Intelligent, integrated plants: The next big leap for India's cement sector

Anupam Agarwal, Sr. Executive Director, Growth & Expansion, Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Limited oulines how modern tech is reshaping cement manufacturing, delivering higher efficiency, lower emissions and a scalable blueprint for India's infrastructure future.

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India's infrastructure expansion has entered a defining chapter, with highways, industrial corridors, renewable energy zones, logistics hubs, and urban development projects advancing at unprecedented speed. As the nation accelerates towards its growth aspirations, the cement industry.

In this landscape, Dalmia Cement has positioned itself as a frontrunner, championing the shift from conventional manufacturing to integrated, intelligent, and future-ready cement production.

At the centre of this transition is Dalmia Cement's smart plant vision, a blueprint that reimagines how cement is produced using AI-driven optimisation, advanced sensor networks, predictive maintenance, automation in high-risk zones, digital twins, and real-time decision intelligence.

For the company, this journey is not about embracing technology for its own sake but redesigning the very architecture of operations to achieve simultaneous gains in productivity, sustainability, and safety. This aligns closely with its long-term ambition of becoming carbon negative by 2040 and its commitment to building cleaner, smarter workplaces supported by a highly skilled, digitally enabled workforce.

In this interview with Manufacturing Today, Anupam Agarwal, Sr. Executive Director - Growth & Expansion at Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Limited, offers an in-depth look into how the company is building plants that think, respond, and evolve. He explains why data will shape the next era of cement manufacturing, how standardised digital frameworks will power multi-site scalability, and why smart plants are essential for India's competitiveness in a low-carbon, infrastructure-led future.

As India's infrastructure growth accelerates, what key industry shifts have made it imperative for cement manufacturers to adopt smart manufacturing practices?