Concrete

Envisioning a Better Tomorrow

Published

3 years ago

April 10, 2023

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Vivek Agnihotri, CEO and Executive Director – Cement, Prism Johnson, speaks about the company’s innovations in cement and their vision for the future.

Prism Johnson, the ‘Made for Future’ philosophy largely encompasses all of its three divisions. They have recently launched new products – Prism Champion, which in comparison to all cement present in the market has a higher quality; Prism Champion Plus, which is a premium product that contributes about 40 per cent to the total sale; and Prism Duratech, which is a specialised product for high strength performance areas. Customers have accepted Prism Champion Plus as a premium product. There are territories where approximately 70 to 80 per cent of sales is from this premium product.
Wherever architects and engineers design long beamless walls or narrow sections, Prism Duratech comes in use as a specialised product. The company has also launched a water resistant cement, which had been in research and development for the last three years. They noticed that this segment was emerging, but still took their time to launch to make it better than the products available in the market. With multiple iterations, research and tests done, they believe this will be the best water resistant cement in the market.
Prism Johnson follows the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). This is a mandate in India. They also take samples from the market and construction sites and analyse what is commonly available in the market and then reconfigure their specifications to give more to the customers. Their premium is not just price, it also comes with surety of performance.
The brand is well accepted in the central part of India, and it has a high rate of capacity utilisation, which has been going good in the recent years.

The Eco-friendly Approach
Prism Johnson makes and sells blended cement with the permitted levels of fly ash in the cement composition. They do not have slag available in the central part of India as hardly any steel plants are located close by, otherwise they would have developed a blend using slag as well. Reducing the clinker factor and creating blends is their effort towards reducing their carbon footprint from the environment.
The company has reduced fuel consumption and power consumption as compared to previous years and that is an on-going process. They are an efficient plant and have installed a waste heat recovery system and perhaps it is one of India’s best in the cement industry. It is a 22.5 megawatt WHRS plant, which is of much higher capacity than other cement plants. They have also installed a 30 megawatt solar power plant and are using approximately 35 per cent renewable energy. They are looking forward to increasing this capacity and steps are being taken in this direction.
The three key benefits that their customers get from using their products foremost include quality. They are extremely focused on quality and give demonstrations in the market with site constructions. Secondly, it is their technical support services. Their services are one of the highest intensive support services in the market that provides support to the customer to train his masons, thus training hundreds of masons per month. They have approximately 65 thousand masons registered with them who at some point of time used their cement and have been trained by the company’s experts. Good quality cement requires good quality construction practices. They work a lot on good quality construction practices with the masons.
Thirdly, Prism Johnson works very closely with architects and engineers. They understand their requirements, designs and what they are working on. This is a huge plus for the end user as the product they get is what they truly need.
Prism Johnson is a rural based organisation. The kind of construction that is coming up in the rural parts of the country, using their cement, is almost similar to that of the metro cities due to the practices that the company follows. They support builders and help them to design buildings using their cement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Vivek Agnihotri shoulders multiple responsibilities as the CEO and Executive Director (Cement) as well as Board Director with Prism Johnson Ltd.

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Concrete

Ultra Concrete Age

Prof. A. S. Khanna (Retd., IIT Bombay) on how Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) improves strength, durability and lifecycle performance.

Published

1 week ago

April 1, 2026

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The need of present time is stronger buildings, industrial or common utility buildings, such as Malls, Railway stations, hospitals, offices, bridges etc. For this, there is need of long durable, tough and stable concrete, which could stand under normal and seismic conditions. Tough railway bridges are required for bullet trains to pass without any damage. Railway tunnels, sea-links, coastal roads, bridges and multistorey buildings, are the need of the hour. The question comes, is the normal cement called OPC is sufficient to take care of such requirements or better combination of cements and sand mixtures is required?

Introduction

A good stable building structure can be made with a good quality of cement+sand+water system. Its quality can be enhanced by keeping the density of admixture higher (varies from 30 in normal buildings to bridges etc to 80). Further enhancement in the properties of various cements admixtures is made by adding several additives which give additional strength, waterproofing, flexibility etc. These are called construction chemicals…

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Concrete

NCB Signs MoU With Cement Manufacturer To Boost Construction Skills

Partnership to deliver nationwide training and certification

Published

1 week ago

March 31, 2026

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The National Council for Cement and Building Materials (NCB) has signed a memorandum of understanding with a leading cement manufacturer to strengthen skill development and capacity building in the construction sector. The agreement was formalised at NCB premises in Ballabgarh and was signed by the Director General of NCB, Dr L. P. Singh, and the head of technical services at UltraTech Cement Limited, Er Rahul Goel. The collaboration seeks to bring institutional resources and industry expertise into a structured national training effort.

The partnership will deliver structured training and certification programmes across the country aimed at enhancing the capabilities of civil engineers, ready?mix concrete (RMC) professionals, contractors, construction workers and masons. Programme curricula will cover material quality testing, concrete mix proportioning, durability assessment and sustainable construction practices to support improved construction outcomes. Emphasis is to be placed on standardised assessment and certification to raise practice levels across diverse construction roles.

Practical learning elements will include workshops, site demonstrations, technical seminars and exposure visits to plants and RMC facilities to strengthen applied skills and on?site decision making. The Director General indicated confidence that a large number of professionals and workers would be trained over the next three to five years under the initiative. The partnership is designed to complement flagship government schemes such as the Skill India Mission and to align training outputs with national infrastructure priorities.

By combining the council’s technical mandate with industry experience, the initiative aims to develop a more skilled and quality?conscious workforce capable of meeting rising demand in infrastructure and housing. NCB will continue to coordinate programme delivery and quality assurance while industry partners provide practical exposure and technical inputs. The collaboration is expected to support long?term capacity building and more sustainable construction practices nationwide.

Concrete

JSW Cement Commissions Nagaur Plant, Enters North India

New Rajasthan unit boosts capacity to 24.1 MTPA and expands reach

Published

2 weeks ago

March 30, 2026

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JSW Cement has strengthened its national presence by commencing production at its greenfield integrated cement plant in Nagaur, Rajasthan, marking its entry into the north Indian market.

With this commissioning, the company’s installed grinding capacity has increased to 24.1 MTPA, while total clinker capacity, including its joint venture operations, stands at 9.74 MTPA.

The Nagaur facility comprises a 3.30 MTPA clinkerisation unit and a 2.50 MTPA cement grinding unit, with an additional 1.00 MTPA grinding capacity currently under development. Strategically located, the plant is positioned to serve high-growth markets across Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and the NCR.

The project has been funded through a mix of equity and long-term debt, with Rs 800 crore allocated from IPO proceeds towards part-financing the unit.

Parth Jindal, Managing Director, JSW Cement, stated that the commissioning marks a key milestone in the company’s ambition to become a pan-India player. He added that the project was completed within 21 months and positions the company to achieve its targeted capacity of 41.85 MTPA by FY29.

Nilesh Narwekar, CEO, JSW Cement, highlighted that the expansion aligns with the company’s strategy to tap into rapidly growing northern markets driven by infrastructure development. He noted that the company remains focused on delivering high-quality, eco-friendly cement solutions while progressing towards its long-term capacity goal of 60 MTPA.

The Nagaur plant has been designed with sustainability features, including co-processing of alternative fuels and a 7 km overland belt conveyor for limestone transport to reduce road emissions. The facility will also incorporate a 16 MW Waste Heat Recovery System to improve energy efficiency and lower its carbon footprint.

JSW Cement, part of the JSW Group, operates across the building materials value chain and currently has eight plants across India, along with a clinker unit in the UAE through its joint venture.