ACC makes strong progress on its strategic priorities- focus on rapid expansion, superior performance, innovation and sustainability

Mumbai: The 86th Annual General Meeting of ACC Limited was held virtually on April 21, 2022. Mr. Martin Kriegner, Non-Executive Director of the Company, chaired the AGM.

As mentioned by Mr. Kriegner, ACC‘s vision is to become the ‘Most Sustainable and Innovative Building Materials Company’ in India. The Company is progressing very well on the implementation of its strategic priorities – delivering superior performance, accelerating growth and leading in innovation as well as sustainability.

Superior Performance: ACC’s continues to deliver strong performance improvements on all key levers. Led by a robust volume growth and efficiency improvements across the value chain, ACC’s consolidated EBITDA increased by 27% on a Year-on-Year basis. In 2021, the Company’s cement sales increased by approximately 13% to 28.89 Million Tonnes (MT) from a base of 25.53 MT in 2020. Under the flagship project ‘Parvat’, ACC has been able to drive efficiencies across the organization enabling strong cost reduction. The Master Supply Agreement (MSA) with Ambuja Cements has helped ACC in achieving significant synergies and economies of scale in the supply chain.

Growth: To accelerate ACC’s growth journey, it continues to focus on capacity expansion. In 2021, ACC successfully commissioned a new cement grinding unit at Sindri in the state of Jharkhand with a capacity of 1.4 Million Tonnes Per Annum (MTPA). Tikaria cement grinding unit, with a capacity of 1.6 MTPA, was commissioned ahead of schedule in February 2022 in a record time of 9 months. The Ametha project to add 5 MTPA capacity, is on track. The integrated unit at Ametha in Madhya Pradesh is expected to be commissioned by Q4 2022. The greenfield cement grinding unit at Salai Banwa in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, with a capacity of 2.2 MTPA is also progressing well. Waste Heat Recovery Projects at Jamul and Kymore cement plants are being executed as per plan and we expect first power in Q2 2022. With the newly approved Waste Heat Recovery Projects at Chanda and Wadi, the total waste heat recovery capacity of the Company will reach 75 MW.

Innovation: ACC is continuing to invest in developing products which are sustainable and meet emerging customer needs. In Cement, our water repellant “Gold Water Shield” continues to grow well and drive the premium product portfolio. In RMX, along with driving the growth of value added services, the Company has launched the green concrete “ECOPact” in 2021, which has now become 17% of the total ReadyMix sales volumes.

Digitalisation: It is one of the key pillars of ACC’s strategy. We have invested significantly in digitalisation of our value chain. “Plants of Tomorrow” program has revolutionized our manufacturing, “Transport Analytics Centre” has optimized our logistics and “Dealer Connect” has enabled us to enhance customer engagement. The “Concrete Direct” app has fully digitalized the ready mix concrete customer experience. We continue to focus on digitalization as a key enabler to delivering superior performance.

Sustainability: Aligned to Holcim’s net zero ambitions, sustainability is at the core of ACC’s business strategy. In 2021, ACC became the first company in the Indian construction sector to sign the “Business Ambition for 1.5°C” commitment with 2030 intermediate targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). ACC is 1.35 time water positive and 2.5 time plastic negative and has touched 5 lakhs lives through its CSR efforts. ACC has taken several measures to reduce its carbon emissions significantly over last year.  In 2021, through its waste management arm, “Geocycle” ACC consumed 11.36 MT Waste Derived Resources and co-processed up to 5 lakh tonnes of waste to generate alternative fuels.

ACC also launched several unique initiatives to educate public at large on sustainability. The first joint integrated sustainability campaign #ChangeTheStory with Ambuja Cements, highlights the non-invasive Bubble Barrier technology launched by ‘Geocycle’ to enable removal of plastic waste in Agra.  The ‘Leave Behind no Waste’ campaign focused on cleaning all single-use plastic generated in cricket stadiums.

Comment of Mr. Martin Kriegner, Chairman of the 86th AGM

“Every member of our workforce played an important role in delivering the business results in 2021. I thank all the employees of ACC for their valuable contribution. On behalf of ACC, I extend my appreciation to all our stakeholders without whose support we could not have achieved this strong performance”.