KARACHI, July 27: Pakistan Cement Company Limited (formerly Chakwal Cement Company) — a stock market listed company - has started production of cement and clinker, stated Orascom Construction Industries, the holding company of PCCL in a statement released on Thursday from its headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.

Orascom Construction Industries, understood to be the largest maker of cement in the Middle East and North Africa announced that production of cement and clinker from its new plant in Pakistan had commenced on schedule. PCCL was noted to own the property, plant and equipment of a 2.2 million ton per year cement plant supplied by F.L. Smidth of Denmark located along the Lahore-Islamabad highway (Chakwal) in the Punjab province of northern Pakistan. “OCI acquired a majority stake in Pakistan Cement Company in March 2005,” Orascom said and added that currently it owned 62.75pc of the PCCL stock.

The Orascom statement quoted its chief executive officer (CEO), Naseef Sawiris as saying: “The commissioning of our Greenfield cement plant in Pakistan comes at an important time for the cement market in Pakistan. Cement demand which is up 14pc during the first half of 2006 continues to grow rapidly mirroring strong GDP growth. The addition of Pakistan to the OCI Cement Group portfolio of operational plants raises our consolidated capacity to 20 million tons as planned”.

To complete the construction of the new cement plant, PCCL secured financing earlier this year through a syndicate of 11 Pakistani banks and the Eksport Kredit-Fonden (EkF), the Denmark-based international export credit agency, for the equivalent of US$130 million in limited recourse project finance debt which has been provided in Pakistani rupees, the Orascom news release stated, adding: “The total investment cost for OCI in Pakistan for the Greenfield plant is US$177 million, implying US$80 per cement ton”.