Technology
Terminals facilitate in supplying factory fresh cement
Published
5 years agoon
By
admin
Ram Manohar Sowbhagya, Consultant
Cement terminals which are away from an integrated plant serve as important distribution points in the overall business. Cement manufacturers are either setting up their own terminals or are sharing them with other companies. Ram Manohar Sowbhagya has a long experience of being associated with ACC Ltd, which operates a bulk cement terminal at Kalamboli, Navi Mumbai. He gave an insight into the need for such terminals and overall management of the same.
Explain the importance of having a terminal either for packing of cement or for loading of bulk cement in the overall cement distribution matrix. What are the typical investments in plant and machinery excluding land?
Bulk cement handling terminals in the vicinity of large, developing and happening cities/markets play a very important role in proper distribution of cement. The terminals are an extension of very large plants which otherwise normally exist in very remote locations, far away from cities or major consumption points. Therefore terminals facilitate in supplying factory fresh cement with many advantages to the customers, which would have not been possible when cement is transported from a far away source. Terminals help in handling cement in a safe method, ensuring clean environment unlike conventional rail sidings where cement is handled in a very unscientific way with all sorts of hazards.
Once the terminal is established, the same can be used for packing cement and supplying cement in loose form depending on infrastructure developed at the unit. The primary objective of the terminal should be for distributing cement in loose form, in special vehicles like bulkers. However the mode and form of cement distribution is more dictated by the customers needs based on the facilities that are available with them. This necessitates a terminal to have a provision for packing cement in bags too. Having terminals for cement handling can avoid large godowns/warehouses near construction points in otherwise congested areas and residential dwellings. Bulk cement terminals help in increasing efficiency of rail transportation or port operations. Major capital investments required for a terminal other than land are storage silos, unloading / loading equipment, packing plant along with special purpose rail wagons and rail siding and railhead plant or port/ship related infrastructure (ships/ barges, jettys/ports). The capital requirement hence could vary in a large range of nearly Rs 100-200 crore, depending on type of infrastructure needed and capacity of the terminal.
Which are the companies having such facilities?
BCCIL-ACC subsidiary company is the first Rail Bulk Cement Terminal. The Bulk Cement Terminal was set up in Navi Mumbai (Kalamboli) during 1995-96 with participation of Ministry of Industry, World Bank and Indian Railways. There are two more rail bulk terminals that came up much later; one in Bengaluru and another near Hyderabad, both belonging to Grasim Industries.
Besides this, there are three-four port-based bulk cement terminals (Ambuja, UltraTech etc.,) transporting cement through the sea route and handling cement near coastal belts of Mumbai, Surat and Mangalore that have been operating for a few years now. There are a few more terminals that are coming up shortly.
Cochin Port Trust is creating an exclusive facility for handling cement. Please comment.
Though not many details are known it is understood that Ambuja, UltraTech, Zuari and Malabar Cements have developed a bulk cement unit in Kochi, located on the land of Cochin Port Trust with more than a million tonne annual capacity.
When you were at BCCIL, what was the proportion of bagged cement vs that of bulk cement? Is the proportion likely to change and in which direction?
Bulk cement proportion at BCCIL is around 50 per cent. The unit receives cement 100 per cent in bulk form from its source at Wadi. However, while distributing the cement to the market from the terminal, the ratio varies from 40-50 per cent and the balance cement gets packed and despatched to the customer. Though it is always preferable to distribute cement through bulk in loose form as much as possible, the limitation is market demand.
Explain the necessity of having a testing lab at the terminal end when you have a full scale QC laboratory at the plant. What are the routine tests conducted at the packing plant?
The purpose of a testing lab at a bulk cement unit is more for quality assurance rather than for any control or correction purpose at the terminal. Though all tests are carried out at the manufacturing unit, it is necessary for certain tests to be carried out from the quality assurance point of view before the material gets shipped to the customer and also as per the BIS statutory requirement, proper lab facilities manned by a qualified person is mandatory. Physical tests including compressive strength for all ages and limited chemical analysis are done on a daily average basis.
What is your take on HDPE bags as packing material vs paper bags or paper laminated HDPE bags?
PP bags with their ease of usage and relatively low cost are extensively used for packing cement. But use of all PP-based bags is a big challenge to the environment as these are not biodegradable. Laminated bags are better if their relatively higher cost is absorbed as seepage of cement is avoided. Paper bags are environment friendly and are extensively used in the developed world. Paper bags have high burstage issues if operations/machinery are not streamlined, affecting cost and productivity adversely.
To what extent is IT used in terminal operations including vehicle movement?
In general the plant operations at the present are semi-automatic. Operations starting from unloading at terminal till repacking /loading into bulkers are controlled through DCS systems. There is huge scope and operations can be fully automised restricting human involvement to the minimum with proper investments and reliable systems.
The movement of all vehicles inside the premises is monitored and tracked through RFID and the movements outside the premises till the consignment reaches the customer are also tracked through GPS combined with various supporting modules and systems. All these are implemented at ACC?s BCCIL; all these operations help in increasing TAT ( Turn Around Time ) of dedicated vehicles leading to productivity efficiency and economic benefits. As such, IT plays a great role in streamlining operations for better efficiency.
What changes do you foresee in terminal operations in the next five years?
Terminals are objectively meant more for distributing cement in bulk form. Internationally, developed nations have very high proportion of bulk (~ 70 per cent ) whereas our country has not crossed 2 per cent even after 30-40 years of first introduction of bulk transportation. Promotion of usage of bulk cement has not had encouraging effects, probably on account of reluctant customers and continuing old construction practices being followed by government departments which consume cement in large quantities. However more and more RMCs are coming up due to environmental and congestion related aspects over and above customer preferring quality concrete from RMCs. The increase in RMC plants will result in more and more terminals to be installed. There are already quite a few terminals that had come up in the pipeline in the recent past. As more and more companies are keen on having their own terminals it is likely the terminal development will be huge in the next 5 years as compared to the past.
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Economy & Market
TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race
Published
2 months agoon
April 27, 2026By
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
Reimagining Logistics: Spatial AI and Digital Twins
Published
2 months agoon
April 13, 2026By
admin
Digital twins and spatial AI are transforming cement logistics by enabling real-time visibility, predictive decision-making, and smarter multi-modal operations across the supply chain. Dijam Panigrahi highlights how immersive AR/VR training is bridging workforce skill gaps, helping companies build faster, more efficient, and future-ready logistics systems.
As India accelerates infrastructure investment under flagship programs such as PM GatiShakti and the National Infrastructure Pipeline, the pressure on cement manufacturers to deliver reliably, efficiently, and cost-effectively has never been greater. Yet for all the modernisation that has taken place on the production side, the end-to-end logistics chain, from clinker dispatch to the last-mile delivery of bagged cement to construction sites, remains a domain riddled with inefficiencies, opacity and manual decision-making.
The good news is that a new generation of spatial computing technologies is now mature enough to transform this reality. Digital twins, spatial artificial intelligence (AI) and immersive augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) training platforms are converging to offer cement producers something they have long sought: real-time visibility, autonomous decision-making at the operational edge, and a scalable solution to the persistent skills gap that hampers workforce performance.
Advancing logistics with digital twins
The cement supply chain is uniquely complex. A single integrated plant may manage limestone quarrying, kiln operations, grinding, packing and despatch simultaneously, with finished product flowing through rail, road, and waterway networks to reach hundreds of regional depots and distribution points. Coordinating this network using spreadsheets, siloed ERP data, and phone calls is not merely inefficient; it is a structural liability in a competitive market where delivery reliability is a key differentiator.
Digital twin technology offers a way out. A cement logistics digital twin is a continuously updated, three-dimensional virtual replica of the entire supply chain, from the truck loading bays at the plant to the inventory levels at district depots. By ingesting data from IoT sensors on conveyor belts and packing machines, GPS trackers on road and rail fleets, weighbridge records, and weather feeds, the digital twin provides planners with a single, authoritative picture of where every ton of cement is, in real time.
The value, however, goes well beyond visibility. Because the digital twin mirrors the physical system in dynamic detail, it can run scenario simulations before decisions are executed. If a primary rail corridor is disrupted, logistics managers can model alternative routing options, shifting volumes to road or coastal shipping, and assess the cost and time implications within minutes rather than days. If a packing line at the plant is running below capacity, the twin can automatically recalculate dispatch schedules downstream and alert depot managers to adjust receiving resources accordingly.
For cement companies operating multi-plant networks across geographies as varied as Rajasthan and the North-East, this kind of end-to-end situational awareness is transformative. It collapses information latency from hours to seconds, enables proactive rather than reactive logistics management, and creates the data foundation upon which AI-driven decision-making can be built. Companies that have deployed logistics digital twins in comparable heavy-industry contexts have reported reductions in transit time variability of up to 20 per cent and meaningful decreases in demurrage and detention costs, savings that flow directly to the bottom line.
Smart logistics operations
A digital twin is only as powerful as the intelligence layer that sits on top of it. This is where Spatial AI becomes the critical differentiator for cement logistics.
Traditional logistics management systems are reactive. They record what has happened and flag exceptions after the fact. Spatial AI systems, by contrast, are proactive. They continuously analyse the state of the logistics network as represented in the digital twin, identify emerging bottlenecks before they crystallise into delays, and recommend corrective actions.
At the plant gate, AI-powered visual inspection systems using spatial depth-sensing cameras can assess truck conditions, verify load integrity and confirm seal tamper status in seconds, replacing the manual checks that currently slow throughput. At the depot level, Spatial AI can monitor stock drawdown rates in real time, cross-reference them against pending customer orders and inbound shipment ETAs, and automatically trigger replenishment orders when safety thresholds are approached. In transit, AI systems processing GPS and telematics data can detect anomalous vehicle behaviour, including extended stops, route deviations, speed irregularities and alert fleet managers instantly.
Perhaps most significantly for Indian cement logistics, Spatial AI can optimise the complex multi-modal routing decisions that are central to competitive cost management. Given the variability in road quality, seasonal accessibility, rail rake availability, and regional demand patterns across India’s vast geography, the combinatorial complexity of routing optimisation is beyond human planners working with conventional tools. AI systems can process this complexity continuously and adapt routing recommendations as conditions change, reducing empty running, improving vehicle utilisation and cutting fuel costs.
The agentic dimension of modern AI is particularly relevant here. Agentic AI systems do not merely analyse and recommend; they act. In a cement logistics context, this means an AI system that can, within pre-authorised boundaries, directly communicate revised dispatch instructions to plant teams, update booking confirmations with freight forwarders and reallocate available rail rakes across plant locations, all without waiting for a human to process a recommendation and make a call. For logistics executives, this represents a genuine shift from managing a workforce to setting the rules of engagement and reviewing outcomes. The operational tempo achievable with agentic AI simply cannot be matched by human-in-the-loop systems working at the pace of emails and phone calls.
Bridging the skills gap
Technology investments in digital twins and spatial AI will deliver diminishing returns if the human workforce cannot operate effectively within the new systems they create. This is a challenge that India’s cement industry cannot afford to underestimate. The sector relies on a large, geographically dispersed workforce, including truck drivers, depot managers, despatch supervisors, fleet maintenance technicians, many of whom have been trained on paper-based processes and manual workflows. Retraining this workforce for a digitised, AI-augmented environment is a substantial undertaking, and conventional classroom or on-the-job training methods are poorly suited to the scale and pace required.
Immersive AR and VR training platforms offer a fundamentally different approach. By creating photorealistic, interactive simulations of logistics environments, such as a plant dispatch bay, a depot yard, the interior of a cement truck cab, allow workers to practice complex procedures and decision-making scenarios in a safe, consequence-free virtual environment. A depot manager can work through a simulated rail rake delay scenario, making decisions about customer allocation and communication
without the pressure of real orders being affected. A truck driver can practice the correct procedure for securing a load of bagged cement without the risk of a road incident.
The learning science case for immersive training is compelling. Studies consistently show that experiential, simulation-based learning produces faster skill acquisition and higher retention rates than didactic instruction, with some research indicating retention rates three to four times higher for VR-based training compared to classroom methods. For complex operational procedures where muscle memory and situational awareness matter as much as conceptual knowledge, the advantage of immersive simulation is even more pronounced.
Today’s leading cloud-based spatial computing platforms enable high-fidelity AR and VR training experiences to be delivered on standard mobile devices, removing the hardware barrier that has historically made immersive training impractical for large, distributed workforces. This is particularly relevant for cement companies with depots and logistics operations in tier-two and tier-three locations, where access to specialised training hardware cannot be assumed.
The integration of AR into live operations also creates ongoing learning opportunities beyond formal training programs. As an example, maintenance technicians equipped with AR overlays can receive step-by-step guidance for equipment procedures directly in their field of view, reducing error rates and service times for critical plant and fleet assets.
New strategy, new horizons
India’s cement industry is entering a period of intensifying competition, rising logistics costs, and demanding customers with shrinking tolerance for delivery variability. The companies that will lead over the next decade will be those that treat logistics not as a cost centre to be minimised, but as a strategic capability to be built.
Digital twins, spatial AI and immersive AR/VR training are not distant future technologies, they are deployable today on infrastructure that Indian cement companies already operate. The question is not whether to adopt them, but how quickly to do so and where to begin.
About the author:
Dijam Panigrahi is Co-Founder and COO of GridRaster Inc., a provider of cloud-based spatial computing platforms that power high-quality digital twin and immersive AR/VR experiences on mobile devices for enterprises. GridRaster’s technology is deployed across manufacturing, logistics and infrastructure sectors globally.
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