Srinagar, Aug 2: Minister for Industries and Commerce, S S Slathia, today said the production capacity of the government owned cement plant at Khrew is being increased from 600 ton to 1200 ton per day to bridge the demand-supply gap.
 Speaking at the Annual General Meeting of the Jammu and Kashmir Cements Ltd here yesterday, Slathia, who is also the chairman of the company, said despite having huge deposits of high quality limestone, the state imports huge quantity of cement from other states to meet its requirement.
 The minister said the local cement plants need to be encouraged to fill the wide demand-supply gap of cement.
 “J&K Cement Ltd has been authorized to set up 300 ton per day capacity clinker grinding cum packing unit at Industrial Growth Centre (IGC) Samba (Jammu) for which 20 kanal of land have been acquired on lease from J&K SIDCO,” he said.
 “The project is estimated to cost about Rs 27 crore,” Slathia said, adding that M/s Ercom Engineers Pvt Ltd New Delhi has been appointed as consultants for the project.
 He said the NIT for setting up of the unit on turnkey basis has been issued at National Level and the letter of intent (LOI) shall be issued in favour of the first lowest bidder, a Noida, (UP) based company viz M/s Ashoka Gears Shortly.
 The Minister directed the management of the company to further gear up its men and machinery to exploit the abundant limestone deposits optimally adding that State’s limestone deposits are known of its high quality.
 He, according to an official statement, asked the company to increase its production, adding that being a state owned company, it has a pivotal role to keep reasonable checks and balance on cement prices in the open market by making its product cost effective and affordable at reasonable rates.
 Managing Director, J&K Cements Ltd, Mushtaq Ahmad informed that clinker and cement production has touched an all time high of 1.15 lakh MT and 1.36 lakh MT respectively during last fiscal where as the sale of the cement has been of the order of over 1.37 lakh MT.
 He said the company has posted a profit of about Rs 2.28 crore during last fiscal. He said the company is providing employment to more than one thousand Semi Skilled, Skilled, Specialized and Super Specialized people directly or indirectly.

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