Economy & Market

Paving The Road To Success

Published

12 years ago

October 31, 2014

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At over 4,689,842 kilometres (2,914,133 mi) in 2013, India has the second largest road network in the world. Qualitatively, however, these roads are a mix of modern highways and narrow, unpaved roads that are in need of urgent improvement. Sanjay explains the dire need to quickly shift to concrete based roads.

In its 2010 report, the advisory firm KPMG said that India?s road network logistics and transportation bottlenecks hinder the country?s GDP growth by one to two per cent amounting to a staggering loss of US$16 billion US$32 billion and equivalent to a loss of about 10 million new jobs every year (the base year of calculations is 2010).

Upgrading roadways has always been a major issue in a developing economy like ours; unsurprisingly, because it is central to our growth and self-actualisation as a nation. The government?s recent utterances and actions only underline this focus area and initiatives around it. However, roadways across the country are perennially in a constant state of repair and refurbishment demanding the question that needs to be asked, ?Why do our roads face such rapid wear and tear in the first place??

Misplaced priorities
There are a variety of reasons from quality, to material, to load. Most roads in India are tar based roads. While prior to the 1990s this was primarily driven by the low availability of cement. Even after the current, vast supplies of the material available, the use of concrete roads is yet to gain momentum. This is because the tar is at least two to three times cheaper than concrete and continues to find favor with most contractors as a means of keeping costs down. However, what is important to note is that while concrete roads are costlier to lay in the initial stage, using a lifecycle cost analysis comparison, the cost equation begins to shift in favor of concrete after an interval of 5-15 years. Concrete roads are relatively maintenance free, while tar roads are in need of face lifts at frequent intervals as a result of low resistance and the fact that their strength deteriorates rapidly with usage.

Proven Material
Ironically India was one of the first countries in the world to build concrete roads. The first reference of a concrete road in India dates to 1907 in Rangoon, Burma which was then within the boundaries of British ruled India. Even today some of these roads continue to remain in good condition. Concrete is the preferred choice of material to build roads in most of the developed world with the United States often cited as the benchmark for concrete roads. Concrete highways have an excellent track record as a cost-effective investment with rigid concrete roads outperforming tar roads on economic and safety benefits as well as having considerably less impact on the environment. Today nearly 40 percent of U.S. interstate highways are built with concrete. Some of our most advanced, six-lane highways the Mumbai-Pune expressway and the Yamuna Expressway to name a couple are concrete based and proof of the virtues of concrete over tar.

Long term benefits
One of the most important features of India?s roadways is our network of National Highways that stretch across the length and breadth of the country. While they comprise only 1.7 per cent of the road network, they carry about 40 per cent of the total road traffic. Reflecting their strategic importance, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways announced that during the financial year 2013-14, about 8,270 kilometers of the National Highways would be improved along with construction/rehabilitation of 100 bridges and four bypasses as stand-alone projects at an estimated cost of INR 23,300 crore.

Thus, while big spends are made on the road sector, what continues to hold us back is that in India, the government typically awards road construction projects on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model to contractors with the lowest bid amount, setting in motion a vicious cycle of regular maintenance uplifts.

Planners are only now beginning to recognise that tenders for road infrastructure projects should include a life cycle cost analysis component, based on the estimated costs of a project over its entire service life. When this concept is applied to maintenance, rehabilitation, reconstruction and value of road, life cycle costs are evaluated, as well as initial costs, revealing the full expense of the selected material. And what is slowly but surely emerging is that over the life of a roadway, concrete performs better than tar on all counts.

Moving in right direction
That things are changing is clear – BMC- Mumbai?s local government authority is working to concretise all roads in the city by end 2018. Currently Mumbai?s most famous carriageway, Marine Drive, is in the process of being re-concretised rather than re-surfaced with asphalt – a showcase victory of concrete over tarmac. If India is to take its economic growth to 6 per cent and above per annum, a lot will depend on building world-class roadways. The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways already estimates that traffic on roads is growing at a rate of up to 10 per cent per annum, while vehicular population growth is nearly 12 per cent per annum. This demands new, strong, enduring roads for increased connectivity. One only hopes that the next phase of construction will be undertaken with concrete – the material that can truly pave India?s road to success.

R Sanjai AED – Institutional Sale Dalmia Cement Bharat

Economy & Market

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

Published

3 days 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

2 weeks 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

2 weeks 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.