Anjani Portland Cement Ltd will invest approximately Rs 300 crore in a greenfield cement plant in Bijapur district of Karnataka. It will have a capacity of around a million tonnes per annum.

The Hyderabad-based company has obtaining mining licence for limestone. It will be the first cement unit in Bijapur.

The unit will take Anjani Portland's capacity to over 2 million tonnes from the present 1.16 million tonnes per annum, said Mr K.V. Vishnu Raju, Chairman and Managing Director.

Funding

“We plan to raise the funds through a combination of debt, equity and internal accruals. Work is expected to begin in second half of 2010 and production in 2014,” Mr Raju told Business Line .

Anjani Portland, which had a turnover of Rs 254 crore in fiscal 2011, hopes to meet the demands of the markets in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa from the upcoming unit. At present, it reaches all the southern States and Maharastra and Goa. “This will improve our market share,” he said.

Rural demand

Mr Raju said the demand in rural areas was growing for cement. In Andhra Pradesh, the slowdown in the State Government projects last year had impacted off-take.

Among the new initiatives taken by the company, which markets its brand as Anjani, are shipping a load of cement to Andaman recently and setting up a Cement Studio in Hyderabad. The studio gives an audio-visual and graphic representation of the story of cement from mines to structures.

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