JSW Cement to bid on Binani Cement

JSW Cement Ltd will partner with a global equity firm to bid for Binani Cement, according to The Hindu BusinessLine. It is expected that as many as 11 industry players, including Ultratech and Dalmia, will submit a bid for the company which is currently undergoing the bankruptcy process.

"There are a lot of bidders and this is going to get aggressive because nobody wants to leave these assets; we would not want to leave these assets," said Sajjan Jindal, managing director, JSW Group.

JSW Cement will also make a bid for Kalyanpur Cements Ltd, a company with a 1Mta capacity which has been referred to the National Company Law Tribunal.

In related news, JSW Cement plans to increase production capacity at its Salboni facility to 3.6Mta from 2.4Mta. The development represents an investment of INR3bn (US$47.2m) and construction may commence in six months, reports the Economic Times. The company has already spent INR8bn to create the 2.4Mta capacity, which has now entered commercial operation. JSW Cement currently has an installed capacity of 11.6Mta across India, but it hopes to expand to 20Mta by 2020.