Orient Cement Ltd has received environmental clearance for its three million-tonne-a-year cement plant at Chittapur in Gulbarga district of Karnataka.

A top source in CK Birla Group told Business Line that the company began construction work at the project site recently. The new Rs 1,75- crore project would be largely funded by internal resources.

“It is expected to be ready by the end of December 2015,” the source said. The project would increase the cement output capacity to 8 million tonne-a-year (mt) 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 mt a year by 2020.

Orient Cement, once a division of Orient Paper and now a public company (the demerger took retrospective effect from April 1, 2012), is yet to list its stock.

The group sources said the process of listing was on and it would be over “shortly”. The shareholders of Orient Paper have been allotted shares of the new company in the ratio of 1:1.

The face value of the new entity would be Re 1. It is to be listed on both NSE and BSE.

> jayanta.mallick@thehindu.co.in

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