Coal news and updates

J K Lakshmi eyes 18 mt production capacity by 2018-19

September 22: J K Lakshmi Cement Ltd is planning to increase its cement production capacity to 18 million tons per annum (mtpa) by end of 2018-19 through a series of brownfield and greenfield expansions, a company official said.

The company, at present, has 6.7 mtpa production capacity at its Udaipur plant in Rajasthan.

“We are setting up a 3 mtpa greenfield plant at Durg in Chhattisgarh, which will be in operation from third quarter of 2014-15. This will take up our total production capacity to 9.7 mtpa,” said J K Lakshmi Cement’s Vice-President (Material) S Ramesh.

Thereafter, the company plans to go for brownfield expansion at Udaipur to increase production capacity to 9 mtpa by 2016-17, which will increase the total production capacity of the company to 12 mtpa.

“After 2016-17, we are thinking of going for another round of brownfield expansion wherein capacity at both Durg and Udaipur will be raised by 3 mtpa each to take the total production capacity of the company to 18 mtpa,” Ramesh said.

“The next round of brownfield expansion at Durg and Udaipur that will increase the capacity of each of the plants to 6 mtpa and 12 mtpa respectively will increase the company’s total production capacity to 18 mtpa by 2018-19,” he added.

Captive power:
The company, however, has no plans to put up a captive power plant at its Durg unit, but aims to set up a 6-MW waste heat recovery (WHR) plant at the unit in the coming years.

“Durg will not have any captive power plant but only a WHR. We will procure power from the grid for the Durg plant as the power cost in Chhattisgarh is comparatively lower,” Ramesh said.

The company, at present, has 54-MW captive power plant at Udaipur and another 15-MW WHR at the same location.

“Going forward, we plan to increase WHR power generation at the Udaipur plant to 21 MW by 2016-17 from the current level of 15 MW. Our objective is to set up at least 6 MW of WHR at each of the plants at Durg and Udaipur by 2016-17,” he said.