar "If you take a scale of 1-10 and if your goal is to achieve 10, I think we are between two to three only, if one is being honest about it and in the light of measures adopted in advanced countries."

Sant had urged that OSH targets should be linked to various government schemes for building a robust safety culture in corporate entities as part of promoting "Make in India" (MII) scheme. MII was launched in September 2014 to make the country a global manufacturing hub. MII can be made successful only by ensuring that manufacturing is also "Safe in India".

Economy & Market

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

Published

3 days ago

April 27, 2026

admin

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

3 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

admin

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

3 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

admin

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.