Shree Cement has inaugurated a 60 m³/hour ready-mix concrete plant in Patna, Bihar, under its Bangur Concrete brand. The facility takes the company’s ready-mix concrete (RMC) network to 36 plants across India and strengthens its presence in eastern markets.

The plant was inaugurated by Neeraj Akhoury, managing director of Shree Cement, in the presence of senior company officials and other guests. It has been established to serve demand for ready-mix concrete in Patna and neighbouring areas, where infrastructure development, urban expansion and real estate activity are supporting construction growth.

The facility is designed to supply construction projects across Patna and surrounding markets. Its installed capacity of 60 m³/hour will enable Bangur Concrete to serve customers across the region while improving distribution and supply capabilities in eastern India.

The expansion is intended to improve customer service, strengthen the company’s market presence and support development activity in Bihar. The plant incorporates modern batching technology, material handling systems and quality control processes aimed at maintaining consistency in production and improving operational efficiency.

With the addition of the Patna facility, Bangur Concrete now operates 36 RMC plants across India. The business is expanding its footprint in key construction markets to improve customer access to ready-mix concrete, which is increasingly used in infrastructure, commercial and residential projects because it supports controlled production, consistent quality and more efficient material management at construction sites.

The facility will also follow environmentally responsible operating practices, in line with Shree Cement’s focus on sustainable construction solutions. The latest addition adds capacity to the company’s RMC operations and supports its efforts to serve regional construction markets as development activity continues across Bihar.

Ambuja Cements has proposed a 2.9 mn tonnes per annum (MTPA) cement grinding unit in Godda district, Jharkhand, as part of a Rs. 145 bn expansion programme. The plan is intended to lift the company’s overall cement capacity to 155 MTPA by financial year 2029-30 (FY30), from its current 113.5 MTPA.

The proposal forms part of the Adani Group company’s wider manufacturing expansion across eastern and northeastern India, according to a company statement issued on Monday. The Godda unit would add grinding capacity to Ambuja Cements’ network and is intended to help serve demand in Jharkhand and neighbouring states.

Locating production closer to these markets is expected to reduce transportation costs and delivery times, while the project could support employment in plant operations, maintenance, logistics and administration. The company also linked the facility to indirect activity in transportation, contract services, construction, warehousing and local supply chains.

The expansion plan includes a 2.9 MTPA grinding unit each in Assam and Bihar, as well as additional clinker capacity in Assam. Together, the projects are designed to distribute manufacturing capacity more widely and improve the connection between clinker production and grinding operations, Ambuja Cements’ cement-business chief executive Vinod Bahety said.

Clinker is the intermediate material produced before it is ground and blended to make cement, making the Godda proposal part of a broader materials and logistics network rather than an isolated facility. Ambuja Cements has not provided a commissioning timeline, a Godda-specific investment breakdown, land details or a detailed employment estimate in the supplied announcement.

The project’s impact will depend on implementation of the plant, associated transport links and local supply chains. The announcement sets out the capacity objective but does not specify the project’s construction schedule or operational start date.

Kiranmai Sanagavarapu, Director – Low Carbon Solutions, Fuller Technologies, explains why successful calcined clay projects must design for variability to deliver consistent operation.

Meeting rising cement demand while continuing to reduce the carbon intensity of cement production will require substantial reductions in clinker factor. The GCCA India Net-Zero Roadmap envisages the average clinker factor falling from 0.75 in 2020 to about 0.56 by 2070, with limestone calcined clay cement (LC3), alongside other blended cements, playing an important role in achieving this transition. For producers, calcined clay also offers greater diversification and control of supplementary cementitious material (SCM) supply because, unlike many other SCMs, it can be produced on site.
The Bureau of Mines records almost three billion tonnes of domestic china clay (kaolin) alone, spread across several states, led by Kerala (23 per cent), Rajasthan (19 per cent) and West Bengal (14 per cent).1 However, taking advantage of these resources is not simply a question of identifying a clay that works in the laboratory. Moving from promising laboratory results to reliable industrial production requires a much broader understanding of the raw material, the process and how both will behave under real operating conditions.
Pilot-scale LC3 production has already demonstrated the use of Indian raw materials,2 while LC3 has since moved into large-scale construction at Noida International Airport.3 Since 2023, there has also been a dedicated standard, IS 18189:2023, providing a technical framework for LC3. Internationally, Fuller Technologies has successfully commissioned commercial-scale flash calcination plants in France and Ghana, providing real-world experience translating laboratory and pilot results into the design, commissioning and operation of industrial calcined clay plants.

Design the system to the deposit
Kaolinite content is widely viewed as the critical consideration when evaluating a calcined clay project’s feasibility, but it should not be treated in isolation. Overall mineralogy, the presence of other clay minerals, quartz and other inert phases, iron and other impurities, particle-size distribution, moisture and handling characteristics can all influence how a clay behaves during processing. At the same time, the final cement’s performance and colour requirements must also be considered when defining the operating window. Characterising this variability establishes the expected feed envelope and can inform material selection and blending or homogenisation strategies, while pilot testing representative samples reveals how materials within that envelope respond to calcination.
Earlier Indian pilot work, for example, demonstrated that good cement performance could be achieved with relatively low-kaolinite clay (<40 per cent).4 The wider point is also demonstrated commercially at Vicat’s Xeuilley plant in France, which uses raw materials containing significant quantities of smectitic clays and notably high iron content. At Fuller Technologies’ Dania facility, raw-material characterisation, including XRD and XRF analysis, was combined with pilot calcination testing to understand the material’s mineralogical and chemical composition, its response to calcination and the resulting reactivity and colour. This provided the basis for establishing an operating window for commercial implementation.
Testing of Indian clay samples also illustrates the mineralogical variability that may need to be accommodated. Even where kaolinite contents are within a potentially useful range, the proportions of other clay minerals, inert crystalline phases
and amorphous material can differ substantially between samples.

Table 1. Representative mineralogical composition of two Indian clay samples
Mineralogical component Sample A Sample B
Kaolinite 44% 32–36%
Other clay minerals 11% 15–22%
Inert crystalline phase 24% 11%
Amorphous phase 20% 15–25%

Individual mineral phases and sample identities have been grouped or anonymised to maintain confidentiality.
Once the expected feed envelope is understood, the plant can be designed to achieve a specified production capacity across the design envelope, while maintaining consistent calcined clay quality as feed properties and operating conditions change. For example, feed moisture variability can increase both fuel consumption and gas flow, requiring sufficient gas-path or fan capacity to maintain throughput.

From design to operation
Commercial scale introduces another level of complexity. At CBI Ghana, the 1,200 tpd calcined clay plant had to integrate with the grinding plant as a single production system, requiring coordinated operating sequences across the complete line during ramp-up. Commissioning was therefore not only about achieving stable plant operation but also about establishing the relationship between process behaviour and product quality. Operators could monitor feed rate and moisture, gas temperatures, oxygen, pressure profile, and cyclone performance alongside reactivity and colour checks, allowing them to understand how process changes affect the finished calcined clay.
Successful calcination means consistently producing a material that meets the required product specification. Process data therefore needs to be considered alongside regular testing of calcined clay reactivity and colour, so that changes in product quality can be related to changes in feed and operating conditions.
Operator training is also critical. Flash calcination relies on rapid heating and short residence times, meaning the process responds quickly to changing conditions. For clays tested by Fuller, the useful activation range was about 750–850°C; however, the optimum varies with the clay. Insufficient thermal treatment can leave activation incomplete, while excessive heating can cause sintering and reduce reactivity. Gas-solids contact and residence-time distribution must also be controlled.
In addition to training, advanced process control, such as Fuller Technologies’ ECS/ProcessExpert® (PXP) system, provides an additional layer of support for operators in maintaining the required operating window as feed and process conditions vary.

Beyond the lab
The opportunity for calcined clay is increasingly clear. Realising that opportunity at commercial scale, however, relies on a combination of laboratory analysis and pilot testing, real-world experience in integrating calcination plants with existing operations, and the calcination and process-control technologies themselves. Ultimately, designing for variability and operating for consistency provides the route from a promising clay deposit to a reliable industrial SCM.

References

1. Indian Bureau of Mines, Indian Minerals Yearbook 2022: Kaolin, Ball Clay, Clay (Others) and Shale, Ministry of Mines, Government of India, March 2024.
2. Emmanuel, A.C., Haldar, P., Maity, S. and Bishnoi, S., Second pilot production of limestone calcined clay cement in India: The experience, The Indian Concrete Journal, 2016.
3. Noida International Airport, Noida International Airport Becomes First Large-Scale Project to Build with Limestone Calcined Clay Cement, 26 September 2025.
4. Bishnoi S., Maity S., Malik A., Joseph S., and Krishnan S., Pilot-scale manufacture of limestone calcined clay cement: The Indian experience, Indian Concrete Journal, 2014.

About the author:
Kiranmai Sanagavarapu, Director of Low Carbon Solutions, Fuller Technologies, developing commercially viable, plant-level decarbonisation pathways for the cement industry. Her work integrates technologies across fuels, clinker reduction and grinding, combining system-level thinking and techno-commercial analysis to deliver scalable emissions reduction strategies.