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NILESH

NARWEKAR

Chief Executive Officer
JSW Cement

Against a weak economic backdrop, market conditions remained challenging up to

November, however, green shoots of growth seem to be returning in December.

Despite this, we have continued to progress on our strategic goals – with the

commissioning of Jajpur, we reached a capacity base of 14 mtpa, making us the 9th

largest Indian cement producer. Ongoing expansion projects include the Fujairah

clinker unit, the Salem GGBS grinding unit, as well as equipment upgradation /

debottlenecking at Dolvi, Vijayanagar and Salboni.

On the operations front, the business has continued to perform strongly, with sales

volume growth of 6% YoY up to December. To secure a strong finish to FY20, we have

adopted the following target for Q4 FY20 – to sell 3.0 million tonnes and deliver EBITDA

of Rs 300 crores.

We have launched several initiatives in order to deliver this target. Sales and marketing

will be supported by a new TV commercial with two high profile brand ambassadors, to

be aired in this quarter and during the IPL. For plant operations we launched

#BetterEveryday where teams from E&I, Mechanical & Operations functions meet over

VC to ensure that best practices are shared and any problems are collectively resolved.

Also, Project Drishti is focused on raw material cost reduction at plants. For logistics,

commercial, marketing and finance functions, a KPI improvement program has already

identified cost reduction levers with annualized benefits of over Rs 55 crores.

At JSW Cement, we believe in combining growth with environmentally sustainable

operations. We received Environmental Product Declaration for our PSC and GGBS in Q3.

Further we commenced at Nandyal (i) a study with CII aimed at becoming water

positive; (ii) a project with municipal authorities for collection of plastic packaging in

Kurnool district for use as alternative fuel.

I urge each one of you to be Better Everyday and proactively contribute to delivering our

Q4 target.

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