Md Mozharul Islam, senior general manager and company secretary of Crown Cement, has announced that the company was able to finally start commercial production of its sixth unit earlier this month after deferring it several times. 

The announcement says that commercial production of the sixth unit of Crown Cement PLC, with a production capacity of 8280tpd installed at its factory premises in West Mukterpur, Munshiganj, will commence in January 2024 instead of its previous probable schedule of February 2023, due to a delay caused by the Russia-Ukraine War in the supply of machines by the suppliers. 

With the sixth unit, Crown Cement’s production capacity will reach 19,000tpd, or 5.7Mta, whereas it was 11,000tpd a year ago, according to the company’s FY22-23 annual report. 

“We have started production of the new unit on 5 January. We wanted to begin production in October 2023, but we could not because of several challenges,” MD Alamgir Kabir, vice chairman of Crown Cement, told local media. He added that the dollar crisis and the Russia-Ukraine war caused the delay, he said 

The cement maker produced 3.154Mt of cement in the FY22-23 when its capacity was 3.324Mta, resulting in a capacity utilisation rate of 95 per cent.