ACC Ltd's cement sales rise to 28.37Mt in 2018
At ACC Ltd's (LafargeHolcim group) 83rd Annual General Meeting, Neeraj Akhoury, managing director and CEO, said the company's cement sales had increased eight per cent to 28.37Mt in 2018.
Mr Akhoury added that despite facing multiple rising costs of coal, fuel, petcoke and diesel the company registered robust revenue and volume growth across all four quarters of 2018. Cement sales rose by over 2Mt on 2017 and the premium product range grew by 36 per cent.
ACC Ltd's consolidated EBITDA grew by approximately 11 per cent and profit before tax grew by 21 per cent YoY. Net sales grew by 12 per cent to INR144770m (US$2094m) capacity.
ACC's plant utilisation rose to 86 per cent in 2018 and CO2 per tonne of cement has been reduced by 38 per cent since 1990. The company also now uses approximately 11Mt of waste-derived resources and has reduced fresh water use by approximately 18 per cent.
These results were achieved despite the fact that, "the government continues to maintain the highest GST rate of 28 per cent on cement, which discourages growth potential," said Mr Akhoury.
Meanwhile, the ready-mix business saw substantial growth of 16 per cent in volume in 2018 and 15 per cent in revenue.
Having overcome a difficult year, Mr Akhoury said ACC would rebuild people's lives in Kerala and deliver additional cement capacities of 5.9Mta with a greenfield plant in Ametha, a grinding unit in Madhya Pradesh, and expansion of the Tikaria and Sindri cement plants over the next three years.
After the meeting, Ashwin Dani, Arunkumar Ganshi and Farrokh Kavarana stepped down as independent directors on the Board.
S K Roongta, Shailesh Haribhakti and Falguni Nayar were proposed as re-appointed independent directors.
In addition, the proposed new independent directors included, D Sundaram, Sunil Mehta and Vinayyak Chaterjee.
