CII?s cement industry division had organised Indian Cement Conference on December 16, 2015 at Hotel Lalit, New Delhi. The theme of the conference was ?Make In India – Urban Infrastructure & Smart Cities?.
Around 200 delegates had gathered to brainstorm at the event, which included top executives of cement companies, government officials and policy makers, consultants, academicians, etc.
Over a period of time, the Indian cement industry has become more organised, efficient, structured and has achieved substantial improvements in manufacturing technology. On one hand the industry is facing many challenges on the other hand the growth in the industry has been very significant over the past three decades. However at present the capacity utilisation is a big question mark when industry is aiming to reach production capacity of 550 mtpa by 2025. The present Government with strong focus on infrastructure, housing, smart cities is an opportunity available to the industry.
At the outset Ajay Kapur, Chairman CII Cement Industry Division, MD & CEO of Ambuja Cement welcomed the delegates and in his speech highlighted some of the issues the industry is facing.
Mahendar Singhi, Group CEO, Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Ltd gave a perspective of Indian cement industry vis-a-vis the cement industry outside.
Then spoke Shailendra Singh, Joint Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. He took the stock of update of Make in India and how it will benefit the cement industry.
Chaudhary Birender Singh, Minister of Rural Development was the Chief Guest. He spoke at a length on the initiatives taken by the government. He suggested that cement industry can support the government initiatives in the road network development and improving the sanitation.
There were two discussion sessions, post lunch.
A panel discussion on spurring infrastructure led growth through SMART Cities, AMRUT and Housing for all. The panelist were Ajay Kapur, Chairman CII Cement Industry Division and MD & CEO of Amnuja Cement; Dr S Chouksey, Whole Time Director, JK Lakshmi Cement; Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Global Head – Digital Enterprise Solutions, Tech Mahindra Ltd; PK Tripathi, President, Unitech Ltd; Dr Asmi Raza, Professor of Economics, University of Delhi; and T Sivaram, IT Advisor, GMR Group. At the end Dr Rishi Bhatnagar hoped that some thing disruptive need to happen as it has been happening in other business streams.
Also took place was a plenary session. CEOs speak, the group got engaged in an interactive debate on market scenario, supply chain dynamics, opportunities and challenges. The session was moderated by Dr Omkar Goswami, Economist, Founder & Chairman, CERG. The panelist of the discussion were Rajnish Kapur, Business Head – Grey Cement, JK Cement Ltd.(Logistics and Transportation); Jagdeep Verma, Head – Business Consulting (Indian Cement Industry – New Horizons), Holtec Consulting Pvt Ltd; JC Toshniwal, Executive Director, Wonder Cement (Manufacturing Technologies); and Atul Desai, Executive Director and Chief Marketing Officer, Reliance Cement Ltd. The entire group had consensus that revival of the industry is certain to happen but they had difference of opinion on the time schedule.
There was a video message from Prakash Javadekar, Minister of State, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. He applauded the industry for achieving world standards for energy efficiency and said that gaseous and particulate matters that are the main pollutants emitted by the industry which have to tackled efficiently and on priority. He expected that the industry to do same as that of energy efficiency for emission parameters also.
At the end Ajay Kapur, Chairman, CII Cement Industry Division, gave his concluding remarks.