Maple Leaf Cement seen adding 2.2mln tons capacity

KARACHI: Maple Leaf Cement on Thursday got a favourable ruling from a court on environmental concerns on its Rs23 billion clinker project and could restart work soon but may face tough conditions on how it proceed after the last month construction halt.

“Lahore High Court has passed the order to the effect that environmental impact assessment filed by Maple Leap Cement Factory Limited is deemed to have been approved and the order passed by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to stop construction of work at new line-3 of the company has been set aside,” the cement manufacturer said in a bourse filing.

But, the court ordered that the company maintains status-quo until the Punjab’s mines and mineral department issues a report “delineating negative and positive areas for cement plants…”

“The EPA has been directed to issue orders in light of the report considering that the company’s EIA already stands approved within a fortnight of its release, expected by mid January 2018,” the company added.

In December last year, the provincial environment protection agency raised concerns over the proposed Maple Leap’s Brownfield cement line with a production capacity of 2.2 million tons/year.

Topline Research, in a report, said Maple Leaf will most likely receive a ‘green light’ to carry out its planned expansion with estimated cost of $220 million “as the venture lies in the positive zone as per our channel checks”.

Currently, Maple Leaf Cement, a country’s leading cement maker, has a production capacity of 12,000 tons/day of grey and 12,000 tons/month of white cement.

Cement sector has been witnessing sales boom for the past four years as construction activities boosted domestic cement demand.

Local cement industry is massively investing in capacity enhancement in view of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor projects. They planned to increase production capacity by 26 to 28 million tons to 72 million tons plus within the next two to three years.