Steep rise in prices over four months' span have tapered off demand. Further price hikes face challenges like delayed monsoon and allegations of cartelisation of cement manufacturers.

All-India cement prices corrected by Rs 7/bag of 50 kg to Rs 361 in June, reversing the hike effected in May, showed the dealers channel check by Kotak Institutional Equities Ltd.

AAC block market has grown approximately 20-25 per cent every year. Out of the three main players in AAC, Magicrete is one of them, also being the pioneer of AAC blocks in India. We hold as much as 15 per cent share currently in India.

The demand growth trend picked up steam in FY18. Expectations are rife that FY19 will consolidate these gains and result in higher capacity utilisation, if not pricing power.

Majority of our coverage companies reported volumes ahead of estimates, while realisations belied our forecast, making it the underlying theme for Q3FY18, said Edelweiss Research in its Q3FY18 (October-December 2017 quarter of 2017-18) Earnings Review.

Environmental protection norms that have been revised and updated since 2014 are considered not too stringent going by global benchmarks. But the Indian industry and authorities are still in the process of finding a common ground.

NCB’s '15th International Seminar on Cement, Concrete and Building Materials’ witnessed nearly 1,000 delegates congregate in New Delhi to deliberate on cement, concrete and construction technologies.

Issue after issue, month after month, we discuss the market situation for the cement sector, and report on demand growth statistics, to the extent these are available. For quite some time now, expectations of a recovery of demand are mounting, what with all the talk about heightened activity levels in housing, infrastructure and smart cities.

'All the roads in the country will be converted into cement-concrete ones, to ensure their stability and durability'. Well, if that sounds like music to the ears of the cement industry, the musician is none other than our Minister of Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, Nitin Gadkari.