By Our Reporter
Guwahati: Star Cement, the leading cement brand of North-East, on Saturday dispatched its first barge of clinker to Bangladesh by riverine route. The Pan Eastern India Cement Company created history by being the first Indian cement manufacturer opting riverine route for clinker export to Bangladesh.
President (Sales & Marketing) of Star Cement, Jyoti Swaroop Agarwal on the occasion said the company is aiming to export over 50,000 tonnes of clinker to Bangladesh every month using riverine route.
In the recent past a series of bilateral discussion between both the Governments of India and Bangladesh have paved the way to utilise this potential river route which is cost effective.
Exporting clinker to Bangladesh by river route will give an edge to the company to encounter the stiff competition its likely to face from manufacturers of Southeast Asian countries, who all incidentally caters to 99% clinker requirement of this country.
In Bangladesh, the annual demand of clinker is about 10 milliontones (mostly imported) which is contributed to the fact of non availability of raw material like lime stone (except of Lafarge Surma, which uses to produce around 0.5MT clinker annually for its own requirements importing limestone from Megahalaya through rope way) .
Total Cement demand being around 18MTper annum where in clinker is mostly imported from countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malasya and Korea.
In a pilot project Star Cement had started clinker export to Bangladesh last year by road and now it has started to export by riverine route. “We believe that this mode of logistics will definitely be commercially more viable than ever”, Agarwal said.