Rainwater Harvesting at UltraTech’s Vikram Cement Works

March 2022: The underlying hard rock of the Khor and Suwakheda areas in the Neemuch district of Madhya Pradesh, along with its soil conditions, meant 90 per cent of the area’s rainwater was lost. With only 10 per cent infiltrating the sedimentary terrain, this posed a unique challenge to UltraTech’s water conservation efforts at Vikram Cement Works, an integrated unit of UltraTech located in Khor, Neemuch. This prompted UltraTech to embark on a project in financial year 2019-20 aimed at collecting the run-off water from the unit’s mining area in a pit, which would allow for rainwater to be harvested. To enable water harvesting, UltraTech modified its mine planning and operations to maximise extraction of mineral from lower benches. This helped in accumulation of rainwater in the lower benches. As part of this initiative, almost 90 lakh cubic metres of water has been harvested and recharged in the mine area at Vikram Cement Works in FY21 alone.

Most of our integrated units have taken up water harvesting initiatives within their premises and several of them have mine-based water harvesting projects.

Vikram Cement Works also has the distinction of implementing watershed initiatives within the local communities. Some of these projects have been implemented in partnership with multiple government bodies. Several other manufacturing units of UltraTech have also undertaken integrated watershed projects to benefit the local communities. These units include Rajashree Cement Works (Karnataka), Andhra Pradesh Cement Works (Andhra Pradesh), Dhar Cement Works (Madhya Pradesh) and Baga Cement works (Himachal Pradesh).

Water security is an integral part of UltraTech’s operations across all its sites. The Company adheres to a zero-water discharge policy at all its facilities. UltraTech undertakes water recycling, recharging of groundwater and rainwater harvesting at its manufacturing sites. More than 71 million m3 of water has been harvested, recharged, recycled and reused across all its manufacturing locations in FY21. Overall, the Company recycles over 12 percent of the water it uses. With these efforts, the Company is certified more than 3.95 times water positive and aims to be five times water positive by end of FY2024.