Concrete for efficient, eco-friendly cities

With wide range of product portfolio, RDC Concrete is providing tailor-made solutions for various needs.Smart city needs to be energy efficient, sustainable with eco-friendly features, says Anil K. Banchhor, Managing Director and CEO, RDC Concrete (India) Pvt Ltd.

How do your products adding value to smart cities?
We have Greencrete concrete of various grades up to M60 with lesser embodied energy and contain more eco-friendly materials. Duracrete is another product offering higher life cycle than normal concrete due to its better durability properties and least maintenance. Crackfree concrete makes it impossible for water to penetrate and thereby reinforcement is well protected from possible corrosion causing external factors. We have Naturecrete for paving in walkways, which allows water to percolate to the ground and increase water table, instead of going to drain.

Selfcrete is one product which is largely being used in multi-storeyed building in congested columns or with aluminium formwork due to high flowability and ability to fill complicated structural members where congestion of reinforcement is high and it also speeds up the rate of pour thereby saves time. Heatresistantcrete helps in lowering down the heat transfer from roof slab to the inside building thereby saving in energy cost due to better resistance to heat. Tempcrete designed to reduce the core temperature of raft foundations, supercrete designed to achieve high compressive strengths up to M100, Fasttrackcrete to achieve high strength in matter of hours, Fibrecrete with new generation poly propylene fibre, impecrete to give aesthetic look to structures and many other products like superexpress crete, procrete, toughcrete, passivecrete, corroderesistcrete, heatresistantcrete, waterproofcrete, greencrete, naturecrete, litecrete etc., with wide applications giving longer durability, better strength, cost savings also reducing time and efforts put in a project. All the products are eco-friendly in nature and are the step forward to contributing sustainable development.

Discuss the latest trends and applications in concrete with respect to smart cities?
In construction, quality of concrete is moving towards the higher grade of concrete apart from increased focus on durability and sustainability through green concrete products. Earlier, the construction used to happen using the m20 grade or m25 grade of concrete. But now the industry is moving towards m30 to m60 grade of concrete. There are many builders and contractors, who are using m100 and m90 grade of concrete, such higher grade concrete helps builders in using less quantity of construction material due to reduced sizes of columns and beams.

Other than this wide range of value added services which are tailor made as per the requirement have introduced in the market like self compacting concrete, temperature control concrete, high early strength concrete, fibre concrete, bag concrete, long retention concrete, crack-free concrete, waterproof concrete, heat resistant concrete, decorative concrete, nature concrete, green concrete, lite concrete and many other products having wide range of application. RDC has special expertise in the concrete technology to meet all such demands to the full satisfaction of customers.

Please share your market outlook for this year.
RMC market is growing at a rate of 8 per cent year over year (YOY) in India, while RDC concrete is growing at the rate of 52 per cent YoY. Cement demand for RMC in India is likely to grow by 4.5 per cent in year 2019 clearly showing expected level of increase in growth of RMC business. In terms of machinery, use of boom pumps and placer booms for high-rise towers are increasing apart from higher capacity concrete pumps and trucks. Government’s infrastructure push would lead to increasing demand for concrete. Low-cost housing and ‘Make in India’ programmes are also aiding growth.

Government’s push for infrastructures like roads, metros; port, water supply etc would lead to increasing demand for concrete.
Anil K. Banchhor, Managing Director and CEO, RDC Concrete (India) Pvt Ltd

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