No, or little Ordinary Portland Cement available?
e-mail received 29th June 2006:
The news is spreading from various areas in Maharshtra that some cement manufacturers are not more providing OPC to the market, but only PPC.
This is of great concern to the Ready Mix Industry and other concrete producers for larger projects.
PPC (which contains 25-30% mostly inter-ground Fly Ash) is currently sold at prices around Irs 4200 per metric ton whereas processed Fly Ash is sold at around half of this price.
Processed Fly Ash offers OPC cement replacement rates of around 30% for structural concrete and much higher replacement rates for other applications. By using Processed Fly Ash at the before mentioned rate the cost price per m3 of concrete is reduced by around 20%.
This is obviously a result of the wrong Fly Ash policy. The Fly Ash which is given by directive for free, or only with a nominal ?administration fee? to the cement companies. The same Fly Ash is sold by them at OPC price, as there is hardly any price difference between OPC and PPC.
The state (owner of many power stations) with its huge infrastructure (=concrete) demand is buying back the ash which was given for free for currently IRs 4200 per metric ton as this ash is a part of the PPC product. Certainly they prefer to sell only PPC.
If Fly Ash would have been sold to the cement industry at prices allowing proper handling and processing of fly ash the cement industry would still have bought the ash, power generation cost would have been reduced and the user would have had the choice between using high volume fly ash concrete produced from OPC + Fly Ash or to use PPC.
A lot of money was wasted and is wasted today. The ash uptake by the cement industry would be still the same as there would be still some saving for them.
There is an urgent need for policy change.
Author: Georg Dirk, Dirk India Private Ltd. Nashik,
e-mail georg.dirk@dirkgroup.com
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