ACC Cement Business
The performance of our Cement business was satisfactory. Cement despatches and sales for ACC as a group crossed the 16 million tonne mark for the first time. At 16.60 million tonnes, sales volume during the year showed a growth of 8 per cent as compared to the previous year. This was despite constraints by way of railway wagon shortages and road transport strikes that affected a few of our plants. Cement production for the group was 16.61 million tonnes, registering growth of 8.2 per cent. Our market share during the year was stable at 13.2 per cent. Capacity utilization for both cement and clinker production was stable.
Our cement plants continued to seek ways of increasing efficiency and productivity and cutting costs. The share of eco-friendly blended cement went up by more than 3 per cent over the previous year. Efforts at energy conservation were fruitful with a reduction of over 4.4 per cent in power consumption and 3 per cent in fuel consumption. The conservation of precious energy will continue to command prime focus. Your Company will always endeavour to seek more energy efficient and economic processes.