11 - The cement industry

Summary

The Portland cement industry developed rather late in India. Although, as is shown in Table 11.1, the consumption of cement in India in 1914 was low (166,668 tons only), it would have been enough to support several plants of the right size at that time. It can be conjectured that it required a substantial change in the building methods in India and a substantial volume of demand for cement in western India before Indian or European capitalists would venture on the setting up of cement plants. What is certain is that the first three companies manufacturing cement on a large scale, viz., the Indian Cement Company Ltd, Katni Cement Company Ltd, and Bundi Portland Cement Company Ltd, were floated by managing agency houses in Bombay (Tata Sons, C. MacDonald and Co., and Killick, Nixon and Co., respectively) and had their works near Bombay (at Porbandar in Kathiawar, at Katni in the Central Provinces and at Bundi in Rajputana). The pioneering cement company had been built in Madras in 1904 by South India Industrials Limited, but its basic raw material had been shells, and its capacity was only 10,000 tons per year; it had become practically defunct a few years after the end of the First World War. The market in south India was small.