Seeing uptick in demand; optimistic of 10-12% growth this year: JK Cement

The company witnessed a degrowth of around 40 percent across various regions of the industry in the month of May. June particularly was better, saw 25 percent growth in volumes on a month-on-month (MoM) basis.

The company has finished 40-45 percent capacity expansion. “Our balance sheet now allows us to go in for new expansion, both with the cash that we generate, and also with the funds that we will take as loan from banks,” he said.

“Our current expansion plan is a 4 million tonne expansion plan in Panna, Madhya Pradesh. This entire expansion is of Rs 3,000 crore and it plays very well with JK Cement’s strategy of slowly moving forward. This can be our next growth engine where we have got adequate mine reserves and we expect this project to get completed by end of Q2 or beginning of Q3 next year,” he added.

The company’s current capacity is at 14.8 million tonnes. With this new capacity, the production capacity will increase to nearly 20 million tonnes, he shared.

JK Cement historically has been focused on organic growth. “However, in terms of inorganic capacity, if there is something which makes real good sense to us, only then we will venture on that. Otherwise at this point of time, we are looking forward to growing organically but yes, a good inorganic opportunity – our balance sheet gives us the strength that we could explore,” he said.