Economy & Market

Inching Ahead

Published

5 years ago

October 19, 2021

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The cement distribution channel has not changed much over the years. The sector is still plagued by shrinking margins, financial constraints and logistical problems.

Cement is a high volume and low margin business. The city of Mumbai alone consumes around 6.5 lakh tonnes of cement every month, despite the slowdown in the construction sector. Like in the past, cement distribution happens in the same way as that of other building materials. Traditionally the distributors of cement have been functioning since generations.

ICR met up with two prominent distributors who have been in business for a very long time. Nikesh Parekh, who operates from south Mumbai, said that distribution is functioning in the same way as in the past, but volumes have increased. The role of a distributor has expanded. Expectations from clients are increasing day by day. Parekh says that the job of distribution has become more challenging, like the quantity of bags to be delivered. Smaller the quantum of distribution, the more difficult is it to serve the retailer or the consumer. Entry restrictions on road, traffic jams, and even bandhs called by political parties add to the problem. In addition, the cement is almost never used in a raw form; it is converted into some other product. Hence, cement stockists have to keep and deliver materials like sand, aggregates, steel and construction chemicals etc. When companies like UltraTech brought a range of products to the market, it was welcomed by many dealers and distributors.

Financial Management
Dhimant Mehta, from North Mumbai who is one of the top five distributors in Mumbai, says that the biggest challenge facing the distributor is financial management. Today when recovery of money from the market takes about 70 days, what is more important is cash flow management. Those who buy cement either for a project or for RMC unit depend heavily on credit terms. For selecting a distributor, one of the main decisive factors is the amount of credit that he can offer. "The major challenge today is recovery of money. We have to coordinate with everybody in the channel link. Cement channel is same as that of other product channels. The retailer is the last channel point in the chain. In the present trend, wholesalers may get eliminated. Bigger wholesalers will only stay in the business. Today it is a game of finance and only better financial management can help you survive in the business," says Mehta. On the advent of E-commerce both Parekh and Mehta echoed each other?s sentiment.

"E-business portal can come to the cement sector also. In steel and copper, prices are available online. Cement together with associated products will make sense. But it will not make a major impact on the business," says Mehta.

Distributors are not really worried about E-commerce for the simple reason that none of the portals that are in the cement business can offer credit, which only a known distributor will. In fact, considering the present business climate, the credit span has gone up to 70 days, creating additional strain on the entire distributor community. Manufacturers in the past have tried to have exclusive arrangements with distributors but such relationships have not been sustainable over the long run.

Logistics
In the overall distribution of cement, a couple of manufacturers are setting up cement terminals to have better control. These are typically created for supply of loose cement through bulkers to captive users like Ready Mixed Concrete plants or any factory producing end products using cement as a raw material. Since such companies which are setting up distribution terminals are investing on these kind of assets, they are also trying to have an option of bagging cement. This helps the companies to optimise the resources created. Ram Manohar Sowbhagya, a freelance consultant, who has a long experience of being associated with ACC Ltd, which operates a bulk cement terminal at Kalamboli, feels that it?s extremely important for a cement distributor to have a terminal. "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," says Ram Manohar. Today Mumbai, Mangalore and Cochin have such terminals.

Gujarat Ambuja pioneered the concept of transportation by sea. It has taken the advantage of the coastal location of its plant and has constructed its own jetties at Kodinar, Surat and Navi Mumbai. It has thus insulated itself from otherwise poor port facilities. Gujarat Ambuja uses its own ships to move cement to markets in Gujarat and Mumbai. It enjoys a significant cost advantage by using this route. Worldwide, around 70 per cent of cement moves through waterways. In India, just 2 to 3 per cent of cement movement is through waterways.

Jimmy George of Cochin Port Trust says that the port has created infrastructure where five cement companies are going to have their terminals. These are UltraTech, Ambuja, Zuari, Penna and Malabar cements. Three companies have already commissioned their plants. In the last month, Zuari was the third company to start its operations. Penna and Malabar are in the process of setting up their terminals. UltraTech was the first to start operations at Cochin Port Trust, followed by Ambuja. The total cement handling capacity at the port is going to reach 3 million tonnes per annum, when all five terminals are commissioned.

Use of IT is also growing in the cement distribution business. For the management of fleet deployed for transporting cement, companies can use RFID and GPS. Some companies have already tried these methods, but have not implemented them on a full scale. This may happen in the coming years.

Packing innovations
Due to the cost factor, Indian manufacturers have been using HDPE bags, which is a non-biodegradable material. Nowhere else, especially in the developed world, are HDPE bags used. There have been many attempts made to replace the cement bags with eco-friendly materials like paper bags or paper laminated HDPF bags. But due to cost considerations, these have not been successful. Johan Nellbeck, Senior Vice President Packaging Paper, BillerudKorsn?s AB, is one of the leading suppliers of paper bags worldwide. He says that the properties of HDPE bags can be easily matched by paper bags. "When making a total cost analysis, including the high loss of cement, higher maintenance costs, costs of pilferage, revenue loss and reduced goodwill due to poor image and pollution, then the paper sack is clearly the logical and economical choice," says Nellbeck.

The only problem is handling of paper bags. India still adopts the age-old practice of using hooks to unload cement bags, which will not work with paper bags. The user also has to be sensitive to the environment, only then the usage of paper bags will become successful.

Economy & Market

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

Published

2 weeks 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

1 month 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

1 month 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.