UltraTech Cement, the cement business of the Aditya Birla Group, has crossed a milestone that no cement manufacturer outside China has reached before. The company has surpassed 200 million tonnes per annum of installed cement manufacturing capacity in India, crossing the threshold with the commissioning of three new grinding units on Saturday carrying a combined capacity of 8.7 million tonnes per annum.
The achievement places UltraTech in a category of its own among cement producers globally. Only Chinese manufacturers, backed by the scale of the world’s largest construction market, operate at greater capacity. Every other cement company in the world now sits behind UltraTech.
The three facilities that pushed UltraTech past the 200 MTPA mark are located in Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh, Patratu in Jharkhand, and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. Each location was chosen to serve a distinct and growing regional demand centre.
The Shahjahanpur plant positions UltraTech to serve the construction corridor running across northern India, one of the country’s most active regions for housing and infrastructure development. The Patratu facility reaches into Jharkhand’s industrial belt. The Visakhapatnam unit addresses the rapidly expanding coastal economy of Andhra Pradesh.
With these additions, UltraTech’s cement capacity within India stands at 200.1 million tonnes per annum. Including its international operations across the UAE, Bahrain, and Sri Lanka, which contribute 5.4 million tonnes per annum, the company’s consolidated global capacity reaches 205.5 million tonnes per annum.
The pace of the second hundred million tonnes
The speed at which UltraTech built its second hundred million tonnes of capacity is perhaps the more telling part of the story. Reaching its first 100 MTPA took the company 36 years, a milestone it achieved in 2019. Doubling that figure took less than seven years — a pace that reflects both the sharpness of the company’s own execution and the scale of infrastructure spending that has been driving demand across India.
Speaking at the commissioning, Aditya Birla Group Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla connected the milestone to the broader economic context in which it was built:”Over a decade ago, our Honourable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, articulated a defining vision through Make in India — a call to rekindle our nation’s manufacturing ambition and elevate it to global scale, as a driver of growth, jobs, and self-reliance. UltraTech has translated this vision into action by matching ambition with execution, and domestic strength with global competitiveness, to help anchor India’s infrastructure story. The 200 MTPA milestone, also describes India’s place in the world, an India that has grown comfortable with scale, in its ambitions, its execution, and its sense of self. India stands at a defining juncture, where choices made over the next decade, will shape infrastructure for generations. That calls for continuity of purpose and clarity of execution. And UltraTech is well positioned, to translate this moment into enduring value for all stakeholders.”
The cement behind India’s biggest projects
The scale of UltraTech’s footprint in India’s built environment is visible in the numbers the company tracks. One in every three homes constructed in India uses UltraTech cement. Two out of every five kilometres of concrete roads built by the National Highways Authority of India run on its product. Four out of every five kilometres of metro rail laid across the country has been built with it.
The list of specific projects where UltraTech cement has been used reads as a catalogue of modern India’s most significant construction undertakings: the New Parliament Building under the Central Vista redevelopment, the Mumbai Coastal Road, the Dwarka Expressway, Navi Mumbai International Airport, the Sonamarg Tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir, and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor.
Managing Director K C Jhanwar described the company’s path to this point:
“UltraTech’s capacity growth has been driven by organic expansions across multiple geographies, complemented by strategic acquisitions — together establishing a nationwide manufacturing footprint that serves consumers in the most remote corners of the country. We are grateful to every partner — our customers, suppliers, employees, and communities — who made this milestone not just achievable, but inevitable.”
Sustainability alongside scale
UltraTech has been explicit that its expansion programme does not sideline environmental commitments. The company is working to reduce the carbon dioxide emitted per tonne of cement produced, increase its use of alternative fuels and raw materials in place of conventional inputs, and integrate greener construction practices across the supply chain.
The company frames this not as a tension between growth and responsibility but as two objectives being pursued in parallel. In an industry that is among the world’s significant contributors to industrial carbon emissions, the credibility of that framing will be tested as capacity continues to expand.
What comes next
UltraTech’s 200 MTPA milestone is not the endpoint of its expansion. The next phase is already funded and underway. Capital expenditure of over Rs 16,000 crore has been committed to projects currently in progress, which are expected to take the company’s consolidated global capacity past 240 million tonnes per annum.
If that target is reached on the timeline the company has indicated, UltraTech will have added more than 40 million tonnes of additional capacity on top of a base that already leads the world outside China — continuing a growth trajectory that, over the past seven years, has been faster than anything in the company’s previous four decades of existence.
