Our Bureau

Kochi , Oct. 14

THE Aditya Birla Group has renamed L&T Cement, which it had earlier acquired from Larsen & Toubro, as `UltraTech', making it the third big cement brand of the flagship Grasim Industries.

"Nothing has changed except the name. What essentially was earlier L&T Cement has now become UltraTech Cement," said Mr O.P. Puranmalka, Chief Marketing Officer of UltraTech Cement Ltd, the erstwhile cement division of L&T.

"The quality, the technology, the plants and the people remain the same as before," he said here at a press conference.

L&T had earlier demerged its cement division to create UltraTech CemCo Ltd. Grasim acquired a majority stake in the company for around Rs 2,200 crore. Subsequent to this, Grasim, which has cement brands such as Birla Plus and Birla Super, was allowed to use the L&T Cement brand till March 31, 2005.

However, the company decided not to use the L&T Cement brand anymore and instead has now chosen the UltraTech brand, Mr Puranmalka said. Along with Birla Plus and Birla Super, UltraTech will be positioned as a national brand, he said.

He said Grasim opted to introduce the new brand to replace L&T Cement, rather than merging it with the existing Birla cement brands, in order to leverage on the premium value the L&T brand enjoyed.

"We did not want to lose out on the brand value," Mr Puranmalka said, adding that UltraTech has over 5,500 stockists and authorised dealers, as well as several thousand retailers across the country.

The Aditya Birla Group Chairman, Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla, recently said that the company would invest Rs 200 crore in UltraTech to generate around 2.5 million tonnes of capacity through modernising and streamlining the facilities.

The Group now has over 31 million tonnes per annum (TPA) of cement production capacity, of which 17 million TPA comes from UltraTech. This makes the Group the eighth largest cement manufacturer in the world.

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