Orient Cement to invest Rs 175 cr on new project

Orient Cement, which plans to invest Rs 175 crore on the proposed 3 million-tonne-a-year cement plant at Chittapur in Gulbarga, received environmental clearance for the project. The company has reportedly begun construction work on the project and it expects the plant to be ready by the end of December 2015. The project, cost of which would be funded through internal accruals, would increase the cement output capacity to 8 million tonne-a-year (mn t) a year. Orient Cement is the hived off cement business unit of Orient Paper & Industries. It has a plant at Devapur in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh and a split-grinding unit at Nashirabad, in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra. According to the management, the company aims to reach 15 mn t a year by 2020. Orient Cement, was a division of Orient Paper and it is now a public company after the demerger took effect from April 1, 2012. The firm is working on the process of listing it. The shareholders of Orient Paper have been allotted shares of the new company in the ratio of 1:1.