UltraTech Cement has planned a total capital expenditure (capex) of Rs 1,500 crore during FY21.
The company has planned the capex for installation of 66 MW waste heat recovery systems (WHRS) and 1.2 million tpa brownfield cement capacity addition in West Bengal and Bihar.
The investment will also be utilised for all the pending work for Phase-2 of the Bara grinding unit in Uttar Pradesh, for coal block development in Madhya Pradesh and new ready-mix concrete plants and other plant upkeep capex.
With these expansion plans, the company’s consolidated cement capacity will stand augmented to 118 million tpa and Green Power capacity will expand to 185 MW for WHRS and over 350 MW for solar and wind power.
The waste heat recovery system is a green technology which captures and transfers the waste heat from a process with a gas or liquid back to the system as an additional energy source. Over the last three years, the use of alternative fuel and raw materials has increased around twofold.
The WHRS capacity has doubled to 118 MW in FY20. The solar and wind capacity has crossed 95 MW compared to none three years ago.
Despite a huge demand de-growth due to economic slowdown during H1/FY20, the company managed to stabilise by December 2019.However, it witnessed another downturn caused by COVID-19 pandemic.
The working capital management and control on cash flows resulted in a reduction of net debt by Rs 2,209 crore during Q1/FY21.
The acquisition of the cement business of Century Textiles and Industries with a capacity of 14.6 million tpa strengthened the company’s position in markets in Maharashtra, Central and Eastern India.
UltraTech Cement recorded net revenues of USD 5.94 billion (Rs 42,125 crore) and EBITDA of USD 1.40 billion (Rs 9,930 crore) during 2019-2020. The company attained net sales of Rs 7,563 crore in Q1/FY21 as compared to Rs 11,229 crore in Q1/FY20.